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Law software boss makes the case for conveyance change

Profile: Matthew Proud, CEO, Dye & Durham Corp.
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Chung Chow photo

Schooled in England, the birthplace of Canada’s common-law heritage, Matthew Proud knew the depth of tradition that grounded the legal profession.

But while professions such as medicine were talking about paperless practices, the work of lawyers remained stubbornly rooted in documents. Proud, who holds law degrees from the University of Buckingham and taught tort law at the University of Westminster, saw room for change.

“You look at some of these workflow softwares that historically have been in the legal industry – they’re archaic,” he said. “It was an industry in need of modernization.”

When his younger brother Tyler saw an opportunity to acquire the Vancouver conveyancing software firm OneMove Technologies Inc., Proud jumped.

The company had great software but was struggling financially. The brothers saw it as a good investment that aligned with their personal interests in technology and law. However, they quickly realized management had to change, and Proud stepped in as CEO at the end of 2013.

Tighter management, then acquisitions, drove growth. The largest purchase came in 2016 with the acquisition of Dye & Durham Corp., now its main operating entity. The company went from losing $1.5 million a year on revenue of $2.5 million to a profit of $20 million on revenue of more than $30 million.

“We really leveraged the name – Dye & Durham has a huge value within the legal industry – and really used that as a platform for industry consolidation,” Proud said. “It was a company, 140-plus years old, traditionally known for providing legal stationery and other types of offerings to the legal community, and we’ve taken that company and pivoted it into, really, a legal technology company.”

The firm’s flagship product is econveyance, a system OneMove developed that cuts the time required to process real estate transactions to as little as 30 minutes. Originally a document-generation product, it now facilitates due diligence and financing arrangements. Proud said the cloud-based software handles about 70% of property transactions in B.C., freeing legal staff to perform higher-value work.

“The whole process, from collecting the customer information right through to pulling the diligence to creating the records to filing them, can be done within one system,” Proud said. “Our vision is to have the all-in-one solution, to own the environment our customers live in so they never have to leave.”

Born in 1981, Proud grew up in the Beaches area of Toronto and moved to the U.K. to study law in Buckingham. A cousin had attended the school, and it grabbed his attention.

“I was really young at the time, and I just wanted something different,” he said.

He received his undergraduate law degree in 2007 and a master’s degree in international public and commercial law, also from Buckingham, in 2008. He took a year off before returning to City University, London, to study for the bar. During this time, he sent an application to Cambridge University to study history. He didn’t expect to be accepted, but he was.

“The opportunity to study at Cambridge was something I didn’t want to pass up,” he said. “I weighed the opportunities at the time and I thought, ‘This is a better opportunity, and I can always go back and practice after.’”

Proud graduated from Cambridge in 2012, and that’s when his brother suggested acquiring OneMove.

“Sometimes you get involved in something that takes you on a path that’s totally different,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily my natural choice, but when you see the opportunity … to change an industry and disrupt what’s happening, it’s really exciting.”

Hiring the right people has been a key challenge for the company, and fundamental to its growth. Dye & Durham took OneMove from a staff of 12 to 15 to more than 200 people at offices in Vancouver, New Westminster and Toronto.

At the same time, “it became apparent that there needed to be a change in management, and that was a roadblock for us because we had always intended to be owners and manage the company through management,” he said.

Proud returned to Canada and commuted to Vancouver from Toronto, spending four or five days a week in the city while trying to give the company a foothold in Ontario.

“I don’t have an operational background, so I had to learn on the job, relatively quickly,” he said.

Guiding him through the challenges was former CFO Ronnie Wahi, who left the company last year but remains an investor.

“Matthew’s been incredible in terms of his tenacity and his energy to go through it all,” Wahi said. “[He] picked up on the tools that I gave him, but applied them and used them very well.”

Proud met his wife, Julia Knowlton, in 2014. The couple married last September and are now raising a child in Toronto, where their families live.

The family connection also runs through the credit Proud gives his grandmother for teaching him to be a well-rounded person. Outside of business he assists with the Tomlinson Foundation, a family charity that awards an annual scholarship of up to $15,000 to help financially disadvantaged students from the Bahamas attend university in Canada.

Proud has also engaged in his own philanthropy. In 2013, he bought a 3.6-acre playing field slated for development and gave it to the University of Buckingham. The field now bears his name.

It’s won’t be the last U.K. connection for Proud, either. Dye & Durham is expanding into the U.K., with plans for organic growth through acquisition.

“Our plan is to continue what we’re doing and grow beyond Canada, internationally,” he said. •

Inside information: Matthew Proud

Currently reading: Bradford D. Smart, Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People (2005)

First album bought or music downloaded: Nirvana, In Utero (1993)

When you were a kid, what you wanted to be when you grew up: Professional athlete

Profession you would most like to try: Member of Parliament

Advice you would give the younger you: Stop waiting for the housing market to crash before you buy a home

What’s left to do: Grow Dye & Durham into a great Canadian technology company