#300 The Founder's Guide to Intellectual Property: Insights from Patent Pro Bao Tran

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0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to any episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me from the heart of Silicon Valley. Bao Tran, thank you very much for being on the show. The way I love to do is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, and I have a reason for that because I believe no one can introduce himself or herself better than themselves. So the floor is yours. 

0:00:23 - Bao
Excellent, okay, well, thanks so much. Well, I came from this space originally was engineering. Then my mother had an illness, then I had a law degree and then people saw my technical background and said what we are perfect for, for patent work. So I started up my life helping out compact with its generations of early laptops, you know inventions. Eventually I moved to Silicon Valley and I was, you know, with a big firm and so we work with big you know, adobe and Intel and other companies. But then there were startups that start coming, and one of the startup was the company that made the Invisalign product. So I had the fortune of working with the founders of Invisalign, architecting the portfolio and seeing how a startup company started from scratch and move all the way through an IPO and then maturing out, and so that was a very interesting journey. So you know, once you get hooked into the startup journey, that that continues, and you know I subsequently left Invisalign, but then I help a lot of startups, deal with a patent portfolios and deal with fundraising, and I came across your show and so I thought it was very interesting, and certainly with the audience from the Dubai region you know that part of the world I think this is an exciting area to discuss a little bit about the value of patents, intellectual property, how you can use it to protect your go to market strategy as well as increase your valuation. 

You know a lot of people think of patents as an expense. It's basically a sinkhole of money. But actually when you have a patent application as an early stage company, you can go and tell your investors that, hey, my application, my patent application, is worth at least $150,000 upward and you probably have spent $10,000 to initiate the process, so that certainly is at least a 10x return. You're beating the venture investors, the gold mark, the benchmark for investing. So there are a number of factors that and a number of strategies where you can build the IP and then leverage it. So I'm interested in sharing what I've learned over the years in working with startups with people that listen to your show, Mehmet. 

0:03:04 - Mehmet
Thank you very much, Bao, for this introduction and yeah, as you mentioned, let's say, topic, which you know, I love to hear more about it. But before we deep dive, I would say now, because majority of the time I put in mind that people who made a startup before they have learned it in a way or another, maybe in an easy way, maybe in a hard way, but for first time founders like when they should consider or how they could know they are actually up to something that really need to be protected. Whether you know a patent or any other intellectual property protection mechanism, patents in the US you know they are the way to go and, of course, to the point, you know, we know, like major companies in early stages, for example, the Google, the IBM. You know all these big names. You know it's one of their major assets. So but for me today, if I am a first time founder, how do I know that I should take this route and how do I start, you know, in the process. 

0:04:15 - Bao
Well, absolutely, you know when, when you start a company you inherit as a startup, you inherently you're thinking that your business is doing something super unique, that it's going to go through this traction curve and it's going to go scale up to be to serve millions of users, right? So, by definition, what you're doing has to be interesting and significant. And so, in my view, every startup should, you know, consider protecting that unique value that you bring to the world. And, in particular, when you deal with investors most investors, they refuse to sign confidentiality agreement because they just deal with so many companies that they don't want to be bound by by a rich, you know, but restricted by, let's say, the very first company they talk with. So, in the nature of the power balance, if the investor is not going to sign, you're probably going to agree to that because they have the money right. So then what's the best way to protect yourself? Then? The only way to do that is first to patent your concepts before you talk to investors, and you know there are many examples of companies that ignore this at the peril. So, for example, you go to Kickstarter. Kickstarter, in a way, the customer is the investor. So what you do in a Kickstarter is. You make a nice video, you describe everything about your idea and then you publish that to see if you have traction. Now, if you're not protecting yourself at that stage, you are exposing yourself to some companies who might just purposely sit back and look at your success on Kickstarter. If you are successful there, they know that you have an idea that's going to have traction, and there are numerous cases of companies that you know they see competitors on their doorstep before the Kickstarter process complete, before they raise the funding from Kickstarter. So I think, before you tell the world what you're going to do, you should protect it and, as I've said before, the protection in the form of intellectual property can in itself, has value to the company. It can increase your valuation, right. 

So, having said that, what are the things that you should think about in patenting and why do you? You know, are there some ways of looking at a product and picking out features that you should consider? So the first thing you do is you go look at your slide deck, your investor pitch deck, right, what is it that you're telling investors and customers and suppliers that are? You know what features make your company unique, and then you start from there and then, and from there you add a few more questions. Okay, so this is my value proposition how am I doing this? And so when you go down that list and you iterate a couple of time, you're going to come up with a maybe five or 10 features that are important, and then you would then flush out how is it done? And then, and then you take that information and you turn that into a patent, and if you decide that, let's say, the features that you've done, you couldn't patent them. 

So, for example, if you're doing AI and you're doing, and part of your, your, your, your features that resides in how you train your neural networks, the training part of it may or may not be patentable, and so then, if that's the case, then you might want to consider keeping part of that as a trade secret. So if you choose to do that, then you need to be very careful in what disclose, what you disclose to the world in your presentation on that trade secret, because once you disclose a secret, it's gone Right, and so, in fact, there is a natural interplay between patents and trade secrets. So in a patent, you have to disclose how you do it, and so that means it's going to be public information, but the patent protects your exclusivity for 20 years from the the first filing date in in the US. In other jurisdictions they vary, but they're generally going to be between 15 to 20 years somewhere, so that should be enough to give you a head start against the competition. 

Once you've done that, what happened is invariably in in a startup journey, you're going to have pivots, right, you're going to. After one year, you might decide it. Well, you know what this path I went down. It didn't work out. Let me switch and do something else, and so it's natural then that you also patent the pivot path and eventually what you have is a portfolio, and then you can decide, okay, on the path that I didn't take. Maybe it wasn't valuable to me, but that's an asset that I can sell and I can raise funding from that asset or I can license it. So there are numerous ways where you can benefit and exploit the intellectual property asset that you have, and so that's an overview. 

0:09:43 - Mehmet
Yeah, but no, this is really perfect and I think it should resonate with a lot of founders because if they feed that up to something very interesting, they should protect themselves, as you said, protect the business and, to your point and I think this is maybe something that probably the first time founded, they don't know and, of course, because especially if they are on the tour of raising funds, so this will add to your point that it can enhance their market valuation, which is absolutely perfect. Now let me check. 

0:10:22 - Bao
You know you look at Kickstarter. A lot of people on Kickstarter do not protect the idea. They just simply blast out to the world in videos how I would do it. This is how the product would work, and think about it. I mean, if I'm just a manufacturer somewhere, it's easy to sit back and see what companies have traction and just clone them right. Yeah, yeah and if you have a software idea and once you launch it on the internet, guess what? It's not that hard to reverse engineer software. 

0:10:52 - Mehmet
No, definitely no, it's not. It's not. It's especially in these days with the age of AI. You know it's easier than ever. 100% Now. You mentioned something about in your introduction. So now we understood when they should do it, why they should do it and how it's affecting their valuation. You also talked about, like how these well-crafted IP portfolio can guide them, as startups, into their go-to-market execution and the business strategy. So can you shed some light on this aspect, how you know the IP portfolio can help them in executing their go-to-market strategy? 

0:11:38 - Bao
Well, absolutely so. When you go to market, you formulate all these marketing plans and you advertise your products and your strength and what specific market it serves. All of that information, the competition, can be searched on the internet, right? Your distribution channel. That's going to be known. Your product, obviously your website describes it, so you know referencing that Kickstarter analogy, people can go in and look and study how you're doing it and that information can be quite valuable. It can save you people a lot of time. 

But now imagine if you tell people that you're patent pending, then it's going to start sewing some clouds in their mind oh, maybe they're patented, so maybe I shouldn't exactly copy the product. You know the trademark. Let's say, if now they have trademark, they're branding. I couldn't possibly, you know, use something that's similar enough to confuse customers there. And you know you may have some copyright also in, let's say, in your slogan or in your video. And so you have different layers of IP that you can go to wrap up your company in a blanket of protection. And the more of a network effect you have, the more powerful it is. So think of it this way you wouldn't own in your stock portfolio a single company, right, I mean, even though as powerful as Apple is or Google is these days, the conservative wisdom is you should diversify and have a basket of ideas. So the way you confuse the competition is to have a basket of intellectual property rights, have three or four patents, have a couple of trademarks, have some copyrights and design rights also as well, and so when you have various layers of protection, it makes it harder and more confusing for somebody who's intent on copying you to do it. It raises their uncertainty and that cost can give them they may be able to design around your patent. You know, in general there's no patent as full proof, but the value of the patent is that it blocks paths from them, the various bridges that they can go to build a competing product. So if you have more patents that block different roadblocks, it creates different roadblocks. Then what you have is you're slowing down your competitors from attacking you, and if they are attacking you, you certainly can assert the patent. And the more patents you have, the harder it is for them to shoot down. Think of it like, let's say, you're trying to shoot down one missile versus an ICBM group of, let's say, 10 missiles. It makes the job of defending a lot harder. So in general for companies that let's raise substantial amount of funding. Let's say you raise your series A and you go to series B I tend to. 

I recommend that you go and build a network of IP, including trademark, a lot of patents and trade secrets and copyright as well. And these days, with the advent of AI based software to help you do the first draft of patents, you can do this very cost effectively. It's not going to cost you a bundle. You know we have companies such as Power Patent. That can you know. You can give it the set of features of your product and it can create a very good first draft of what your invention is about and then you can polish it up and then you hand it over to a law firm to file it for you and in that way it won't cost you an Armour Lake number one and you can do it a lot faster. So technology itself is coming down to reduce the cost of patenting. 

0:16:00 - Mehmet
That's great, bob. Now, one thing, if I want to, you know, I like to summarize some points that attracted my attention, and I've seen this because I've worked for, you know, tech startups before and you know when I used to go to customers and say, hey, like this technology is patent pending, right. So yeah, it resonates because, okay, these guys mean they are innovative, they are up to something you know different. Let me hear them. So it's very important when you say just this, these two words, patent pending right. So yeah, so it's very, very, very important. 

The second thing, what you mentioned about, you know, building this network or like portfolio of things, and, as you said, because I've seen, you know successful companies that have done this as well. So sometimes it's like a motor, you know, like a small header, for example. Of course, I'm making this out of my mind, I don't want to mention a company specifically. We are the best. Of course, this is not a trademark, but let's see. So you take this. 

Or customers loves us, right. So you trademark this, and you know, because every time people see this term or this motto, they will remember your startup. So this is why it's very important and is a very good tactic. Now you mentioned something about when they move from series A to series B and so on. So in your opinion, like how this can I mean building this portfolio and, you know, doing all the route to have a proper IPO sorry, a proper IP portfolio affect their IPO, in other sense, when they decide to go public how this can play a role in this journey and what could be the positive sides of it. 

0:17:57 - Bao
Sure. 

So a patent by itself has certain value, but it really when it's combined with a business that's growing. That's where it's worth in the billions. So I've, you know, we've involved with many inventors who came up with ideas that are, you know, just ideas by itself and not affiliate with a business. You can sell those patents roughly between 150,000 to 300,000 if they're not connected to a business. Now when you connect it to a growing business with sales and profit, that's where the true you know the value of patents. They really shine there because they amplify the exclusivity that you get, and so that means you are, you're the cash flow. The valuation of a company is based on a cash flow, right. So if you have a certain cash flow that's growing and you can see the path of growth, because you know the company is something public is, they typically have, you know a curve a, the the J curve, right. So the profitability is is rising dramatically. And imagine if you can tell investors Well, you know, project this forward and you know, 20 years into the future we have this infinite growth curve with infinite profitability. Your valuation is going to be significantly higher. Contrast that with a company that doesn't have IP, you know when an investor checks for defensibility, they're gonna make the argument that hey, anybody else can enter the business and you're gonna face competition as soon as you you have traction, as soon as you have this hockey curve effect right. So the real I think the real value of patent in in a startup is where it is downstream, where it's really growing fast, and you need to preserve that, that exclusivity of that growth, rather than facing, you know, five or ten competitors jumping into space. So, with you know, one of the companies I was with when they went public, the first few years it was like five, five, five or ten patents and then, I think by the time they reach series sees, we were doing like 30 patent applications a year and Then they went public, at that point we were doing like 40, something like that a year roughly. And so you can see how the portfolio builds over time. 

And I think that that portfolio has Two things. Number one, like you say, when you tell people, when you go to customers and you say I'm patent-pending it for it Projects, a sense of a we're high tech were unique. Number two is that with a portfolio of, let's say, three or four years worth of an average of 20 patents Applications a year. You're talking about 60 patents. Now Imagine when a competitor comes in and they see that, wow, you've mined 60 bridges to entering the space. You, you know, because you're the first into the space. You've seen all the challenges that the competitor is going to see coming into this to try to duplicate you. And now you protect that with key patents at all those bridges. You know. Imagine you know somebody coming in and they have to overcome 60 Different bridges to get to you. That's a damn hard thing to go. So that's why companies that go public they generally have a Good portfolio. Now we can switch hand into being the defense side of it. 

As you grow, you're naturally eating revenue away from an existing competitor, right? So that competitor probably has some patents already, and so now, once you grow to a point where you're probably reaching series C or D, you're probably likely to pay. You're gonna be faced with some sort of a threat from your competitor, from from the, the company that you're eating market share from. They're gonna knock on your door and saying hey, we think that you infringe our product because of x, y and z. You need a good portfolio to To counter that. So for a company that's going public. A nice portfolio serves both offensive as well as defensive needs, and that's why you're gonna see Companies that grow big. If they don't have a big patent portfolio, they're gonna buy it from other people and they're gonna pay a substantial, handsome sum of money to buy the portfolio, to bring it in so that you have defensibility and uniqueness also. So you're gonna pay for that cost sooner or later. So I recommend that the start-up start thinking about it upfront. 

0:22:47 - Mehmet
I've seen this several times, especially in the tech space, without mentioning names again, when you know they feel that you are up to something really big. 

So the big guys, you know the big competitors, they have all the resources, they have all the lawyers and they will start to say, hey, you are infringing you know our, our patents, you're using our technology, blah, blah, blah, and you know what. 

I've seen a lot of cases and you know I was curious about, you know I don't have statistics maybe, well, you have, but I think you know there's a huge amount of you know these Cases like x company versus y, and majority of the time, you see, you know, of course, maybe sometimes they settle, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but yeah, so, so when the competition cannot, in their value proposition, beat you, they will try to go the legal way. And I have seen I remember, because the example came to my mind from his own book so Tony Faddel, the founder of Nest, so like Honeywell, went after him because they said they took the technology and so on. So maybe, if they found their thinking, maybe on a smaller scale, but again, this can happen, because I've seen it happening to smaller startups, even with and we are not talking about millions of users. We're talking about B2B, maybe software, but still if you start to give them pain by taking market shares. So this is their strategy, that they're gonna do so. 

0:24:23 - Bao
Of course I mean. It's understandable If you and their shoe you would then try to find everything in your arse to slow them down. It's a natural course of things To me. I don't see anything improper about it. They're using their rights and so if you think ahead of that, then you're staying ahead of the curve, and the people that thinks ahead, they can get out of that easier and better. 

0:24:48 - Mehmet
But yeah, yeah, now about one thing because the patent is an asset, so it might be something, an asset by itself, that I can, as you said, sell it or resell it later on or license it. So this, indeed, as we discussed it, agrees the valuation. So now would that be also a good if they decide not to go with the IPO route. So let's say they decide, because some founders I've been talking now for the past year, so a lot of founders so some of them they say, hey look, I'm a serial entrepreneur. The way I'm gonna exit this business is I'm gonna sell it to a bigger player. So this also would stay the same, right, bao? 

0:25:36 - Bao
Yes, yes, the dynamic is identical. The acquireer, the M&A route you're talking about, the first thing they're gonna do is say is check on whether or not, how defensively you are in your IP. So actually, when you're exiting by M&A route, the patent actually becomes much more important because in a checklist of most of the buyer, the first thing they're gonna check off is IP rights, right, and so the more you have, the safer they will feel and they're feeling like they're buying something. And, to be honest with you, I think the value of most companies these days is actually in the IP side of it. I mean manufacturing nobody does manufacturing anymore. Software, it can easily be copied. So the only thing that holds the value, the store value there, is actually the IP. So the patents is on the technology side and the trademark on the branding side. 

Right, a lot of time, people buy you for your branding power. I mean, think of Apple. I mean the Apple brand or the Coke brand is valuable, but it's like Ethereum you can't touch it. What is the value of a? I mean, can you touch and feel the Apple trademark or the Coke trademark? You can't, but yet you know that it has billions of dollars of value in that, so yeah. So I think that if you're thinking of exiting by selling through the M&A route, the IP is actually even more important. 

0:27:10 - Mehmet
Yeah, definitely. Now you touched a couple of minutes back on using AI and you said like they can leverage the AI for maybe putting the first draft, and I know that there are some other emerging technologies, so maybe blockchain as well. So how do these innovation can transform the way not only we file the patent, also how we can manage that? 

0:27:39 - Bao
Yeah, so you're touching on a great point. So on the blockchain side of it, there are companies that try to connect the IP with the license between the licensor and licensee via the blockchain. So that's a very easy way to track the utilization of the licensing of the patent right. As far as the AI side of it, in the legal space, we can use AI in terms of identifying trademark infringement. We can use AI in the generation of the IP. We can use AI in litigation. They call it document discovery. So the AI has a lot of use in the legal space. 

But now, speaking from a founder perspective, how does AI help them? And so, from that perspective, I think the AI can help in terms of conceptualization and flushing out your idea, in terms of expanding your initial vision of what the product is. It can certainly organize it and create the description of the invention. And then in my firm, we also use AI to help, in addition to drafting, to help the dealing with rejections relating to a particular technology. So our particular law firm we heavily rely on AI to make our firm more efficient in doing providing services costs effectively. 

So it's a technology that I think will bring the cost down dramatically for both the entrepreneurs and to service providers worldwide, and I think that's just not limited to legal space. That's happening, I see, in accounting space, I see that definitely in marketing space. That's a lot of now. Let's say, if you do search and optimization, ai can help you a lot in terms of selecting the keywords, in generating the blogs and, in fact, even in answering the search term. So AI is now dropping the cost of your business, very similar to in the old days where you have you have these, the cloud processing. That's cutting your cost down. I think AI is gonna be. It's gonna do the same thing for startups. It's gonna help cut the cost down for those who know how to utilize it correctly. 

0:30:25 - Mehmet
Yeah, yeah. Now one question that can be brought right, and this is it's an old debate actually. So, let's say and, by the way, there are a lot of founders even in this part of the world the first thing they do is that they incorporate their company in the US, right, so mainly Delaware. Usually they do it there and if there's a patent they file it. So the question that comes sometime, and I know, like you, have some involvement, you know, with the Boston Global Forum and the UN. 

So how, how, you know we can, we can take this patent perspective to some other part of the world where maybe there's not the same jurisdictions that you know we have in the US. Now, at least I can tell you here in in the UE and this part of the world, they are following very fast. So so there are some. You know there's the trademark, you know lows are here, you know the other things. But when it comes to patents, you know, because the last thing you want to to have is you put your blood and sweat, as they say, as a founder to come up with this technology and then you can go find it like in a place where you cannot even do anything right, and then you know you feel like someone. Literally they stole your work. So Should they think too much about it or is it like a problem for another day? 

0:31:59 - Bao
No, I think that's still an important factor to consider. So we Helping a company that that's basically under contract to the Bangladesh government to help their startup economy and Most of the startups and the entrepreneurs there. They focus on software because it's easy, its global strand is transferable, right. And of course, the question ends and then is where do we patent? A lot of people would designate the Established world, such as in the US and Europe. You know, japan, korea, etc. You know because those are the market that they're gonna enter and, of course, in their own native country. 

So I think I think part of your questions is about where should they? If that, let's say, you're there in Middle East, why should they care about a US patent and and why should you know? And so I think you need to have a strategic view of when your market is going to be. So if you're purely only in a particular country, then of course you patent in the country that you're in. But if you're gonna look forward to expanding into the US, then you need to To have some defensibility there. 

And so I would name, let's say, the Chinese companies as an example. Although they started out in China, they really expand rapidly into the US and into Europe, right? So if you are going to be a Unicorn, you need to think global and and and surprisingly I think, I find out that most of the people that I talked to they are global in thinking. I mean, we deal with enterprise entrepreneurs in Africa, you know fintech entrepreneurs and and a lot of them actually apply to Y Combinator. In Silicon Valley, at the top of the, the, the companies that are the, you know the top of the top, they go apply at Y Combinator, even though they're based out of La Secaña, I mean. So I think that the world is becoming more global and more interconnected and so you know where. If I were them, I would think first protecting your own country and and then, second, pick the market where it's a biggest market, and you know, naturally, that would be the traditional Europe. You know China, us and things like that. 

0:34:23 - Mehmet
So yeah Well, I know, like you know almost coming to an end. So I know, like you are an advisor and rest in many you don't have to disclose any sensitive information. But you know, part of the thing that I like to cover on the show is the trends. So, and because you I'm sure, like companies or let's say, startups, who Get some patents would be the ones that attract you to invest and be advisor with them. So Let me it's like a two questions in one. So first, like where are you seeing the majority of the patents filed into, I mean, in which particular I mean domain? And second, you know for you what is the one which is because, for example, you mentioned something it's a very important, I would say you know statement. You said like who's the who's doing manufacturing anymore? So everything is going, software going thick. So which one you know? You think really it will be like Be really growing fast from what you are seeing, advising and investing in these startups. 

0:35:30 - Bao
Oh, Sure, I mean in today's, you know, particularly in 20, after, you know, january of 2023, everything's AI, right, I mean you, you know, you all these business like the old outcome era where you say it's like pets, calm, and now you're gonna, it's probably see pets. Ai, yeah, very dominant, and what we see the application of AI into To improve efficiency and things like that improved design. It can, it can be used to improve designs. I see a lot of AI in medical device actually and so and that's another area where I see you ask you know where. So I think AI and Right now, medical healthcare, there's a lot of uses of AI to then transform that information that used to be Siloed and now, with the advent of the wearable devices and the amount of data that you have available, you see very in a lot of innovation coming out of traditional medical device that is now becoming software. 

In the old days, the medical device used to be a mechanical device, right, it used to be some sort of a stent or some sort of a bone implant, but increasingly, even the bone implant. Now they have the electronics and software inside of it, and and and you know your heart implant has. It has software inside of it, right, and and now just imagine you take that and now you start throwing in you know a CPU with AI that can detect various other patterns to to help you Treat a particular disease. So it's, it's you know. I think it's natural that you'll see patenting a lot. You know patent has been historically been very strong in a medical space. You know any kind of drugs, a patents worth billions, right. So, and now is you know, and with medical devices, you're beginning to see software eating into it and in fact I've seen even some pure software invention now being applied at the FDA, at the federal drug administration. Ask a medication, because the software can, can virtually help you treat a condition like, for example, if you have, you are your your sugar level is border, hot, borderly, is Kind of borderline, and with a little exercise, reminded exercise, or to make them to move after lunch, it can reduce down that sugar level and that is a kind of a medication, even though it's not chemical. So you're seeing a trend now where this, the, the FDA, now is recognizing software as an important part of the of the medical space. 

So I mean, in short of it, I think the two most powerful is is anything to do with AI and as a sub part of that, it's medical Related AI. I I think there's there's a lot of you know very interesting things that can happen there and, of course, you know, now you're seeing devices that are using AI to help you become more personalized assistance, and now you know, is it possible that a phone can just become a device that you wear on your pin and you talk to it and it Uses AI to help you? So that's the beauty of Innovation. You really is very hard to predict where it's going, but I can see in a short term, there's a lot of legs in AI related applications. 

0:39:00 - Mehmet
Absolutely. And I was lucky also to have people from the health care industry on the show and, you know, based on the discussions we had, I think you know the health care was this Dormant giant. I mean from from innovation perspective and all of a sudden now, with you know, data science, machine learning, ai, you know, seems like on a acceleration phase. Now you know, I can, I can tell, at least from my humble experience on the show only with the people I talk to. 

0:39:31 - Bao
And yeah like it's. 

0:39:32 - Mehmet
It's fascinating how, how things are moving fast, because even I don't remember when the smartphone came, it took like maybe three, four years until we saw really you know the things Moving that fast and people always say this was the last time we had kind of a you know this important moment in history, but now AI is really accelerating us very, really fast. But any final thing you know, which I should have asked you, or any final thought you want to leave us with today? 

0:40:01 - Bao
I think we've covered a very wide squad of topics. I think each of it is extremely interesting in itself. I think the discussion really served the founders in the sense of giving them the overview that number one IP doesn't have to be expensive. It can be made very inexpensive now, in particular, if you work with the people who know how to utilize AI to help you document. So IP doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg. And the second thing is that IP is actually a way for you to build your company valuation. Most people, when they come into this, they think, oh, it's going to be expensive, it's going to cost me a lot. I'd rather have that money spent on marketing or on engineering rather than on some legal expense. Don't think of it as a legal expense. Think of it as an asset. 

As an investment, actually, yeah exactly, and it's actually you know from a valuation. You're getting a 10x return easily. So you're beating your own investors' expectations that whatever they put money into you, they expect a 10x return. Just by investing, let's say, 10 grand in filing a plan, you're going to easily get $150,000 worth of value. So I think that's something that most people don't think about. It's actually not an expense. 

0:41:32 - Mehmet
It's an eye-opener really about thinking about all these things, especially and I'm happy again because, as we were discussing before and during you know today's episode like in my opinion, at least in the place where I live, it's an underrated topic and it was very good to hear that perspective from you and because you know every founder what they want. Of course, they want their product to go to market in a much faster way, which we discussed. They want to have better discussions with the investors with, of course, you know this is something every founder they want or she want to do. And, exactly to your last point, the valuation, and we talked about either the route of IPO or the route of M&A, which is great, so, baal, where people can find more about you, how they can learn more about you. 

0:42:28 - Bao
Sure, please. You can email me at B-Tran, which is my initial plus the last name at patentpccom. So patent PC is short. It's a short for patent professional corporation. So B-Tran at patentpccom and we'll be very happy to answer any questions you may have. 

0:42:49 - Mehmet
Sure, I would make sure I would put this in the show notes of this episode. Again, thank you, baal, very much for your you know valuable information and for all these insights you gave us today. I really appreciate it, and this is the way I end every episode. This is for the audience. If you discovered this podcast same as Baal has discovered, by the way, for the first time, and you like it, please subscribe and tell your friends and colleagues about it. And if you are one of the fans that keep coming back and sending me their messages, thank you very much. I really appreciate all the feedbacks you are sending it to me and we're trying to cover as much topics as possible related to the tech trends, to the startups and entrepreneurship. So thank you very much for tuning in and I promise we will try to get the best of the best every time. Thank you very much and tune in for a new episode very soon. Thank you, mehmet.