Min-Kyu Jung (Co-founder & CEO at Ivo) on creating AI-powered legal assistants; the journey from NZ corporate law to leading a hot Silicon Valley startup

The ‘Diaspora’ podcast features Blackbird entrepreneur in residence (EIR) and investor David Booth, profiling the founders, innovators, and emerging leaders of the great Kiwi expat community.

Min-Kyu Jung is the CEO and co-founder at Ivo, an AI contract law assistant for legal teams, which has raised $6.2 million in funding total from investors including Uncork Capital, Fika Ventures, GD1, Phase One, and Daniel Gross.

Min-Kyu got the idea for Ivo (previously Latch) while working as a corporate lawyer in New Zealand, when he saw how much time, effort and money were spent drawing up agreements. 

His entrepreneurial streak got the better of him — drawn to what he saw as “low-hanging fruit”, under-optimised processes around him in the legal profession, he taught himself how to code in two months and took the leap to start a startup.

He joined Booth to discuss his thesis for AI product development, how founders should think about designing user experiences, how Ivo handles issues with Large Language Model (“LLM”) reliability and hallucinations, and how he’s preparing to leverage ever more powerful AI models to his advantage in coming years.

Click here to listen.