Why Vertical LLM Agents Are The New $1 Billion SaaS Opportunities

TL;DR

Jake Heller built Case Text, a legal AI company, which after a decade of incremental improvements achieved a $650M exit to Thomson Reuters within two months of launching Co Counsel, a vertical AI agent based on GPT-4.

Key insights

• Early attempts at user‑generated content (like Stack Overflow for law) failed because lawyers bill by the hour and have no free time; the team had to pivot to automated AI.
• Before GPT‑4, Case Text’s products were incremental improvements that lawyers earning $5M/year could ignore; GPT‑4 created a step‑change that forced lawyers to pay attention.
• The company had 48 hours from seeing GPT‑4 to deciding that all 120 employees would shift 100% to building Co Counsel; the founder built the first prototype himself that weekend.