I’m Andrew Mayes. I’m a licensed court reporter, and for the last five years I’ve been Director of Technology at Executive Reporting Service — a Florida firm that’s been doing this work for 45 years. That combination — actually holding the certification and owning the tech — taught me things you can’t learn from either chair alone.

What breaks is never the demo

In a sales demo, everything works. In the field, the Wi-Fi at the hotel conference room drops mid-realtime. The depo gets moved twice before 9 a.m. The videographer needs the sync and the file’s still uploading. Three parties order copies and one of them needs it yesterday. The software that wins isn’t the one with the longest feature list — it’s the one that doesn’t fall apart on a bad day.

Reporters keep asking for the same things, and nobody’s built them

Not exotic things. Boring, obvious things. One place where a job goes from scheduled to on the record to delivered to paid without re-keying it four times. A dictionary that’s mine and moves with me. Pricing I can understand without a sales call. And — for agencies — paying reporters quickly and correctly, because slow pay is how you lose your best people. I heard these for five years. They’re not on anyone’s roadmap because the incentive to build them isn’t there.

Speed without breaking trust

Here’s the tension I sit with. A 45-year-old firm runs on trust — attorneys and reporters who know the work will be right. A startup runs on speed. You’d think those fight. They don’t, if you’re disciplined about one rule: the record is sacred, and the human stays the authority.

Move fast on scheduling, billing, exhibits, the busywork. Never move fast on the integrity of the testimony. AI can carry the load; it doesn’t get to certify the record. A reporter does.

That’s the line I won’t cross, and it’s why I think this is buildable without betraying the people who built the profession. It’s the thinking behind DepoStack. Join the founding-member waitlist.