Leah Del Percio calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur.”
She didn’t necessarily intend to strike out on her own and build a business. She had an impressive legal career as an attorney at places like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs and was climbing the corporate ladder at DLA Piper.
Del Percio said she enjoyed private practice. But something about the inefficiencies of trust and estate planning made her start thinking about entrepreneurship.
“Whether you’re rich or poor, whether you had a good estate plan or not, everyone has an estate,” Del Percio told Hypepotamus. But the reality is that a lot of the operational work falls to grieving families, even if they’ve put together a plan or will ahead of time.
Frustrating estate professionals were often losing clients during this process, since they didn’t have all the tools needed to help their clients. Staff members are spending hours on hold on the phone to make sure accounts get transferred over correctly and other parts of estates get executed in a timely manner.
It was while she was on hold for one of her clients for three hours that she realized there had to be a better software solution.
Client Happiness Tool
Del Percio ultimately co-founded Trustate, a Tampa-based LegalTech startup, in 2020, to fix the problems she saw in trust and estate administration and planning.
Law firms, attorneys, and wealth managers go into the platform and set up an account to start streamlining their client’s estate planning documents. The dashboard allows estate planning professionals to delegate out tasks while more easily identifying important assets and liabilities that need to be handled.
This helps both the law firm and its clients work through the many moving parts associated with creating and implementing an estate plan properly.
The platform is designed to “empower firms to not only be able to generate more revenue, but revenue where their clients really palpably feel that their lawyer is representing them and getting stuff done for them. So it’s not just a money making tool, but also like a client happiness tool,” she added.
Growing In Tampa
To date, over 900 law firms have already signed up for Trustate.
Despite not intending to be an entrepreneur, Del Percio has built up an impressive venture-backed business. Seed-stage investors from New York, Ontario, and California have backed the startup, according to available Crunchbase data.
Tara Faquir, an Atlanta-based entrepreneur, came on as Trustate’s co-founder. The team is remote first, though a large contingent of them live and work in Tampa. Embarc Collective, Tampa’s startup hub, has been instrumental in Trustate’s growth early on.
The Southeast’s LegalTech space continues to grow, with venture-backed companies like Courtroom5, Case Status, and FourthParty all calling the region home.
As Del Percio scales Trustate, we asked her what advice she had to other early-stage startups looking to scale in the tech world.
For her, it all comes down to hiring.
“One thing we’ve done well in building out an early team that saved us quite a bit of grief is that we’ve always hired for the player, not the role. We’re always looking for really incredible talent and a desire to continue to learn and grow. Because inevitably, you end up wearing 1000 different hats,,” she added.
She and the team are always on the lookout for high-quality talent to join, so keep an eye out on their hiring page if you are in the market for a new job.
—
Featured Photo provided by Leah Del Percio
