The contract management lifecycle company Agiloft has received a $45 million growth equity investment from FTV Capital — the first outside investment for this 29-year-old California company.

In conjunction with the investment, Eric Laughlin has been named chief executive officer, succeeding Agiloft’s founder Colin Earl, who will remain with the company as chief technology officer, overseeing product development, engineering, security and technology infrastructure.

Laughlin was most recently global leader of legal managed services at Ernst & Young LLP, where he managed the Pangea3 and Riverview Law teams and provided clients with technology and service solutions in the contracts, e-discovery, and compliance domains globally.

Eric Laughlin

Before EY, Laughlin was at Thomson Reuters, where he was managing director of the corporate segment, responsible for information, software, and service offerings for corporate legal departments.

His career at Thompson Reuters included posts as general manager of the Serengeti e-billing and matter management software, consultant in the Global Strategy function, and in marketing leadership.

Named a leader by Gartner in its 2020 Magic Quadrant for Contract Lifecycle Management, Agiloft’s contracting software is built on a no-code platform, which it says allows its customers to customize complex contract and commerce workflows without writing a single line of code. Artificial intelligence is used to simplify the intake and organization of existing contracts and to identify risk in contracts.

Agiloft says the investment will be used to build the company’s position in the rapidly growing enterprise contract and commerce lifecycle management market and to accelerate development of its AI-based product.

“Colin and his team at Agiloft have built a unique company, emphasizing customer-focused execution and a culture of trust and transparency — all built on a foundation of technical excellence,” Laughlin said in a statement provided by the company. “The result has been steadily accelerating growth and consistent profitability.”

FTV Capital is a growth equity investment firm that has raised nearly $4 billion to invest in high-growth companies offering a range of innovative solutions in three sectors: enterprise technology and services, financial services, and payments and transaction processing.

In the legal sector, it had previously funded e-discovery company Catalyst before it was acquired by OpenText.

As part of this transaction, FTV Capital’s Alex Mason and Abhay Puskoor will join Agiloft’s board of directors.

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Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.