IGHS73 - Unpacking Morae's acquisition of Gimmal, a CEO perspective

Jim Merrifield (00:00.889)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov hot seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today are Shahzad Bashir at Morae and Craig Carpenter at Gimmal. Welcome to you both.

Craig Carpenter (00:12.706)
Thanks, Jim. Great to be here.

Shahzad Bashir (00:12.869)
Thank you, James.

Jim Merrifield (00:14.627)
Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat and get to know the both of you and both your companies and what you're doing together. So first, maybe we'll start with Shahzad. Would you be able to provide a brief introduction of yourself and your current role?

Shahzad Bashir (00:31.761)
Sure, Jim. and you say brief, that's a challenge, but I will try to be brief. So I'm Shahzad Bashir and I really kind of straddle between our two offices, Houston, which is our headquarters and London, which is a big market for us. Briefly about myself, I've been in the industry

the industry defined as legal, risk, compliant, governance, regulatory for over 30 years. And I've seen the industry evolve some level of disruption, but generally moving in the right direction. And that's what Morae is about, but a little bit later about Morae But in respect to myself,

I specialized as a consultant in the legal industry as defined earlier. And I bring that to the table as the founder of Morae to address the needs of the marketplace. Extending that, Jim, we at Morae look ourselves as very uniquely positioned and have put ourselves

to be a tech-based solution provider globally.

across all five continents, many time zones, and put ourselves in a position to serve our clients who have the problems and want to solve the problems. And we, as a team, can give them the solution they are looking for. So that's who I am. And that's what I bring to the table as we work with our clients, with our people and

Shahzad Bashir (02:39.353)
Of course, delighted now to welcome Craig on board to work with Gimmal All yours, Craig.

Craig Carpenter (02:48.238)
Thanks, Shahzad Appreciate it. And great to be here, Jim. Really appreciate you making time for us. So Craig Carpenter currently run the information governance practice area, if you will, at Morae as part of the acquisition that Morae made of Gimmal where I was the CEO for about three and a half years. Gimmal's an information governance software platform that basically finds information specifically unstructured in the wild and

allows people to take action on it, including application of a retention schedule for regulatory purposes. Throughout my career, I'm not quite to this Shahzad level yet, but I'm getting there. I've been in the legal technology space for about 25 years, including companies like Recommind, Kroll OnTrack, Access Data, and then going way back to my cybersecurity beginnings, company called Fortinet, but started my career as a practicing attorney in Silicon Valley.

legal technology, software and solutions and services is really kind what I've been doing for the last 25 years.

Jim Merrifield (03:53.293)
Wow. You both have great backgrounds. I love Craig too. You're a, you're like a recovering lawyer, right? That, for sure, for sure. got a great background and we're going to talk about that, acquisition, which I think is, is really exciting for, for this community. So Shahzad, let me ask you, what was the driving force, behind Morae's acquisition of Gimmal and

Craig Carpenter (03:58.764)
Yeah, that gets bandied about a lot. Yeah. There's a lot of us out there.

Jim Merrifield (04:20.249)
How does it align with the company's long-term strategy?

Shahzad Bashir (04:25.169)
That's a great question, Jim, and it's one of those where how much time do you have?

You know, in order to answer that question in a reflective manner, Jim, we've got to look at the very foundation of Morae. Why did we start this? And it builds out from there where we are taking the company and what we plan to do with Gimmal And I'm going to kind of approach the answer.

from two different directions, one from Morae perspective and the other from the industry perspective.

Morae was founded to provide real business solution to our clients, not to provide services, not to just be human capital based, not just to provide technology, but to say that if there is a commercial problem, if there is an operational problem, how?

should that be addressed? And we would provide the solutions for those specific problems. Now keep that in mind, for far too long, our industry has compartmentalized and it's almost kind of an alphabet soup, which has worked very well. Matter management, ELM.

Shahzad Bashir (06:12.859)
CLM, InfoGov, records management, and the list goes on and on. We look at this as a holistic problem. Our clients have information. The information is used, reused, repurposed, and sometimes

orderly disposed other times not.

And the use cases are many and varied. And what we at Morae want to present is a way for our clients to manage data through information, through insight. It's not just about InfoGov. It means to an end. And with the

evolution of solutions, as you all know, from being primarily human capital based to technology based, now AI based. We want to move from efficiency

from rules-based approach to true AI, GenAI, where our clients solve the problem with the solutions we can provide. That was the driving force behind acquiring Gimmal for our clients. I would like to make another point. And Morae realizes that this cannot be done.

Shahzad Bashir (08:03.247)
with bricks and mortar, with human capital, we have to have our own SaaS offering and or as needed partner with our technology partners to fill in the blanks, to work with them, to truly create the right ecosystem to solve the business problems of our client. And we can expand on that.

as we talk about InfoGov, but it's more than Gov. It is far more than Gov. It's about, as I said earlier, data to information to insight, whether that's a brief, whether that's a memo, whether that's spin analysis, or any number of things which we'd like to solve. with the acquisition of Gimmal we

truly are now positioned to solve those problems for our clients.

Jim Merrifield (09:08.431)
Yeah, that's great. mean, who doesn't want to solve business problems and show value, right? Through solutions and consulting and now, you know, technology. So let's talk a little bit about that technology. Craig, how do you see Gimmal's information governance software enhancing Morae's existing legal tech solutions?

Craig Carpenter (09:31.596)
Well, so Gimmal kind of came from the other end of the spectrum, which was we didn't have the consulting. We didn't really have the services component of things. And we didn't have anywhere close to the geographical breadth or depth that I talked about that that Morae has. And so we were limited in terms of how we could get to customers and how deeply we can go and solve their problems. We really you know, our aperture were customers that knew they needed software.

and had the people to solve those problems on their side, which is great, but it's a really smaller segment of the marketplace. And then you have Morae, which has myriad people and tool sets and does a lot of work with companies like iManage. But they didn't have their own information governance software as Shahzad talked about. And so that was kind of the perfect yin-yang marriage, if you will.

You know, Gimmal becomes a really nice foothold that allows Morae to go much more deeply with its regulated customers, public sector, private sector, law firms than it had before. And that allows the information governance practice to be able to deliver solutions. Shahzad talked about this at the outset. Gimmal has not really been able to deliver solutions because we haven't had that services and consulting component in the Morae world we do.

And so that allows us as a combined entity to go to market and say, okay, customer software is a means to an end, but the end you're trying to get is to manage your information wherever it is in the wild in a scalable fashion. then secondarily to Shahzad's point, you know, being able to automate as much of that as possible and then get insights from the information that we're managing using AI.

and we've gone all of five minutes not talking about Morae AI. I'm sure we'll talk more about it. But our customers are really excited about that because not only is the technology truly compelling, but now we are able to really customize it to specific use cases, right? So making sure that retention schedules cover the right information or they're for the right time periods or they're being updated enough or being able to have the information itself speak to the users as opposed to people having to run queries.

Craig Carpenter (11:52.11)
know, the sky's the limit in terms of what we're going to be able to do. But that wasn't really possible until we got under a Morae roof. So we couldn't be more excited about this marriage because our and our customers, frankly, are as excited as we are.

Jim Merrifield (12:05.807)
Yeah, it seems like the perfect marriage. Go ahead, Shuzza.

Shahzad Bashir (12:05.873)
Greg, you said something. You know, you used the very right words that ultimately it's about managing the information. But I would say towards what end? And that has to be clear because as wide and as deep Morae is, at any point of time, we could be doing a data migration for a client with

a couple of hundred million documents, or we could be managing their discovery, or we could be looking at their spend information. And what is key, building upon what Craig said, is clarity on what we're trying to achieve with managing information. And that's what we're trying to do, as Craig alluded to, the Morae

AI platform is as relevant here as the Gimmal platform to help manage the information and give our clients true solution, not human capital based, not process based, not rules based, and not just even AI based, but a combination of all this to manage that information with specific end.

Jim Merrifield (13:34.511)
It's awesome. I love, I love that summary. That analysis seems like the perfect marriage. And I like that your other offering or, your AI offering, should say Morae AI, just, it just flows, you know? So, so kudos to you. so, you know, I don't know if this is correct, but AI told me that this was Morae's sixth acquisition in, since 2019. I don't know if that's right. Is that right? Shahzad or is, or is that the correct number?

Shahzad Bashir (14:05.297)
100%. No one was hallucinating at that point. Sixth since 2019 and ninth since our inception. But no, we really have an excellent track record of picking some great partners there.

Jim Merrifield (14:07.649)
All right. All right. All right.

Craig Carpenter (14:09.154)
Yeah, exactly.

Jim Merrifield (14:26.083)
Yeah, that's great. That's great. So let me ask you, what makes this acquisition different? You know, like what lessons have you learned? Cause it's not easy, right? To integrate solutions into a company you've, you've integrated several different acquisitions since 2019. So what makes this different and, and what, what do you usually focus on? What lessons have you learned from those other acquisitions?

Shahzad Bashir (14:51.249)
Sure. And you asked several interrelated questions there. What makes this different about integration and so on? Each acquisition has its own persona. And it's difficult to put them in a cookie cutter format.

Morae certainly has some clear concepts on who we acquire. And the two words which I use all the time is a strategic fit. And I'm going to expand on that in a second. And a cultural fit. Those are key to a full integration.

simulation. We certainly believe in what we call internally one Morae program. There really is one Morae and we need to work as one team globally with one objective in mind.

Shahzad Bashir (16:09.881)
Why are we excited? Honestly, the commonality here is every acquisition we do, it's done outside in, meaning will it make a difference to our clients? Are we adding value in that process? And this one was not just one check, but probably three check marks, because this will make a difference to our clients.

Secondarily, it also makes a huge difference to our people in terms of their skill sets and what we are trying to do as we bring it together. Cultural fit, I won't expand. We really kind of are the same kind of people. The professionalism, the focus, the attention to details, and ultimately, ultimately, the quest for excellence.

everything we do has to be world class. But in terms of integration, look, you all of us have done those things before. Craig has done it many, many times. The back office part, the plumbing, you know, the running, that's the easy part. What is more important is to make sure that we get integrated.

from a customer perspective, what we are offering, the impact of that on our customers and how it makes life easier or better for them. And so many people look at it either outside in or inside out, and that's both are valid ways of looking at it. For me, the integration comes in the middle

What are we doing from a solution perspective? How are we integrating that? How are we investing in that from a client's perspective? And it's not just GenAI. it's UI, it's UX, it's the back end. And of course, it's GenAI. But what Craig and I are absolutely focused on is to integrate the product.

Shahzad Bashir (18:35.845)
Therefore the solution and then integrate our go-to-market strategy and client service delivery strategy. And that's our focus. And we're there. This is not rocket science. Craig and I have been speaking. Our teams have been speaking. We've been speaking to both sets of clients. And that's a formidable group of very prestigious.

institutions all over the world. So we are working from our offerings, from our solution, and making sure that they get integrated. The admin part is easy. The fun part, the value added part is how do we make difference in our client's life on a day to day basis. And we are open for business. We can do it today. Sure, there are some things which requires

more product development, more engineering, but Craig is out there hiring people, building the team, talking to clients, getting their feedback as we go along. And to me, that's true integration. And as I said earlier, bringing the solution to our client, the likes of which honestly doesn't exist right now. And that's, as I said earlier, is the very reason why we started Morae.

Jim Merrifield (19:53.743)
.

Jim Merrifield (20:05.667)
Yeah, at the end of the day, it's all about the client, right? So yeah.

Shahzad Bashir (20:08.849)
100%. And I'll quickly add, people, because they need to be not just gainfully employed, but make sure that their skills are enhanced, they are challenged, and they live in innovative world with our resources globally available all over the world, including our mine factory in Cape Town, South Africa, and our product team in India.

And that combines with Craig's team as part of the One Morae program. So very exciting as we go forward for two of our principal stakeholders, customers and people.

Jim Merrifield (20:51.203)
Yeah, you got me excited. Now, Craig, what are you most excited about with this merger?

Craig Carpenter (21:00.536)
So let me try to limit to three just to kind of keep our arms around the question and answer. And let's be informed to Shahzad's point by our customers and our people because that's the best barometer. And what our customers and our people have been most excited about. So Shahzad talked about solutions and it really kind of starts there because our customers that we've worked with in the past, software is important, but again, software is the means to an end. People don't buy software for the sake of buying software. They're trying to solve a problem.

And now if we can come at that and say, us help you scope that problem beforehand. Let us help you define what success looks like in this program. And then if you need people support or you want this to be a managed service as opposed to something that you have to run yourself, we can now do that for you. These are things that Gimmal has not been able to do since it actually started as a consulting firm 20 years ago that we can now do again. The second is the geographical heft. Before this acquisition, we had

one person in the UK and Europe, we had nobody in Asia Pacific and we had three people in Canada, everybody else was in the US. Now we have a footprint all over the world that is a follow the sun sort of delivery mechanism, which is unbelievably helpful as a force multiplier for our customers, right? Because now stuff can get worked on continuously, is hugely helpful. And then not to beat a dead horse with the AI component, but

not AI for AI's sake, but the ability to come to customers and work with them and to craft a solution that works for them. Because just plugging in ChatGPT for our customers isn't a solution, right? That doesn't give them what they need, whether it's hallucinations or the cost model doesn't work or a large language model isn't the most effective approach for them. Having a team of experts that can now come in and say, what are you trying to accomplish? Well, we're trying to implement

a more robust data subject access request workflow. Okay, great. So technology will have a component of that to address, but people and workflow will as well. And you have to have expertise to do that. And we have some when it comes to, we have quite a bit in terms of records management, information governance and the Microsoft ecosystem, but Morae has a hundredfold more than we do. And now working together, we're just able to solve, you know, not just more discrete.

Craig Carpenter (23:21.268)
information governance and records management problems that we've addressed in the past. Now we can delve into things like cybersecurity and proactive privacy and AI hygiene and really exciting things that our customers have been asking about for years. you know, and then I'd be remiss if I didn't point out, which is I talked about is, you know, the, the welcome has been terrific just in terms of everybody in this whole, you know, in the one Morae mentality is just focused on addressing customer problems. And we,

We help Morae open that aperture and they help us a whole lot more. But with that focus just on let's solve the customer problems, it's very easy to have everybody rolling in the same direction.

Jim Merrifield (24:00.943)
Yeah, I could see the chemistry even just here virtually between the two of you, between both organizations. So that's amazing.

Craig Carpenter (24:10.476)
Well, I'd like to say, Jim, that I sold Shahzad when we first talked six months ago on this vision, but I'm pretty confident he had already had it. And he just kind of, you know, he did a rope-a-dope strategy with me and let me think that it was, you know, it was my sales pitch. But I think he had planned on, you know, broadening their depth all along. And we just happened to be, you know, the timing happened to work out.

Jim Merrifield (24:33.839)
It's all about timing. Shahzad Looks like he's got a great poker face. So, you know, he probably didn't want to. Yeah.

Shahzad Bashir (24:37.563)
Heh heh.

Craig Carpenter (24:37.868)
Yeah, for sure.

Shahzad Bashir (24:40.625)
You know, magic here, sure, Craig did a good job and our teams did a great job. But ultimately, what really hit me hard in a very positive way was the difference we can make to our clients and not to be jargonish here. But the industry, honestly, Jim, needs

some changes here, some transformation. And we've got to approach the problems our clients have in a holistic manner. And it cannot be process oriented. It just cannot be human capital based, cannot be rules based. It's got to be different from what's been addressed. And I think with our combination, when Craig and I started talking,

and whiteboarding, it was very clear that we could do for our clients what we think can be done. So stay tuned. But this combination, along with our MoraeAI platform, is unquestionably going to make a difference.

Jim Merrifield (25:58.671)
Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait for more. So I know we've talked about a lot here. We could probably talk for another hour, I'm sure. But I know we all have other things to do. But is there anything else that you'd like to share with the audience? Maybe Craig, we'll start with you before we let you go.

Craig Carpenter (26:18.254)
I would just say, I'll be myopic and just speak to all Gimmal customers who have really been wanting and asking us to be able to just get bigger and play on a bigger stage and be able to do more and do more and more quickly. That's where we are. This is kind of the answer to your requests and your prayers. And so just give us a bit of time here. We're very impatient people because we want to be able to do that yesterday.

Jim Merrifield (26:36.514)
you

Craig Carpenter (26:44.524)
but we are getting there very, quickly. And Morae is really following through on everything that they said they do. And it's just, very exciting. customers, to Shahzad's point, when we talk to them, they're just, get really excited about the things that we're going to be doing here. I think there's a lot of really interesting, fun and helpful stuff that's coming. So just look for that to come.

Jim Merrifield (27:10.465)
Awesome. Shahzad, how about you?

Shahzad Bashir (27:13.105)
You know, I would echo everything Craig has said, but what really excited me is as I've gone out with Craig and spoken with Gimmal's clients, we've got a very happy bunch of clients there. And what I'm excited now is with all the things we can do together, how do we get complete?

Jim Merrifield (27:17.441)
you

Shahzad Bashir (27:42.193)
customer success in the holistic manner I spoke about earlier. And that's where we excited. We can't wait. 2025 is essentially a plan and execute time frame. 26 is when we really hit the market with all the excitement, all the compelling solutions we have in mind.

really excited in the timeframe with what we want to do. Ultimately, for our clients, for our people, for ourselves as we go forward, great tailwind behind us.

Jim Merrifield (28:24.429)
Yeah, for sure. And I appreciate both of you taking the time. I know you're busy, busy people and especially in the summer months trying to take some time off before I'm sure both of you will be at ILTACON right? So you're trying to take some time off now so you can get refreshed for, you know, being at the conference. I'm sure I'll be able to see you and your teams there. So looking forward to that. awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate the time.

Craig Carpenter (28:44.984)
Yep, we are too.

Shahzad Bashir (28:46.907)
Likewise.

Jim Merrifield (28:49.647)
And thanks so much if for our audience who's listening if you'd like to be a guest on the info gov hot seat Just like Craig and Shahzad here. All you have to do is submit your information through our website infogovhotseat.com and Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day You got it I'll just hit stop

Craig Carpenter (29:05.442)
Thanks, Jim. You too.