IGHS43 - Shawn Curran, Jylo's AI Debut at ILTACON2024

Jim Merrifield (00:00.85)
Hello and welcome to the InfoGov hot seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Shawn Curran at Jylo Welcome Shawn

Shawn Curran (00:09.336)
Thanks Jim, thanks for having me.

Jim Merrifield (00:11.112)
Yeah, it's great to have you all the way from the UK, right? It shows the powerful of video conferencing, right? You don't have to be in the same room to actually have a useful, handy conversation. So thanks for taking time out of your afternoon to, yeah, spend some time with our audience. So let's kick this off. Let's get to know Sean Curran at Jylo Can you tell us a brief introduction of yourself, your current role, and one fun fact about yourself?

Shawn Curran (00:27.863)
Yeah, of course.

Shawn Curran (00:41.07)
Cool, yeah, Shawn Curran, the CEO of Jylo Jylo is an AI company. We're based out of Shoreditch in London. My background is I have worked in technology within private practice for about 20 years in a variety of different roles. I worked for, your audience in the US might know Latham Watkins. I worked for the Latham for about four and half years, based in London, but often traveled to the Global Services office in Los Angeles.

And then I worked for Freshfields for a couple of years as an architect and then joined Travis Smith as a head of legal tech, then boom promoted to director. But I've kind of worked my way up through a variety of different roles in law firms and I've got experience of pretty much most of the types of roles. Like I did infrastructure for a while, I did software engineering, I started in tech support, I did architecture and design, I led and built a department. And so I've kind of touched most of the areas and then over the last year,

of kind of less private practice and now building a technology to try and sell back into private practice. And I do believe that we've got quite a lot of, because of that expertise and that experience, really kind of striking a chord with people who would have been my peers a year ago on the basis that I can empathize with the problems that they have and we're sort of building a solution to solve for that.

Jim Merrifield (02:04.98)
Yeah, that's a great background. I love it. See, I told you I was gonna ask it. Now tell us the fun fact.

Shawn Curran (02:06.926)
I missed my fun fact, I missed my fun fact. I think, I need to get, it's quite funny when you get asked a fun fact and then it's the same fun fact for like 20 years and then you're like, why have I got no more fun facts that have occurred in my life than the one that happened when I was like 20? But I think they're probably, the one that might be most relevant, and because there is some evidence of this online so people can look it up. When I was, 21

I tried out for Los Angeles Galaxy, the soccer team, and I scored a goal in the tryouts, which was good. But after the tryout, I have a family in Los Angeles, and after the tryouts, we got home and this news came on at five talking about how David Beckham had just signed for the LA Galaxy. And then they cut to the tryouts and I was on TV. And was prime time, 5 pm NBC News.

in Los Angeles and I have got a cut of that which is on YouTube so people can look that up. Yeah and I think there's a video of the assist as well. So I think that's a fun fact. It's the one I use regularly.

Jim Merrifield (03:15.934)
Yeah, that's awesome. I'll have to get a clip of that maybe integrated with the when this recording hits hits live.

Shawn Curran (03:22.22)
A lot more mobile back then. But yeah, I look at the video now thinking, how could I have moved that fast? I was like running, but yeah, that's my...

Jim Merrifield (03:31.358)
I love it. I love it. I love asking that question. Fun facts. it's you learn a little more about about people. You know, we're a little more interesting than being in the tech space.

Shawn Curran (03:42.69)
What's your fun fact?

Jim Merrifield (03:44.996)
Fun fact. geez, you're actually asking me a fun fact. So that's fun So no one's ever actually done that so I guess you could say my fun fact is I used to play professional wiffle ball So he's wiffle ball. Yeah, you know, do you have wiffle ball it so wiffle ball? It's like a a plastic baseball With a few holes like probably about six or seven holes around you've never seen it. It's like white no

Shawn Curran (03:56.44)
Wiffleball

Also, bye.

Shawn Curran (04:09.558)
Cool.

Jim Merrifield (04:11.934)
I'll have to put a picture up there and I'll send you a link.

Shawn Curran (04:14.112)
Is it like a less dangerous version of baseball?

Jim Merrifield (04:17.458)
Yes, it's all plastic, but the ball moves in so many different ways. You can make the ball curve and move and stuff like that. So they used to have a, they still do have professional wiffle ball leagues and things like that. used to travel around and, you know, few of my cousins and friends. So, so that's my, my professional days, I guess you might say.

Shawn Curran (04:22.389)
Bye! you

Shawn Curran (04:37.87)
I've never seen wiffle ball but I'll have give it a try next time. We don't have it over here. I'll give it a try next time in America.

Jim Merrifield (04:41.182)
Yeah.

Yeah, listen, there's plenty of YouTube videos. Who knows, maybe at ILTACon we'll get a wiffle ball game going on or something on the expo floor. I don't know. You guys seem to be pretty innovative. So let's talk about ILTACon I know this was your first ILTACon this year. You were in the startup hub.

Shawn Curran (04:50.478)
Yeah.

Shawn Curran (05:01.384)
no, we weren't, we we weren't. We were Full Silver -sponsors.

Jim Merrifield (05:05.948)
Right, you're a fully at I shouldn't say startup up. I know you were you know a startup right this year What was the reaction to your startup debut?

Shawn Curran (05:10.818)
Yeah, yeah.

Shawn Curran (05:14.766)
So yeah, we had a great year at ILTACon I think the reaction was very positive. have a lot, we certainly felt like there was a lot of activity at our stand and looking around at some of the stands around us, it didn't seem like there was a huge amount of activity. That was hopefully part of the strategy and plan, which was we took a lot of people to ILTACon this year.

We had a lot of people kind of out and about meeting people and chatting to people and just letting people know about Jylo and the product around the exhibit hall, but also like all over the venue, the event venue. And then, you know, encouraging people to come back to the stand for a demo. But we felt like it went really well. We've made lots of friends. We've built lots of new connections and lots of good relationships.

It was exhausting. think I've been to ILTACon as a customer four or five times in my life. But going as a vendor, it looks like it's lots of fun. I think my family on Instagram seen me at the Grand Old Opry watching Luke Combs. It looks glamorous, but actually you're hosting clients and you've got to make sure that they're happy and you've got to get them drinks if they want drinks.

pitching all day on stand and then like socializing all night, but then also being the host and then just doing that for like four or five days. Like I always heard vendors who would talk about how exhausting it was, but it's not until you actually live it that you feel that. But yeah, we felt like it went really well for us and we've been able to kind of introduce the brand to the US. And as a result of that, we've got lots and lots of followups, which is great for us.

Jim Merrifield (07:04.436)
Love it, that's great. No, it's awesome. So you went to the Opry you saw Luke Combs live.

Shawn Curran (07:09.61)
So Luke Combs and then we went the second night to see Post Malone. We got tickets to both. It's quite interesting, like being honest, we reached out to quite a few people in America to try and organize the usual round tables and dinners and stuff. But I think like nobody had heard of Jylo, so we were just another one of the X number of the AI startups or AI companies that people didn't have time to chat to.

Jim Merrifield (07:13.8)
Yeah? Wow.

Shawn Curran (07:34.402)
And so we had some budget and so we thought, how do we allocate that budget to something that actually is quite interesting? And thankfully, I mean, was a complete luck that you had two superstars in the Grand Old Opry in the same week as ILTACon Luke Combs and then Post Malone. And so we bought some tickets and took some prospects along to those.

Jim Merrifield (07:55.572)
That's awesome. That's great. I'm sure you had a blast.

Shawn Curran (07:58.658)
Yeah, it was good fun. It's good for as you know, it was quite a quite embarrassing story. I'll tell it because I think it's hilarious. Caroline Hill, the Legal IT Insider journalist in the UK, she came to one of them and a few a few prospects. But because I think you saw me talk to Jim at the G200 and I also did another talk with some other people and it was about a thousand people in the room. And so when I was walking around ILTACon

a lot of people would kind of wait, stand near me and I could see them looking at me and come up and like, thank you very much for that talk, we thought it was really good. The usual sort of stuff when you do public speaking. So that was happening all week, which is very normal and stuff. We went to Grand Old Opry, we were standing in queue to get, standing in line to get a drink. And there's this old man that's kind of standing looking at me and I just thought he was from the event, we thought he was from the conference and I kind of went to introduce myself thinking that he wanted to chat to me about one of the talks.

But I was standing in front of the mayonnaise and ketchup and I just wanted to put something nice on Hot Dog And it was extremely embarrassing. So yeah, it was quite funny.

Jim Merrifield (09:02.772)
That's That's a cool fun fact too.

Shawn Curran (09:05.996)
Yeah, but it's just like how to just make yourself look like a complete idiot in front of prospects. Like, you are waiting to chat to me? No, mate, you're just in front of the condiments for my hot dog.

Jim Merrifield (09:12.572)
the

Jim Merrifield (09:18.334)
Now it's all good. It shows that you're human. So speaking of ILTACon you shared some takeaways already, but what were your key takeaways from the event? What did you enjoy?

Shawn Curran (09:28.718)
Key takeaways are... I think, think

Obviously, AI is just dominating everything. Every single vendor has got some form of AI play, whether you're a new company like us coming to market with an AI product or whether you're an existing vendor who's trying to kind of bring it into the platform and complement that existing value prop. I think that's just dominating. I think that will be the case. I think you mentioned earlier, Jim, it's kind of an e -discovery 20 years ago, but I think that is just going to dominate now for the next five or 10 years.

I think we noticed that quite a bit. I don't get the impression, I think people are now kind of looking for the next iteration following like chatbots. I think we can evolve, dip their toes in the water in terms of like how AI works and giving people chat and sort of inputs and outputs. But now you're looking at volume based analysis, now looking at everything else, I think that's an idea that is quite exciting. Obviously that's an idea we're in.

And so I think there's a few other vendors as well that are doing the same thing as us that they were in attendance. Yeah, but I think really the takeaway for me was just it was a fantastic event for us. AI is dominating and we're really looking forward to National Harbor next year and going again and trying to go as big as we did this year.

Jim Merrifield (10:59.39)
Yeah, be a great time in Gaylord National Harbor.

Shawn Curran (11:03.266)
I think there's a lot more drinking this time because of Broadway. I think you're pretty much down in Broadway every evening. seen a large percentage of the attendees of ILTACon all rushing back to get taxis at like two in the morning when the bar's closed.

Jim Merrifield (11:06.974)
Well, it is Nashville, so.

Jim Merrifield (11:25.908)
Yeah, and then getting up at 730 in the morning right to make it to the keynote.

Shawn Curran (11:30.606)
Yeah, or us, like standing on the stand and having to like pitch all day. But I did the 1000 attendee talk and it overran by five minutes and I was getting text messages because I had a meeting like that five minutes with like a really important person. So had to like jump off the stand and then run back. It's just like super intense as a vendor.

Jim Merrifield (11:52.382)
yeah, for sure. Yeah, I was on the vendor side for a little while, practitioner side, and then back to the practitioner side. you know, I think the day is being, yeah, on the vendor side, or I call them business partners, it's, you can't appreciate, I think, the time that you all put into these events until you kind of live it. It's a lot. And so, you know, obviously thank you for doing that. So I know we talked about a lot, Shawn here.

about Jylo about ILTACon AI in general. Is there anything, I'm sure we'll have a part two to this discussion, is there anything that you, anything else you wanted to share with the audience?

Shawn Curran (12:33.646)
In terms of just general?

Jim Merrifield (12:36.666)
Anything general, I don't know. I mean you could talk about what you're doing for in the fall I don't know, you know, you could talk about anything

Shawn Curran (12:43.63)
Cool, interesting. I'm actually visiting America way more than I ever have in my life. I'm out in two weeks for an event and lots and lots of work. What am I doing this fall? I'm coming to America for a few events. In the winter, I am going to Mount Hood Skiing in Oregon. My wife is from Portland, Oregon, so we're taking the kids over there to go skiing.

But yeah, I think like from a sort of balanced perspective between like working and fun, obviously, as we said, like we're building this AI company, there is a lot of competition. It is extremely important that everybody moves quickly to capture the market here. And so it's been extremely intense. And I sort of expect the fall to be quite busy for us just in terms of like onboarding customers and trying to.

to keep pace with the market.

Jim Merrifield (13:44.658)
Yeah, it definitely will be for sure. And you have a unique name in Jylo I'm going to have to ask you in the next one, how you came up with that name. Jylo. All right, do it to me. Do it. You got AI to really?

Shawn Curran (13:52.822)
I mean, it's a quick answer. We got AI to do it. Yeah, we wanted four characters. We wanted it to be like one syllable, maybe two syllables that rolls off the tongue. And as we talked about earlier, Jim, like trying to get the SEO of like Google just now is so hard and so competitive. You want that first page. And so getting a domain that's available and getting a name that doesn't exist on, you might have like some random person who's used it before, but it won't have enough hits so you can push them down quite quickly.

And so we just wanted to get them on that page for when people search for their name. And so we just wanted, and so I asked ChatGPT and I had like, give me another 50, give me another 50, give me another 50. Jylo obviously wasn't built at this point, because we, or I would have asked Jylo. But we asked ChatGPT And then it just, we've got it like, we've got it as a printout, but like it just stands out with all the other names and it just, it's just catchy. And so we thought, right, we're going with that.

Jim Merrifield (14:49.534)
That's awesome. It is catchy. Now it's a used AI to create the AI company. I love it. That's awesome. Well, listen, Shawn thanks so much for spending some time with us on the hot seat. Allow me to ask some questions, get to know you a little better. Thank you, audience, for attending today's episode. If you'd like to be a guest on the InfoGov hot seat, like Shawn here, all you need to do is submit your information through our website, infogovhotseat .com.

Shawn Curran (14:53.752)
it.

Jim Merrifield (15:17.606)
and then we'll get you on the calendar, just like Shawn And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.