Five years of writing on institutional software, data infrastructure, and building systems that work the first time. Chronological order, from our founding to today.
When we founded Semperr, a friend asked what would keep us from turning into every other software firm. Half a decade later, the answer has not changed.
The edge no longer comes from model access — it comes from proprietary context. Essential reading for operating partners rebuilding portfolio data systems.
The engineering philosophy behind systems that institutional clients depend on: correctness as the floor, not the ceiling.
For law firms doing cross-border work: why generic legal AI fails and what jurisdiction-specific models can do that semantic search cannot.
Who we actually build for, and why institutional software is fundamentally different from consumer technology.
Why fragmented data systems fail PE firms at scale, and what unified intelligence architecture looks like in practice.
The tools law firms use for discovery haven't kept pace with the volume of digital evidence. A technical overview of what comes next.
Based on conversations with 40+ institutional LPs: what they look for, what signals trust, and what makes them walk away.
Why institutional systems must maintain complete provenance. On the difference between what happened and what the data says happened.
Why institutional software is won or lost in the last 10% of implementation. A meditation on craft, edge cases, and finishing.
How we built a system that doesn't just find clauses, but understands relationships between obligations, parties, and dates.
PostgreSQL, server-rendered HTML, and why we keep reaching for tools that were already stable when we started the firm.
Why we use Postgres as our primary datastore, message queue, full-text search, job scheduler, and time-series database.
Why data quality problems multiply exponentially over time, and what PE firms can do about it before the next fund raise.
The Clad story—from skepticism to scale. How we identified the legal tech opportunity two years before the market caught up.
Data plumbing isn't glamorous. That's the point. Why we chose to build the unsexy foundation that institutions actually need.
Why we chose to grow slowly—and profitably. The economics of staying independent in an industry that expects you to take outside money.
Our founding charter—and why we wrote it publicly. The principles that have guided every decision for five years.
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