Taylor Wrice didn’t see a document problem. He saw a communication problem. And that became clear as he guided me through a quick demo of his fledgling platform, DocuLingo.
Before turning into a founder, Wrice’s career featured significant rev-ops experience (also two-plus years of government work). Solidifying go-to-market strategies and navigating the various contract conversations exposed him to the issue he’s tackling now: Too many departments operated in silos, he said, and that created many platforms to work out of.
DocuLingo emerged as a customer data platform (CDP) trying to solve those problems, featuring AI tools that can translate and extract insights — functions producing results in seconds that normally could take days and weeks. His former athlete background (he was a Division I football recruit) and the complexities that can come with deals in sports made this industry an easy fit. And there are all kinds of potential customers.
“It’s not just athletes — it’s brands, it’s sports agencies, it’s families that don’t have a representation yet,” Wrice said. “This is an engine that can fit anywhere.”
The startup was founded last year. It’s based in Raleigh, N.C. and is raising funds after investor interest prompted Wrice to increase the company’s funding target. DocuLingo recently added premium stick maker Swift Hockey, joining a client base of double-digit companies, which includes agencies, apparel businesses and athletes. There are also ongoing conversations with more business in the pipeline, Wrice told me.
Bringing deal management under one screen
Typically, to support deals, a company may lean on a communication platform (like Slack or Teams), a document management tool (like DocuSign) and the preferred CDP it deploys. DocuLingo puts all those in one place. There are different experience views for athletes, agents and agencies for the web-based platform. Wrice added that while the company is working on an app, the web version is mobile-friendly.
Wrice explained that the driving design focus was straightforwardness. A portfolio manager can see most of the answers they need from the opening dashboard called the Sports Hub. “I could break this down as an athlete myself,” Wrice said. “... Now they can get access to all their data, all their documents, if they ever decide that they don’t want to get an agent.”
The AI in the platform provides document intelligence capabilities, which parse through contracts and navigate questions from the user.
DocuLingo can scan and evaluate uploaded contracts for risks that it flags for users but also lay out the deliverable schedule associated with agreements. The platform can also translate to 31 different languages — international negotiations often required an interpreter and took months, Wrice said, to navigate with both sides of a deal (think Shohei Ohtani’s global endorsement portfolio or the constant international challenges a Nike or Adidas may face). A chat function provides for quick prompts around deals and produces answers that sidestep legal jargon with responses in everyday language.
There is so much information in deals, Wrice said, and by making those documents work for clients better, the rest of the process can run much more smoothly (and quickly, too).
“They [deal managers] are generating [the contracts] at the end of the deal,” Wrice said. “You start the deal with the contract and document, you can really pull out the information.”
