SAN FRANCISCO, February 24, 2022–Bonterms announced the release of its best practice, open source Cloud Terms for the enterprise, making it the first to release a committee-vetted standard agreement for use between enterprise SaaS/Cloud service providers and their customers.
“Across the industry, among players large and small, you hear the same thing – the legal side of
adding one more customer to a Cloud service is just too difficult,” said Todd Smithline, Co-
Founder and CEO of Bonterms. “Customers and providers each have legitimate concerns, but
the current approach of starting from one side’s unbalanced terms and then trying to redline,
negotiate and Zoom your way to an agreement isn’t optimal for anyone.”
Bonterms solves this problem with its neutral, open source agreement that is balanced between
both parties and drafted by a committee of experienced lawyers to reflect industry best
practices. The parties make any changes to the Cloud Terms by cover page and attachments,
simplifying and shortening the negotiation process. The open source nature of the agreement
(released for free under CC BY) makes it easy to implement and the use of standard terms
allows legal teams to focus on what really matters and restores goodwill back to the process for
both parties.
Coinciding with this launch, Chris Walker, an enterprise software veteran, joins the company as
Co-Founder and Head of Product. Chris will drive the company’s product direction and build out
Bonterms’ Negotiation as a Service Platform.
“While we’re part of a larger open legal wave, we’re also heading in our own direction and
developing a Negotiation as a Service Platform,” said Chris Walker. “Our software vision is to
offer a new approach to negotiating SaaS deals, one that preserves good will from the start and
allows the parties to focus on what they really care about in the negotiation.”
Bonterms also announced its seed funding by XYZ and select angel investors in the technology
and legal sectors. The company will debut at LegalWeek in New York March 9 – 11, and Todd Smithline will be a featured speaker at the LegalTech in 5D Salon, hosted by Doon Insights on
March 23.
Todd Smithline has nearly 30 years experience designing, negotiating and teaching contracts.
He was General Counsel of Marimba, a publicly traded technology company, and the founder of
Smithline PC, a boutique technology firm that pioneered fixed-free subscription billing.
Chris Walker has over a decade of experience in enterprise software and has held product
leadership roles for category leading companies such as Palantir Technologies, DataFox,
Oracle and DraftWise.
Bonterms is a privately held company focused on simplifying commercial contracting by
providing best-practice, balanced, open source legal forms for the enterprise.
February 24, 2022
Media Contact: Liz Westover | marketing@bonterms.com | 415.834.1700