Posts Tagged ‘Investor Due Diligence’

IP Due Diligence Checklist

Due diligence is essential for any business deal, and IP due diligence is shockingly left out of the equation for most angel investors and venture capital investors. Due diligence is hard work. Doing it well will get your hands dirty. Introduction to IP Due Diligence Any due diligence exercise, especially IP due diligence, involves turning…

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How to Find a Realistic Patent Value

(Updated 22 July 2023.) The biggest factor to determine a patent’s value: revenue. A realistic patent valuation can be determined using many of the same techniques used to value businesses. However, it all depends on whether someone is actively copying your invention. How to value a patent all depends on whether there is product in…

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Startup Fundraising – Pluses and Minuses

From bootstrapping to venture funds, there are many different avenues. Fundraising for a startup company often takes more skill, talent, and innovation than creating the product or service you want to deliver. I deal with IP-centric businesses where patents are a core asset, and that implies that the entrepreneur is creative, innovative, and tries new…

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How to Spot Bad Patents

Investment-Grade Patents represent only a small sliver of the patent universe. Their value comes from a huge amount of research and thought. However, bad patents are easy to spot. These less-than-optimal patents have certain characteristics that can easily be identified by anyone: the inventor, the investor, or anyone in litigation.  Use this as a first…

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Webinar: IP Due Diligence in Two Questions

There are two questions to ask every time you are dealing with patents: Can you tell if someone infringes? How hard is it to design around your patent? With these two questions, you are 90% of the way there on IP due diligence. Here is my presentation to Band of Angels in October, 2020.

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Why Marketing Is More Important than Patents

Entrepreneurs have been fed this lie that the first thing they need to do is get a patent, then work on the business. This is a bad strategy. As an investor who finances IP for startups, I want some data to support the investment in patents. The best strategy is to do the marketing first,…

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1% Patent – 99% Execution

As we all know, business is usually 10% idea and 90% execution.  The successful companies rarely have the single best product on the market, but they do have successful execution. Startup companies – and any business with a new product – spend more time doing product market fit than anything else.  Figuring out what the…

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Patents Help Sell Your Company

(Updated 10 Oct 2021.) IP plays a big role to sell your company, especially if you are a startup company. Most people think about building an IP portfolio for “protection.” Somehow, the patent value is that they can mystically enforce their patent on an infringer. The notion of “protection” is mostly an illusion, unless you…

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