Fundraising to Protect IP

Welcome back to investream. I'm bunkage and today we're going to talk a little bit about raising money to fund IP protection coming up next. I hope all of you are doing well, you're staying safe, staying healthy, and hopefully we'll get back to a normal life very soon. Today I want to talk about companies that are raising money purely for the reason of IP protection. Now, people could be raising money at the seed stage because they want to file patents and they can't afford to do it on their own. Of course, you can still do a provisional patent, but some people want to go through the whole process. Then there are other companies that might be a little bit further along. They already have a patent and maybe they're trying to enforce the patent or litigate or something like that, and they're trying to raise money from angel investors or VCs in order to do this. Well, if you don't want to sit through the whole video, the shorter answer is don't. It's not going to work. Very few VCs and angel investors, professionals at least, are going to fund IP protection. Generally, angel investors and VCs want to funnel money into companies that are growing, that are doing something unique with a product and they're going to use that money to either enhance the product, build the team, Capture market share, etc. Very rarely are you going to find a company at an early stage that is going to be able to raise money purely for IP protection. It does happen. It does happen. There are companies that are doing very unique things. And again, I'm talking specifically about tech. I'm not talking about biotech and other industries where perhaps IP protection is even more important than it is in technology. But in typical software companies, SaaS companies, B2B companies, we're talking about IP protections in that category. It is rare that you're going to find a investor who's going to say, you know what, this is really solid IP and I'm going to give you money to file patents or to go in and protect your patents. But you will find people who will give you money to go out and build the business, build the team, capture market share and things of that nature. It's much harder to convince an investor that their money is being spent wisely purely for protecting patents. You could go out to non vc, non angel investors that might be willing to invest the money in order to protect patent. It does happen. You can find some of those people or you can sell the IP to a company whose sole purpose for existence is buying out IP and then litigating against people who are infringing on those patents. Generally, they're called patent trolls. So the short answer is don't do it. It's probably going to be a waste of your time. If you really want to file patents and you want to go out and protect the IP that you're building, scrounge up the money yourself. Maybe from family, re from them. Angel investors and VCs are typically not going to fund it. So I hope that's helpful. I hope you're staying safe and healthy and look forward to seeing you again soon. If you haven't yet subscribed to the YouTube channel, please click on the link in the bio and head over to YouTube and subscribe to the YouTube channel. And make sure you turn on notifications so that you don't miss a single episode of investream. Thanks again for joining me, and I'll see you again soon.