The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 20VC: 15 Term Sheets in 7 Days and Choosing Benchmark | Harvey vs Legora: Who Wins Legal and How to Play When You Have $600M Less Funding | Are AI Models Plateauing Today | Building a 9-9-6 Culture From Stockholm with Max Junestrand
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Aug 15, 2025 
Max Junestrand, Co-Founder and CEO of Legora, transitioned from a potential gaming career to revolutionizing legal tech with AI. He shares how he raised $120M—just a fraction of his competitor's $800M—while still outpacing them in innovation. Max discusses the challenges of scaling against well-funded rivals, the unique culture of the 9-9-6 work model in Sweden, and whether AI models are truly plateauing. He also reveals the pivotal coffee meeting that saved his startup during Y Combinator.
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From WoW To AI Founder
- Max learned English and competitiveness through World of Warcraft and Dota, which shaped his early career choices.
- He chose university over a possible pro-gaming payday and built betting models before pivoting to AI.
Frameworks, Not Just Models
- The biggest leaps came from GPT-style models, not incremental improvements since BERT.
- Max argues progress now is driven more by frameworks (tool-calling, structured outputs) than raw model gains.
Swarms Improve Quality—At High Cost
- Running swarms of LLM calls (hundreds to thousands) drastically improves output quality for complex legal tasks.
- This approach multiplies compute costs (up to ~100x) but can still be far cheaper than senior lawyer time.
