– Brian Powers, CEO and Founder, PactSafe, Inc., says:
Indianapolis-based PactSafe, Inc. has officially launched PactSafe™ – a new cloud-based contract management application which allows companies and their legal counsel to manage, track, deploy and enforce online digital legal agreements such as “Terms of Use”, “Terms of Service” and “Privacy Policy.” The PactSafe dashboard organizes a company’s website agreements and then ensures the documents are trackable by version, enforceable, and clearly viewable on the company’s website.
PactSafe is the first of its kind, a patent-pending application that simplifies everything about digital legal agreements, and empowers businesses to focus on their core digital business without the hassle of dedicating valuable time and resources to managing their digital legal. After a simple implementation process, PactSafe allows businesses to manage and track every aspect of the digital legal agreements they need to conduct business.
For brands with regulatory disclaimer issues, PactSafe helps them meet those regulatory requirements while upholding the quality of their brand with an attractive, professional digital marketing presence. With PactSafe, a business always knows exactly where it stands with its digital legal issues, and can reduce legal fees and technical maintenance costs, and simplify workflow with development teams.
Our team developed PactSafe based on many years of providing legal and consulting services to businesses, including Internet companies and start-ups. Historically, lawyers often created online agreements for clients with no provision for ongoing management or enforcement assurance of the documents over time. This scenario exposed corporate clients to risk for litigation and the lawyers themselves were at risk for malpractice. We developed PactSafe to be a resource for corporate clients and their legal counsel to ensure that digital legal agreements were effectively managed and enforceable.
Many high-profile companies like Facebook and Zappos have faced issues with their digital agreements, with unfortunate financial and reputation-related consequences. PactSafe solves these problems. The application manages and enforces both “browsewrap” and “clickwrap” agreements to ensure that digital contracts are successfully executed, can be proven valid when challenged, and are as transparent as possible to a business’s customers.
Browsewrap agreements, which users tacitly accept simply by using a website, need to meet the “constructive notice” burden. Constructive notice means that the agreement is conspicuously visible to the user upon visiting a website. PactSafe satisfies this burden by displaying an easy-to-see digital badge on a company’s website which overtly bids visitors to review certain agreements. When served up, the PactSafe badge collects IP address and machine identification data from site visitors, and also records dates and times when the badge was present. By capturing this data, PactSafe can prove that at a specific time and date, there was a valid browsewrap agreement in place because the user had opportunity to view it.
For clickwrap agreements, which require the end-user to click an “OK” or “Agree” button to indicate agreement, PactSafe allows companies to certify enforceability of the agreement by capturing user information upon receipt of the clickwrap signature. PactSafe officially certifies that the clickwrap agreement is an enforceable contract, recording when the digital agreement was executed, at what time, and by whom.
PactSafe can be used by any company whose website has a clickable transaction or signup feature. PactSafe was built with enterprise-level needs of software-as-a-service and eCommerce companies in mind, but also allows smaller volume websites to sign up online. Lawyers can recommend PactSafe to their clients to protect them from lawsuits, customer complaints, and other woes.
PactSafe is priced on a per-user basis ranging from $10 to $75 per account, per month for sites with less than 10,000 registered users. More information about pricing can be found at https://www.pactsafe.com/pricing. Larger, enterprise-level implementations are priced separately upon request.
PactSafe recently raised $600K of seed capital in its first round of investment from firms including Elevate Ventures and Vulpes Testudo Fund. The company’s advisory board includes leaders from LegalZoom, Salesforce, co-founder of ZipRecruiter and a former Amazon in-house counsel.
The company has been building its executive team, recently hiring former ExactTarget product & consulting leader Eric Prugh who joined the company as Chief Operating Officer. Prugh is now responsible for all customer-facing activity and operations including product strategy, customer support, sales, and marketing.
Before joining PactSafe, Prugh reported to Chief Product Officer Bryan Wade at Salesforce Marketing Cloud as the head of the Content product line where he directed strategy and product management and supervised the launch of several major products. During his tenure there, Prugh also helped build the company’s Asia-Pacific team in Sydney. In his 7 years with the company, he was honored with many awards for his accomplishments including the Impact Award for community service, MVP in Solutions Consulting, and Region of the Year while in Australia for achieving 199% of the annual growth target.
Prugh is known for his skills in positioning, public speaking, and building small, high-functioning teams within a larger business. He is experienced in working with executives in selling, competitive positioning, and product strategy.
Eric’s career at ExactTarget spanned 3 continents and many parts of the organization as the company grew from 250 employees to 2,000. He held leadership roles in the Solutions Engineering team, managed the strategy and development of a product organization, and is credited as being critical to expanding the Australian business unit tenfold, from $2M to $20M in only 2 years. His combined expertise in SaaS business strategy, sales and positioning, and product strategy makes him uniquely suited to developing PactSafe’s nascent business and solutions. We are very pleased to have such a talented executive come on board.
“The opportunity for PactSafe is immense as the market is wide and deep,” Prugh said. “The green field of an undefined, untapped market and the chance to define a global standard attracted me most to PactSafe. I’ve developed a well-rounded set of skills to apply to building a business from the ground up and I couldn’t be more excited to leverage those skills at PactSafe.”
About the Author: Brian Powers is an Indianapolis-based lawyer and entrepreneur who is CEO of PactSafe, Inc. He can be reached at brian@pactsafe.com.
