Upper Sigma’s co-founder Emile Van Den Berg said on LinkedIn yesterday (6 February) that he won’t sell a company again following the news that Litera has acquired Microsoft-based CRM provider Peppermint Technology.
Upper Sigma is a Salesforce-based CRM system, which was acquired by Litera in April 2023. Van Den Berg left Litera in February 2024 to found Intake Logic.
In a post on LinkedIn yesterday, Van Den Berg said: “I learned a hard lesson, one I won’t repeat,” going on to observe: “Two years ago, I sold Upper Sigma to Litera with the vision of accelerating its growth and changing the legal industry with great technology. I wanted to push innovation forward and give law firms the tools they truly need. It’s clear that Upper Sigma will slowly fade away. We will see how long this team and product lasts.”
Naturally, one of the first questions raised yesterday was about the future of Upper Sigma, however, Litera strongly denies that Upper Sigma will be end of lifed. A spokesperson for the company told Legal IT Insider that the Chicago-headquartered company will continue to innovate and develop the product. Litera will, going forward, be able to help customers that want to work with Microsoft and Salesforce. “This acquisition has no bearing on future product direction of Upper Sigma,” the spokesperson told us. Upper Sigma’s core developers will continue to work on the product, they said. New customers of Upper Sigma include Fox Williams.
Van Den Berg today (7 February) updated his post with the following: “Edit: Just spoke to the Litera Exec’s. Upper Sigma has no intent on being end of life nor will any Upper Sigma staff be let off. Want to put this out there to calm any Upper Sigma clients.”
Nonetheless, he says that as the legal technology market matures, this an important topic for founders to think about, telling Legal IT Insider: “In light of the consolidation in the market, it’s really important for founders and customers to be aware of the potential for downstream acquisitions.”
See below a full statement from Litera that we were given yesterday about the plans for Upper Sigma.
“This acquisition allows us to expand our CRM portfolio to better serve customers who prefer operating within the Microsoft ecosystem. While we will focus much of our go-to-market efforts on Peppermint, we remain fully committed to supporting existing Upper Sigma customers. There will be no degradation in service, and there are no end-of-life plans for Upper Sigma at this time. Our priority is to continue building value in service of our long-term relationship with both UpperSigma and Peppermint customers.
“Peppermint and Litera Foundation will offer a unified Legal BD & Intelligence stack, presented to lawyers in one Outlook add-in and Combining Peppermint with Firm Intelligence creates the single broadest legal-specific marketing and BD offering in the market.”