Robert Ambrogi Blog
In a hire designed to further accelerate its growth, Steno, a tech-enabled provider of legal support and court reporting services, has named Prabhdeep Singh, who has held executive roles in technology companies such as Clover, WeWork and Uber, as chief operating officer.
Singh was most recently operating partner at Armory Square Ventures, where he was a board member, portfolio advisor, and member of its investment committee. His prior roles include having been global head of marketplace at WeWork, head of enterprise at Uber Eats, and chief growth officer at Clover Health.
In an interview yesterday with Singh and Steno CEO and cofounder Greg Hong, Hong said that Singh brings critical experience that can help scale Steno from a $100 million company to a $1 billion company.
Already this year, the company is seeing growth of 119% YoY, fueled in part by its launch in May of Transcript Genius, a tool that uses generative AI to enable attorneys to dynamically interact with and interrogate transcripts, and Singh’s hire will help build on the momentum, Hong said.
“Prabhdeep’s proven track record of growing and leading high-performing teams and his deep understanding of scaling operations will be instrumental as we continue to expand our market reach and deliver exceptional value to litigators,” Hong said.
“With his extensive operations experience across a range of technology sectors, Prabhdeep is ideally suited to lead Steno’s next evolution of delivering excellent experiences to our clients through innovative technology and white-glove service, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the Steno leadership team.”
‘Something Special Here’
Singh told me that he was drawn to Steno by the opportunity to help drive innovation in court reporting, an industry that has historically been characterized by very commoditized and transactional approaches.
Through his experience in real estate, food delivery and health care, he has learned to recognize which aspects of an industry work and should be retained, and which can be innovated, he said.
“Steno meets a lot of the criteria for me to say there’s something special here,” Singh said.
How does Steno get to be that billion-dollar business? One way, Hong said, will be by expanding its product line. Transcript Genius is a recent example of that, he said, and reflects the company’s approach to developing products that are meaningfully different from what its competitors are offering.
Another way is by having a different approach to the market. In selling to Am Law 100 and NLJ 350 firms, court reporting companies have traditionally focused the conversation on price and relationship. While those are important, Hong said, Steno is able to talk to firms about how it can help them improve the practice of law and provide them with a broader offering through its Steno Connect platform.
One final way is to retain its current customers by keeping them happy, Hong said. He said the company works hard to maintain service quality, as reflected in the fact that its average customer response time is 10-11 minutes.
“At the end of the day, we are still a services business,” Hong said. “We need to deliver on the core service, which is court reporters, videographers, interpreters, and making sure that people show up on time and that our clients can get a timely and thoughtful response.”
If Steno can deliver on that and also offer unique products that differentiate it in the market, he said, “it will allow us to grow and continue to grow very nicely.” But both of those things need to work in tandem, he said, and that is where Singh’s experience can be critical.
“We’re already doing a great job in a lot of ways, and our clients are happy,” Singh said. “The way that we think about this is, as we scale, we just need to make sure that never degrades. … On the service side, it’s just making sure that we’re keeping to the standards that we set for ourselves and our customers and never move away from that standard.”
‘Inside-Out Thinking’
Singh added that another critical strength he sees in Steno is its knowledge of the legal industry. Too many companies build “outside-in” technology, he said, developing for an industry they do not know well. By contrast, Steno approaches development from the perspective of how legal professionals work and whether the tool makes sense for them.
“The hope is that our products are matching the best of outside-in technology, but with the best of inside-out thinking,” Singh said.
Singh said his experience in health care showed him that too often, products for physicians were developed without understanding their workflows. Only the small minority of companies that solved for actual workflows were the ones that succeeded.
“We’re focused on that one piece, because we know that’s actually what will get people to use the thing,” he said.
Singh’s appointment rounds out Steno’s executive team, which includes Hong; Dylan Ruga, cofounder, president and CLO; Dan Anderson, cofounder, CTO and CISO; and Carly Savar, general counsel.
Cofounder Ruga, a former Steptoe & Johnson partner who then founded his own plaintiffs’ litigation firm, first conceived of Steno as a vehicle for financing deposition costs. Having never started a company, he enlisted Hong, an entrepreneur who previously had founded Reserve, a restaurant reservation system, and sold it in 2018 to another restaurant reservation company, Resy, which was later acquired by American Express.
Last year, the company raised a $15 million Series B financing round, and last May, it announced another $46 million in financing.