I built 80+ contracts for my first company. Then I built the tool I wish existed.
Hi everyone,
I started a product brand a couple years ago. Physical product, no legal background, no budget for a lawyer.
Everyone told me to get protected. Use contracts. Lock everything down.
So I learned the hard way what your options actually are when you're a founder or small business owner who needs a contract.
Option 1: Hire a lawyer.
Anywhere from $500 to $3,000 per contract. You have to go find one, vet them, explain your situation, wait 3 to 5 days. You get quality but it's slow and expensive, and most early-stage founders can't afford to do it for every agreement.
Option 2: Use a template platform.
Around $40 to $50 a month. Fine for basic NDAs. Shallow on everything else. I used one and when I got to my first factory agreement, the template didn't cover half of what I actually needed. Mold ownership. Tooling rights. Custom IP clauses. I was on my own.
Option 3: Do it yourself with ChatGPT.
Spend 6 to 8 hours in a Word doc, piecing together clauses, second-guessing everything, not knowing if it's actually enforceable, stressing about hallucinations. Meanwhile you're a founder and that time should be going toward literally anything else.
I ended up in option 3 for 18 months. Over that stretch I wrote 80+ contracts across factories, engineers, scientists, shipping vendors, marketing agencies, and influencers.
I once hired an influencer for marketing. 20 reels, $500, different outfits, different locations.
That's what we agreed on. I thought I was being detailed; in my head that meant 7 outfits and 5 locations minimum.
They delivered 2 outfits and 2 locations.
Technically, they fulfilled the contract because I never defined what "different" meant.
That's the kind of thing no template warns you about and no ChatGPT session catches unless you know the right question to ask.
So I built Claustar.
Claustar is an AI-guided contract creation platform built for founders, freelancers, and SMBs. It starts by asking about your situation before it writes a single clause, so the document actually reflects what you need, not what a generic template assumes.
A few things I wanted to get right from day one that most tools in this space skip:
UPL compliance is baked in. Claustar is a document preparation platform, not a law firm. We don't give legal advice and the product is built around that line clearly. Every template on the platform is reviewed by licensed attorneys before it ever reaches a user.
We have real attorney advisors. Not for show. They reviewed the templates, they shaped the clause architecture, and their credentials are visible on the platform. That was a non-negotiable for me.
Jurisdiction awareness. Contracts don't exist in a vacuum. State law matters. What's enforceable in one state isn't always enforceable in another. We built that into the intake flow.
Security first. Your documents are sensitive. The platform is built with that assumption, not as an afterthought.
Right now Claustar lets you:
Generate a contract through a guided intake flow
Review it in plain English before you finalize anything
Access attorney-reviewed templates across the most common agreement types for founders and SMBs
We're launching next week. If you've dealt with the contract problem firsthand, I'd love to have you be one of the first in.
What would it take for you to actually trust an AI contract tool?
