Ironclad built the software that makes legal contracts suck less. Jason Boehmig was a lawyer who got tired of doing the same repetitive contract work and decided to automate it. The platform handles the entire contract lifecycle — drafting, negotiating, signing, and storing — for companies like L’Oréal, Mastercard, and Staples. $334 million raised and a $3.2 billion valuation. It’s the rare legal tech company that lawyers actually like using, which is basically a miracle.
Founded
2014
HQ
San Francisco, USA
Total Raised
$334 million
Founder
Jason Boehmig, Cai GoGwilt
Status
Private
Website
www.ironcladapp.comTHE ORIGIN STORY
Jason Boehmig was a corporate lawyer at Fenwick & West, the Silicon Valley law firm that represents most major tech companies. He spent his days reviewing and redlining the same types of contracts over and over.
He thought: this should be software, not manual labor.
He co-founded Ironclad with Cai GoGwilt (the engineering brain) in 2014. The product started as a contract workflow tool — automating the process of creating, reviewing, approving, and signing business contracts.
What made it different from DocuSign was that Ironclad handled everything before and after the signature, not just the signing.
WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO
Enterprise SaaS subscription. Ironclad charges annual contracts to legal and business operations teams.
Pricing is based on number of users and contract volume. The platform targets mid-market and enterprise companies with significant contract volume.
The "digital contracting" category Ironclad helped create represents a shift from point solutions (just e-signatures) to full lifecycle management.
THE PRODUCTS
Ironclad Workflow Designer — drag-and-drop tool for building contract approval processes. AI Assist — AI-powered contract review and redlining.
Repository — searchable contract database. Ironclad Clickwrap — digital contract acceptance for web-based agreements.
Analytics — contract cycle time, bottleneck identification, and compliance reporting.
HOW THEY GREW
Ironclad grew by selling into legal departments at large companies, where the pain of manual contract management is most acute. They built deep integrations with Salesforce (for sales contracts), Slack (for approval workflows), and DocuSign (for signatures).
The Y Combinator network and Silicon Valley law firm connections drove early customers.
THE HARD PART
Legal departments are notoriously slow to adopt new technology. The sales cycle for legal tech is long — 6 to 12 months for enterprise deals.
Competition from DocuSign expanding into CLM (contract lifecycle management) and from other CLM providers like Agiloft and Conga.
MONEY TRAIL
Seed
2015 · Led by Y Combinator
$3M raised
Series A
2017 · Led by Accel
$9M raised
Series B
2019 · Led by Accel
$50M raised
Series D
2021 · Led by Y Combinator Continuity
$100M raised
Series E
2022 · Led by Franklin Templeton
$150M raised
$3.2B valuation
WHO BACKED THEM
Y Combinator was the earliest backer. Later rounds led by Accel, Sequoia, and Franklin Templeton.
The Series E in 2022 valued Ironclad at $3.2 billion. Total funding of $334 million.
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