No, no it’s not, says Rob Wilmot:

Crowdicity founder and CEO Rob Wilmot was the first speaker at this year’s Legal Geek Conference, and shared his thoughts on the importance of harnessing the innovation of individuals within companies as well as the unusual path he took to becoming one of the youngest executive officers of a FTSE 100 company, Freeserve, at the turn of the Millennium.

Wilmot was just 29 when internet provider Freeserve floated with a market cap of £1.6 billion, going on to peak at £9 billion. Freeserve was sold to France Telecom in 2001 for £1.6 billion and Wilmot moved on to new horizons soon after; eventually leading him to starting idea management software platform Crowdicity in 2012 (via multiple tech ventures many of which he remains involved with to this day).

Wilmot’s time at Freeserve – from being one of the 3 founding executives to its sale and then his departure – lasted less than 3 years – and coincided with the ‘dot-com bubble’.

So as Legal Geek listened to Rob’s story, we wondered how this exciting time in LegalTech (and FinTech and RegTech too) looks to someone like Wilmot who has witnessed first-hand a boom and bust in technology.

“The dotcom bubble was quite a traumatic time,” Wilmot told Legal Geek. “A lot of people lost everything because there was this hype around it all.

“Today, I don’t see another bubble developing because I see many companies are behaving very practically. I feel we’re in a structured and stable time for growth, as well as being in a sweetspot for technology.

“I think if you are a start-up here today [at the Legal Geek Conference] it’s really important to get the balance between ambition and practicality. If you overstretch yourselves you are going to collapse. But the economy is right for innovation at the moment, this is one of the best times to be innovating.”

Check out Rob Wilmot on Linkedin and his latest projects 🙂