Introduction: 0:00
- Introducing Kathy Zhu, Co-founder, CEO & GC at Streamline AI, her legal background, and her passion for scuba-diving.
Becoming an in-house counsel: 1:30
- Coming from a family without experience in the legal profession.
- Studying both Biology and English in college.
- Realizing she had a drive to help people and deciding to pursue law school.
- Encountering business law in Law School and deciding in-house counsel was the right path.
Persevering during life pivots: 3:45
- Immigrating from China at the age of 6 and learning how to adapt.
- Moving from locations that spanned from Australia to the UK to the United States.
- Overcoming challenges and cultural differences in each move to become resilient.
- Gaining a global perspective.
Taking a leap of faith and building a start-up: 5:24
- Transitioning from Doordash to building her own company took courage.
- Identifying a recurring problem she faced as an in-house counsel and striving to fix it.
- Building Streamline AI to manage the chaos and bring visibility into the legal department.
- Teaching herself how to design on Figma and coming up with a product blueprint.
- Teaming up with a technical co-founder to build and execute on the vision.
Identifying the right co-founder: 8:05
- Meeting Streamline AI’s co-founder Julian.
- Identifying a common problem, which they each personally identified with from different perspectives.
- Meeting of the minds to help solve this problem.
Transitioning to CEO of Streamline AI: 10:16
- Working as a business-minded in-house counsel prepared Kathy to be CEO.
- Wearing multiple hats on the job enables business-minded lawyers to succeed in entrepreneurship.
- How struggles in life gave Kathy the perspective to persevere through challenges and to prioritize Streamline AI.
Learning about leadership from scuba diving: 18:01
- What scuba diving taught Kathy about being a leader.
- Learning to stay calm when dealing with pressure.
- Overcoming your fears becomes easier the more you face them head-on.
Leveraging law experience in product development: 22:53
- Seeing the world through the users’ eyes.
- Capitalizing on Kathy’s experience from her in-house roles and baking that into the product.
- Combining her lived experience with her co-founder’s technical experience.
- Listening to customers for product feedback and recommendations.
Advice for legal tech buyers on where to start: 26:55
- How to go about procuring and evaluating legal tech software.
- Encouraging customers to do their homework.
Embracing new technology in law: 30:14
- Ensuring legal teams do not get left behind with technology.
- Studying the “Tech Adoption Lifestyle” and identifying where you fall.
- Making a conscious decision to embrace technology or be aware of changes happening in the landscape.
Breaking the mindset of resisting change: 33:49
- Identifying what your internal dialog is telling you.
- Acknowledging that change is already happening.
- Directing the flow of change, and being the CEO of your own life.