GoldFynch is the brainchild of Mazira: a software company based in Iowa City.

We are University of Iowa graduates: Ross Johnson, Anith Mathai and Amanda Johnson, and we founded Mazira in 2011. At Mazira, we develop custom search engines for both structured and unstructured data.

We created GoldFynch to solve a pressing need in the legal world.

We were getting multiple requests from lawyers and paralegals for a simple solution for what was essentially e-discovery; although at the time we didn’t know it.

A local law firm needed a way to search 1000s of scanned pages.

That meant using optical character recognition (OCR) software to convert the scanned text into a form a computer can process, and then making all that text searchable. They were tired of having to go to multiple vendors and so approached us to build a solution. They wanted an easy-to-use piece of software with which their paralegals could just log in, upload data and have everything else be automatic.

With a bit of research we realized other firms had the same problem.

In fact, it was pretty pandemic, especially in the local market. Software with a simple ‘log in, drag-and-drop, and go’ setup hadn’t yet been developed. The existing players had clunky software that needed installation, training for users, and (more annoying than anything else) an extra long sales process.

We built GoldFynch from the ground up, to be easy to use.

Just sign up with an email address and you’re ready to go. No time wasted on getting custom quotes or going through complicated sales processes. Once signed in, everything is included in the fixed and transparent pricing. If a file needs OCR, GoldFynch handles it. Duplication checks and indexing? It’s all done by GoldFynch.

The name ‘GoldFynch’ is a play on words.

It’s a blend of ‘Goldfinch’ – the state bird of Iowa – and the character Atticus Finch from the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. GoldFynch: spelled different because it is different.

The domain name Goldfynch.com was previously owned by a alum of Grinnell College in Iowa, who graciously gave it to us for free. So, a shout-out to the Arrel Gray for the gift.