This year, we celebrate HighQ's 15th anniversary.
The timing could not be more apt - we've recently secured our first ever round of investment, we're hosting our biggest ever client forum, and launching our most exciting overhaul of HighQ Collaborate to date.
The first 14 years
We've come a long way since 2001, when we began as a small business providing legal technology solutions as part of a joint venture with five major law firms and nine global banks.
In 2006 we launched our flagship product HighQ Collaborate (then known as DraftSpace), and launched HighQ Publisher a couple of years later.
By 2010, we’d established ourselves as a leading provider of collaboration tools for law firms and had a strong client base in the UK and Australia with traction growing in continental Europe and the US.
Two years later, we'd gained most of the top 20 law firms in the UK, including all of the Magic Circle, as clients and opened two more offices, extending our reach to New York and Amsterdam.
2013, 2014 and 2015 saw us grow rapidly year-on-year, and expanded our employee base around the world. We reached 250 global enterprise clients and won several awards.
Where we are today
Today, we have three products that cater for many business critical use cases in the legal, finance, and corporate sectors. We operate out of 12 data centres in six jurisdictions and are still growing fast. We now have a team of 205 people in six offices worldwide.
Saviz Izadpanah, Chief Technology Officer, reflects on how far HighQ's technology has come: "Every few months when I stand back and look at what the development and infrastructure teams have achieved, in terms of growth and improvements, it makes me proud."
Today, the world's top law firms rely on our products on deals worth billions, and so do major banks and corporates.
Saviz says that this success is testament to the quality of HighQ's products and the skill of our support team. "The fact that we have a relatively small support team dealing with all incoming requests highlights the great work the support team is doing and how good the quality of our products and services are," he explains.
A year of rapid growth ahead
After 14 years of steady growth and success, our 15th year is a year of rapid acceleration. At the start of this year we secured $50m funding to boost our growth for the next five years.
"As great as it is to look back on our success as a company over the last 15 years, it's even more exciting to look forward," says Stuart Barr, Chief Strategy Officer. "We're at a pivotal point in our history and the real potential in the business is about to be released. We have a fantastic team of people, amazing products and great clients to take us to the next stage."
"The future for HighQ is extremely exciting and one that's full of growth and change," agrees Amit Patel, Chief Finance Officer. "We're doubling in headcount in the next year and aggressively expanding in the US and elsewhere outside of the UK."
"We're going to become a truly global company with the leadership team across two continents for the first time in our history," says Amit. "We have set ourselves high growth targets and we'll achieve these by continuing our ethos of being an employee and customer focused company."
Reflecting on the success of HighQ
Ajay Patel, Chief Executive Officer, co-founded HighQ. "It's been amazing to experience HighQ's growth and success over the years," he says. "What we have achieved as a company that started from very humble beginnings and has grown into an industry-leading SaaS provider is truly unique and makes me very proud."
Stuart agrees: "I'm very proud to have been part of the team at HighQ," he says. "I'm really looking forward to getting our amazing products out there and available to as many people and companies as possible, so we can help transform the way people work in businesses around the world."
Ajay reflects on the scale of HighQ's success: "It's easy to forget how many companies never make it anywhere near this far. To do so with no external funding until very recently is a great achievement," says Ajay. "It's a testament to the team of people we have brought together at HighQ and the fantastic client base we are very grateful to have established."
"I'm proud to work with them all and hope that together we can go on to achieve even greater things with our exciting plans for the future," he concludes.
A sincere thank you
We are extremely grateful to our clients, partners and team members for supporting us over the past 15 years and helping us get to where we are today.
We can’t wait to see where HighQ will be 15 years from now. If the next 15 years are anything like the previous 15, we’ve got a lot to look forward to.
