On The Up: Mount Maunganui start-up Dispute Buddy wins global grant for legal tech growth

Dispute Buddy, founded by Jenny Rudd, was named out of 400 start-ups as one of two winners of a $5000 grant from Airwallex. Photo / Supplied

A small legal tech start-up run from Mount Maunganui has won a global growth grant to help establish itself in overseas markets.

Dispute Buddy, founded by Jenny Rudd, was one of two start-ups chosen from a pool of 400 New Zealand-based entrants to win a $5000 Airwallex Global Grant.

The grant gives two NZ-based business owners, founders or executives the chance to attend a global conference, aimed at facilitating professional development to bring bright ideas back to New Zealand.

Rudd will head to Boston in October to attend ClioCon, one of the world’s biggest legal tech conferences.

She said being able to attend the global conference was an “incredible signal” to the investors and customers of Dispute Buddy.

Dispute Buddy is software that supports its users with the family court process, which Rudd described as the “first mile” in discovery for people in legal disputes.

“Dispute Buddy solves an easy-to-understand problem, which is that there is so much legal advice that’s trapped in texts and people don’t know how to get it out,” Rudd said.

It extracts evidence collected and collated from texts and emails needed in legal disputes, and creates a court-ready document summary report.

“It’s a jurisdiction-neutral tool, so we’re not encumbered by legislation and laws in different countries.”

Jenny Rudd pitching Dispute Buddy on stage in Sydney to hundreds of investors. Photo / Supplied

It prevents users from having to go down a rabbit hole and reread painful messages.

“We’re like the first mile in discovery for people in legal disputes where they’ve got communication-based evidence.”

Rudd told the Bay of Plenty Times the $5000 grant meant she could scale up the company much quicker.

“Anywhere that we can save money, whilst ensuring growth, is a huge opportunity.”

She was looking to raise capital and open to New Zealand investors, while also targeting Australia and America.

Rudd said as an early start-up, she had to be careful about where she would spend capital.

“Every dollar you have, you have to be super careful about where you spend it to make sure it turns into revenue as quickly as possible.”

She said, like any early tech company, staying alive while validating a product was challenging.

“You’ve got to find a way to finance to keep you going while you’re building tech and validating it, because it’s never a linear path.”

Jenny Rudd (front) and Dispute Buddy's chief technical officer Seth Bell. Photo / Supplied

She said she saw a “huge global market” for gathering evidence for any legal dispute that involved digital communications.

“Not to mention the many hundreds of thousands of people that don’t ever access legal support because they are daunted to.”

Rudd said Dispute Buddy was currently focusing on cases of coercion and abuse.

“Our abuse report is good at pulling out abusive messages and finding patterns of coercion, which is difficult to prove.”

With the help of the global grant, Rudd will take Dispute Buddy to Boston in October and said she was thinking carefully about the app’s messaging to what Americans need.

“I‘m planning on launching into America, but we’ll see how we go. It just depends on what the pool is like in the whole of America.”

Kaitlyn Morrell is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post. She has lived in the region for several years and studied journalism at Massey University.