General counsel | nami.ai
Julie Nazerali
General counsel | nami.ai
What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?
We are a very agile global AI startup company based in Singapore, specialised in wifi sensing. Our team is global, partly hybrid and we work with global players who are household names. I am based in Brussels, but my work is international, and I work across time zones. The challenge is to work across so many disciplines to support the company and across so many jurisdictions dealing with a broad range of questions from filing complex patents across the globe to supporting the board on corporate governance to negotiating complex technology transfer agreements with the USA to exciting projects to deliver innovative Wi-Fi sensing in Japan. The biggest challenge this year was to successfully close our Series A funding round, which we completed in March 2023 raising more than we anticipated and having the credibility to attract lead VC investors from the USA and Europe. The legal work was complex but also very rewarding and interesting.
Do you have an example of a time when you have come up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works that did not result in a large expense?
Our in-house legal team is small. We are a global company and therefore it is more useful to develop a panel of outside counsel who we can work with as trusted advisors across the globe. What is very helpful is that I have 20+ years as a lawyer in private practice as a partner, so I know how to buy legal services and keep costs down by working in partnership with outside counsel. I also have an MBA (INSEAD), so I am interested in buying legal services in an innovative and commercial way and taking law firms outside their comfort zones of how they want to provide legal services to their clients.
After 20+ years leading anti-trust and as managing partner of an international law firm’s Brussels office, I took the exciting challenge to go in house as the general counsel of an agile AI start up in Singapore. nami.ai, where I am general counsel, was founded nearly three years ago by the founders of WiZ, a smart lighting company, that was sold to Signify, formerly Philips. Nami has developed a series of disruptive IoT devices with multi-sensing software layers, including pioneering AI sensing plugs and wellness pods which aims to solve problems for players in security, safety, building automation, energy optimisation and wellness. We have partnered with OriginWireless in the USA, a world-leading venture company that has developed Wi-Fi sensing technology, which is scheduled to be the global standard for sensing technology by 2024. Although I have worked in many disciplines, including technology, my solid traditional law firm career, international network and MBA (INSEAD) prepared me for the excitement and the challenges of working for an agile 21st century start-up. The most exciting part of being a lawyer is to work with the client. Now I am working with the client, hand-in-hand with the founders, the board and in close proximity with the CEO on our strategy and governance. I am part of the founding team, and I am very excited about the business trajectory we will make from start up to either being sold to Big Tech in a few years’ time or an IPO. In the meantime, the journey to growth is very exciting.