Tag: Entrepreneurs
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Just Do Your Job
Your patent attorney is a skilled professional. They spent years learning patent law. They passed the patent bar. They have written hundreds of applications and prosecuted thousands of office actions. And they will not make…
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Why Patent Competence Is a C-Suite Responsibility
Why outsourcing it to a patent attorney is one of the most common — and expensive — mistakes founders make There’s a simple test for whether a patent actually matters: Did it change your competitor’s…
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Are Patents Still Relevant in the Age of AI?
The cost to build software is collapsing. Not slowly. Not incrementally. It’s collapsing fast enough that entire assumptions about startups, competition, and defensibility no longer hold. AI has changed the economics of software development in…
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Myth: Patents Have Intrinsic Value
Why Revenue Is the Only Metric of Value There is a deeply embedded myth in the startup, investor, and legal ecosystems that patents have intrinsic value. That simply owning a patent means you own “something…
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CES and Grifting the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Grifting in the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem I just returned from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I have been going for many years, and I thoroughly enjoy the show in many respects, but the grifting…
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Four Horsemen of the Investor Apocalypse
Contempt That Destroys Investor–Entrepreneur Relationships Contempt is one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Once it shows up, it is the end of a relationship. Contempt doesn’t look like shouting. It is mostly passive…
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Your Patent Attorney Is NOT Giving Business Advice
Are you getting a list of options or a strategy that aligns with your business? Is that “strategy” more tailored to the Law Firm’s billing or your success? Most inventors think that hiring a patent…
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Contempt from Crowdfunded Equity
Entrepreneurs are stuck between two polar opposites. On one hand, they are encouraged – endlessly – to hype, hype, hype. The accelerators and incubators want to see astronomical projections, Total Addressable Markets in the trillions,…
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Entrepreneurs and Imposter Syndrome
The Easiest Way to Spot an Entrepreneur with Imposter Syndrome: They Don’t Have Revenue Some founders will drone on and on telling you how “innovative” they are. They highlight their patents, their clever ideas, their…
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Strategic Partnerships are often Neither
Strategic Partnerships are a polite way of saying “we don’t own the most important parts of our business.” Every founder loves to brag about their “strategic partnerships.” The name sounds impressive, but hides a glaring…