#52 - Meet the Start-Up Reinventing Patent Work With AI

Today we talk with a company that has designed an AI to defend and enforce your patents.

It's a simple mission, but providing exceptional value in the discovery, analytics, and reporting of intellectual property patent landscape. It's difficult to come by, and there's a lot of walls and a lot of barriers everywhere. We create this next level transactional efficiency and really set the market standard.

Happy to connect and build ecosystem together. I think that's what we can bring to the table—the network effects and the power of the network.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this episode of Tech Optimist. Today, we meet Pat Lytics. So the people taking us through the episode from the AV team is Ray Wu, managing partner. And then our guest today is the co-founder and CEO of Patlytics, Paul Lee. Now his background is really interesting, so can't wait to hear— for you to hear more about it. Then you'll also hear my voice. My name is Sam and I am the guide editor and sort of narrative writer for this show. Now let's dive in. So A little bit of an intro onto the conversation that you're going to hear today between Ray and Paul. Now, Paul has a really cool background, and he's been you know a venture capitalist for a really long time. And him having you know that that special background of being the CEO of this newer company that you know helps inventors and engineers and innovators alike. Sort of protect, design, and enforce their patents for their new technology. Now, I don't know much about patents at all, and Paul does a really good job of sort of explaining, you know, what their company does and how, you know, their AI can help a bunch of different groups of people. So we do a quick dive on their website to talk a little bit more about their technology. And then Ray also gives some insights on, you know, how special it is, uh, to have the sort of large venture capital company and, you know, community that, uh, AV does to help out companies like Packlytics. So again, I will stop yapping and we'll get into the rest of the episode. So sit back, relax, and we hope you enjoy. As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not personalized advice, and it is not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

Let me start by saying that hi, my name is Ray Wu. I'm the managing partner of Alami Ventures. Today, I'm speaking with Paul, the CEO and founder of Pedalytics. We're truly excited to support the company and to be part of this journey together. Paul, we know each other for a while, so before we dive into the product details, maybe introduce yourself and your company.

Awesome. Ray, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to speak with you and kind of discuss many things. I'm Paul. I've been a venture capitalist for most of my career. Right before this, I was a partner at Tribe Capital, $1.6 billion fund investing with the mission of partnering with companies at critical inflection points. And I've been an early-stage investor for most of my career as well. I've also been a vertical SaaS, vertical AI guy for the past 10 years, which is why later we'll get into the reason why I was so attracted to the mission of PatLytics and what we're doing here in the ecosystem. But yeah, just as a brief bio, born in Korea, grew up in Canada, Attended the University of Waterloo back, I guess it's been about 15 years or so ago. And yeah, that's also when I met my co-founder Arthur, right? Who previously founded the company Magic and has had many successes there. And yeah, we forged this path just under a year ago now with the mission of, it's a simple mission, but providing exceptional value in the discovery, analytics, and reporting of intellectual property. Currently, we work with IP prosecution litigation firms, in-house counsel of IP-centric corporations, and and researchers to really harness this kind of new power of AI in these mission-critical workflows. When founding this company about a year ago, just us 2, now a team of 15 people, we're headquartered in New York. We have a couple dozens of clients globally, Fortune 500 companies, premier law firms, Kind of any interesting organizations that have IP, we have synergies and relationships with. And really, we started this company to wake up the sleepy giant of IP.

Okay, so for Patlytics, I did a dive on their website so that you don't have to, to provide you a little bit more context and information about Patlytics, what kind of company they are, And, you know, a little bit about their mission. You know, Paul just now talked a little bit about their mission, but, you know, right in massive big letters on their About Us page at www.patlytics.ai/about-us, it says, create exceptional value in the discovery, analytics, and reporting of IP. Patlytics unlocks the massive productivity gains in the IP community by providing a suite of customer-obsessed technology to aid in discovering, analyzing, and reporting on intellectual property data. Now, for those of you who don't know, which I didn't know, IP stands for that phrase that I just said, intellectual property. And in the Patlytics space, that means that Patlytics is the premier AI-powered patent platform. So they are your trusted partner in patent creation, Protection, enforcement, and defense. Again, a little bit about their leadership team: Paul is their co-founder and CEO, and then Paul mentioned briefly, but their other co-founder and CTO is Arthur Jen, which is Paul's kind of partner in this company. But on their about page, you know they are super keen on accuracy, insight, and partnership. So under accuracy, our data is meticulously curated and updated to ensure accuracy and reliability. Under insight, you can gain valuable insights generated by AI that give you a competitive edge in your industry. We're gonna learn a little bit more about that here, uh, later in the interview. Um, but just sort of scratching the surface on that. And then partnership. So we see ourselves as an extension of your team committed to your success. So we're gonna hop into our first ad to get it out of the way, and then we're gonna hop into the rest of the interview with Ray and Paul. So. Like I say every episode, don't go anywhere. Hang tight. There's much more to come.

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I mean, it's always exciting. So sounds like you mentioned about the, obviously with the AIs, any other industry catalysts or trends that influence your decision to start this company? And how do you envision in the long run how this proceeds forward?

Yeah. And Ray, you know this well, is that like, Back when we, back when I was a venture capitalist and we were doing deals together a couple years ago, AI was not at a critical inflection point. Now it obviously is, but during that time, I'd say, and even now, there's a lot of discovery, there's a lot of curiosity, there's a lot of wanting to learn in the market because it has provided so much value to individuals and organizations in general, and people just want more of it. And when you have that kind of culture and that kind of theme, you can run into issues of, you know, snake oil, right? There's stuff that don't really work, or there's stuff that's like, You know, security prone or have huge security risks. There's a bunch of wrapper stuff. You know, there's all this stuff that I think, you know, in this age of AI, you need to be very, very discerning, right? And that's something I think is on trend with current market development, which is the idea and also the sophistication of how you can be discerning, right? I'll just say, like, even in this patent AI market, there's like a bunch of players, and I'd say 99%, 95% of them are probably irrelevant, mainly because it just hasn't touched the, not only the scary side, but the tailwind that I think it should follow. To really think a little deeper about this market, what I'm currently seeing in the market is that people want better tech. There's a big push for higher value work using LLMs. Yeah. And most importantly, people crave quality. These And these people in my day-to-day, they're patent attorneys, right? They're some of the most sophisticated people in the world, right? And they've went through high degrees of education and also work experience to kind of be where they are at. And that's why this quality piece is so, so, so important, right? What drives me and what drives PatLytics is that There's so much information that is still archaic in this patent landscape. It's difficult to come by and there's a lot of walls and a lot of barriers everywhere. What we do, and this is tailwinds of the AI kind of revolution, is that we create this next level transactional efficiency and really set the market standard. And in the end, this transaction efficiency is, you know, it can be made by, you know, making more information readily available at a lower cost at a much higher speed. So for example, people don't have to litigate on things that don't really matter, right? Or it can be found out. later that it's a little trivial. And that's the value. I think the value is really about maximizing efficiency to create that middle point.

Very, very cool. And then maybe share a little bit in terms of your funding rounds and the VCs currently in and what are you looking for from a venture community perspective?

Yeah, with With the venture community, I think, first of all, I love the venture community, right? The venture community supports, you know, and have created the— and then supported some of the best startups in the world, right? So I think just by the mere fact that you're, you know, putting capital into work where by deploying such, you get to be part of this, you know, opportunity creation is super cool. I think it's even cooler if some of these funds or GPs at the funds or the team, teammates, investment members, et cetera, could also help with kind of the operational aspect. And I'm not talking like, getting into the weeds of kind of like KPI management or all that kind of stuff. Actually, I would prefer, you know, stay out of that. But I think in terms of customer development, right? Customer introductions or just key hires or, you know, even what AV did for us, which is, you know, to provide temporary like location support, right? When we were just kicking things off in New York, right? It was extremely helpful. And I think that's what makes, you know, some of these VCs great, right? They understand where the support could be had and where's better if you put kind of an arm's length on the level of support.

Yeah. Maybe share some of the VCs currently supporting the company.

Yeah, so the funny thing about Palantir's round was that it was completely preempted from the start. Something surprising too is that we just never really had a pitch deck. We never had a pitch deck. And yeah, like Gradient, HVC, you guys, Liquid2. Yeah. Myriad Ventures has been just fantastic on our cap table as well. And other key VCs and angel investors were part of the round that was very preempted and done, you know, very quickly, mainly because I think I think, you know, in my opinion, yourself and other supporters, other VCs really know that like when Arthur and I came to do this, we wanted to do it very seriously, right? And I think it really means kind of, it means a lot where kind of the support could be understood immediately. And also be acted upon immediately as well. So yeah, we raised around like, you know, $6 million now, right, at seed. And then when we hit the milestones that we want to hit, we'll be going in for a Series A soon.

All right. You know what time it is. We're wrapping up the episode. Here's our last ad and then we're going to finish it off.

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So again, I want to provide a little bit more information on how PatLytics Does what they do. Again, this is read directly off of their website, so I'm reading it and you know providing it for you so you don't have to. But if you want to take a look, please feel free. The website link will be in the show notes, of course, as always. But just as far as like an AI-powered patent platform, I'm cur— I was very curious on you know what that means and how that works. So they have a, like an advanced AI engine for intellectual property. So you can stay ahead with comprehensive discovery and analytics. So this AI has litigation intelligence, so it can safeguard your IP with cutting-edge infringement monitoring detection. They have an AI patent drafting copilot, which can leverage our AI engine, which can leverage their engine to save time. It can control the quality of the invention and disclose and smart label figures. They also have office action response within this model that can optimize the response process, reduce manual workloads, and significantly increase success rates. They have whitespace detection, so it'll monitor patent life cycles, pinpoint discovery strategies, and identify portfolio gaps. It has a patent inventory harvesting where you can gain oversight across all of your IP assets. Streamline portfolio management and immediacy. And they even have, you know, a section on why you should use Patlytics, where you can access all of your data and discover insights all in one place. So they have market-leading tech and deep industry expertise. So we combine unmatched industry knowledge with powerful AI tools built for patent professionals. They have comprehensive workflow coverage, so manage each relevant aspect of their patents. From drafting to litigation, all on one platform. They have unmatched quality with AI enablement. So these are table stakes for your needs. We help you navigate complexity and accuracy, precision, and they have innovative and sophisticated solutions. So the AI-powered platform empowers effective patent defense and enforcement.

Great. Yeah, good to be a part of this journey. I'm glad we keep in touch so I'd be able to learn about your funding round. Do you have any requests for the alumni venture community and how can we help?

No, I mean, you guys have been extremely helpful, right? Again, the office thing was amazing. I think what was really impressive is when Jin introduced, Jin and Helen introduced me to like, what, like 20 different kind of potential customers. And that was, I didn't know that AV was capable of having such resources and support, right? It actually was such a pleasant surprise, right? I think relevant events, relevant key hires, you know, those Those are always helpful. But no, just being there whenever, you know, through the ups and downs and all that has been very helpful, Ray. So thank you.

Yeah, no worries. I think, you know, when you talk about the Marriott Ventures, that's the one with Xerox, right? I think I introduced you.

Yeah, no, man, you did introduce me to Marriott. Yeah. Initially, I was like, man, do I like talk with like, I don't know, I didn't know more about them and I almost dismissed it. I was like, no, Ray, I do not want the intro, right? But then you're like, no, these guys are good, right? So I, yeah, I chatted with them, Chris, Dean, and the whole team over there, been phenomenal for us as well. So thank you for the introduction.

Anytime, anytime. Glad to help. And As a community, obviously we just want to provide the connections, right? Regardless within the school networks, the alumni networks, and also just within the industries. Obviously we have large portfolios. We're happy to connect and build ecosystem together. I think that's what we can bring to the table, the network effects and the power of the network. So great to have you as part of the community and really appreciate you spending time with me today.

Thanks again for tuning into The Tech Optimist. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a rating on whichever podcast app you're using, and remember to subscribe to keep up with each episode. The Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions, so please email us at info@techoptimist.vc with any of those, and be sure to visit our website at av.vc. As always, Keep building.