Combined, two of ModeOne’s startup investors have over 55 years of experience and success in the legal profession.
Conceived and founded by Matt Rasmussen, ModeOne Technologies began operation in March 2022. The company offers the industry’s first automated, fully-remote mobile data acquisition solution with global reach. Its patented SaaS technology helps clients target, collect, and review emerging forms of digital data and short-message chat information quickly, accurately and with cost-certainty. It is the first mobile phone data acquisition solution that doesn’t require a physical mobile collection kit.
In just a few short months, ModeOne is revolutionizing the way evidentiary data is collected from iOS (Apple) and Android smartphones.
Before the Company commenced operation, it made the decision to raise over $1 million of Series Seed funding to support continued software development, professional staff costs, marketing and sales activities, and other customary business operating expenses.
Two of ModeOne’s startup investors are accomplished veterans of the legal profession and litigation support services and technology industry, respectively. Combined, they have over 55 years of experience in legal services.
David Marroso is a renowned trial lawyer with the prominent law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP. He is the Chair of the firm’s General Litigation Practice Group and also the Head of the Litigation Department of the firm’s Century City office. David has been honored by Chambers USA as a go-to lawyer for commercial litigation and Benchmark Litigation described him as a “Litigation Star.” Named to Variety’s Legal Impact Report, he is among the “legal eagles” who have “litigated thorny disputes for entertainment industry clients, studios and networks.” Over two decades, David has represented clients in high-profile antitrust, contract, copyright and trademark, defamation, environmental, ERISA, insurance, interference, labor and employment, profit participation and royalty, international tax, and white collar criminal defense matters covering multiple industries. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Nevada and a Juris Doctorate from the Harvard Law School.
David explained his decision to invest in ModeOne as follows: “I decided to invest in ModeOne because of the two T’s: Talent and Technology. I have had the pleasure of working with ModeOne’s founder, Matt Rasmussen, for many years. He is among the finest technology professionals in the business. Thoughtful, creative, pragmatic, and always with client goals and needs in mind.”
Marroso added, “When I learned about the technology Matt and ModeOne had created — wirelessly accessing communications from mobile devices — I asked to be part of the team, not the other way around. The sky is the limit.”
Another early investor was Greg Mazares, who has spent the past 34 years as a senior executive of litigation support services and technology companies. He has experience building and selling companies in over ten unique industry service sectors including jury consulting, deposition services, temporary staffing and permanent placement of attorneys and paralegals, electronic discovery, and managed review. Mazares is the former CEO of Encore Discovery Solutions, which grew materially under his leadership and was acquired by Epiq Systems in 2011. He was also president of sales and a major investor in Discovia, which he helped build and sell to Lighthouse Global in 2017. At present Mazares sits on several boards and consults with private equity groups interested in making investments in the legal services market. He holds an undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
In 2019 Mazares, then the EVP and global director of M&A at KLDiscovery, met Matt Rasmussen through a mutual friend and business associate. While ModeOne was too early in its journey to be an acquisition candidate, he and Rasmussen talked about the business concept and potential often, leading to Mazares serving as a consultant and mentor to Matt after he left KLD. Today, he serves as the company’s Executive Chairman.
Like David Marroso, Mazares and his wife, Carol, made a decision to invest in ModeOne primarily because of Matt Rasmussen’s inspiration to develop the ModeOne technology and the innate skills Rasmussen demonstrates in technology development, customer service, and general management.
Mazares explained, “Matt Rasmussen comes from a family of successful entrepreneurs. Most people won’t risk leaving a great job at a premier law firm to start a litigation technology company from scratch. Matt used most of his savings to fund software development over a three-year period before he introduced ModeOne to the marketplace.”
He added, “We made the decision to invest because Matt identified a problem in the profession that has been frustrating attorneys and litigation support experts for years and he jumped on the opportunity to fix it. The guy is a visionary, and he risked most everything he had to develop this literally “game-changing” technology. It is quite unique and he was awarded a patent for it. ModeOne has a chance to be the next legal market “unicorn.” Its technology shaves days off the traditional process used to acquire data from smartphones and other mobile devices. Now, fewer people and no physical collection kit are required. Plus, the price of smartphone data acquisition using ModeOne is at least 50% below what has been the customary cost per phone collection.”
Mazares went on to say that he also made the decision to invest in the company because Matt Rasmussen built a great team around him to oversee technology development and client delivery day-to-day. He explained, “Matt is brilliant, but it takes a team to operate and build a great business and company. His decision to hire proven experts like Jason Purviance as CIO and Ryan Frye as SVP of Digital Operations created a formidable senior leadership team which has a track record delivering world-class service. In this type of business, beyond identifying and retaining talented people, commercial success boils down to deploying breakthrough technology and focusing on impeccable execution.”
He closed by saying, “I have seen hundreds of ideas and companies in this industry over 34 years. There have been many great innovations, for sure. I view ModeOne’s SaaS framework as the latest one. The only thing missing at this point is that more attorneys, litigation support specialists, and forensics experts need to try it and see it in action. That will happen soon. And when it does, I guarantee they will be very excited about this technology and how it will help them better serve their clients and be even more profitable.”