The Startup Cooperative - Sean Blanchfield
I read this post by Sean Blanchfield and here is what I posted as a comment:
Great reading Sean, and a topic I believe will be of interest to all entrepreneurs out there.
I can’t help think upon reading your post that this co-op follows a structure similar to an “accelerator” or “incubator” such as YCombinator, 500startups, TechStars or Startup Bootcamp.
This co-op needs to be defined as an organization set up by it’s members for it’s members. The members are active entrepreneurs who seek to act on opportunities in their markets of experience.
But let’s face it, ideas are only ideas unless acted upon. Everyone with a flare in business or entrepreneurship has ideas, and lots of them. We talk with colleagues and do a bit of research around an idea and then we write short descriptions of them and imagine a route to market…but that’s all we do. We save them in a lonely folder fooling ourselves in the belief that we will someday have the balls to act upon them.
It’s been considered that 9/10 ideas (or startups) fail. They fail because perhaps the market was not yet matured for it, the route to market was wrong, or the team behind the idea was wrong or they couldn’t get the product together in time. Now imagine a co-op like this that would make the difference between creating a successful business or creating a worthless product.
To add to what you mentioned above, I see the co-op providing the following:
1. An opportunity to weed out the crap ideas. They say it’s best to fail fast when you’re a startup. Instead, I say it’s best to not even start if there is no real business in your idea. Ideas can be actively discussed and challenged by the members.
2. An opportunity to build a great team. When an idea is perceived to be a valuable opportunity for the market, members with an interest in the particular space can then put their name forward to continue with the opportunity and form a team with set targets and milestones. It is also important to realise that the team can and should change during the process of the startup venture. For example, a team of developers can move between the co-ops businesses once the market has been qualified and a sales pipeline has been identified. A business student loves researching new markets and finding routes to market (but lacks the experience of knowing what to do next) so they work with the team on the early stages of new startups. This is a way we can draw from the experience the members have at the right time.
3. An opportunity to pool resources to provide assistance to the teams. At the end of the day, the members will want the startup to succeed as all members will benefit.
At the end of the day, I believe that all members acknowledge that owning 100% of that idea in that lonely folder is worth nothing, and always will if they decide not to act on them. This co-op is a great opportunity to churn out great ideas and great businesses.
Chris and Liam bring getHealth to America: Part 1
On Wednesday 12th October, Chris was doing a Google search on the US wellness industry and he came across the Annual Corporate Wellness Conference which was being held in Chicago in two weeks time from the 26th to the 28th of October.
The conference was the largest corporate wellness conference in the world bringing together 1500 attendees from all over the world as well as many of the experts in the industry to share their knowledge. We quickly realized that if we were going to try and validate our business idea we needed to attend this conference. Also, because we were applying to a number of accelerator programmes in San Francisco we thought, “sure, if we’re going to Chicago we may as well pop down the road to San Francisco.” So our plan was that that would become the second part of our trip (see “getHealth does America: Part 2”)
Things started to happen very quickly with flights and hotels being booked, business cards being printed and meetings being set up, and despite Chris frantically trying to renew my passport we got everything organized very quickly. On Tuesday 25th we headed off for the morning flight to Chicago O’Hare International.
After the 8 hour flight and getting to the hotel in Schaumburg, Illinois, we quickly assessed our surroundings and our itinerary. Our first engagement was a networking cocktail party in the hotel where the conference was being help. Armed with business cards, a few flyers and pure adrenaline we headed off to the cocktail reception to commence our networking barrage of the US wellness industry. With palpable enthusiasm for our new idea and our Irish accents in full swing, we got a lot of positive feedback from attendees at the conference.
Following a few glasses of wine and some business card collecting, we headed off to dinner with Marcia Reid, a Healthcare Consultant (with quite a large following of her personal blog on healthcare), whom Liam had connected with via Twitter. It was good to relax and chat about our idea with them and talk about our strategy for launching this service in the US market. Amidst the food and chatting, we quickly realized that our jetlag was catching up on us and we headed on back to our hotel to rest up for the next day.
Wednesday
Not adjusting to the jetlag meant we had an unexpected early start to the morning. However, this allowed us to get some good research done on some of the individuals we were due to meet later in the day.
Throughout the morning we spoke to HR managers, health insurance providers and wellness coordinators about our business concept and, like the previous day, the response back was extremely positive and a number of the companies expressed an interest in piloting the service for whenever it launches.
As well as speaking to individuals about our concept, the conference was also a fantastic opportunity to learn about the corporate wellness industry and to see what challenges companies faced. Particularly notable speakers included Dr. Cecil Wilson, President of the American Medical Association, who spoke a lot about various legislation which are either in effect or coming into effect in the next couple of years. Also of note was Pani Tademeti who talked about the ‘Return on Investment for Web Based Enrollment System Implementation’. This session was interesting from our point of view, as it let us hear from other experts how they can create a culture of change for wellness coordinators through the use of software and online technology.
Our meetings went very well throughout the day and perhaps the most productive time was spent going round the stands chatting to people, finding out what they do and also identifying any potential competitors.
With the day coming to a close we were able to relax and reflect on what had been a great day of networking for us with new friends and a delicious steak.
Thursday
Up early again to finish off our demo. Some of the attendees we had met the previous day had expressed an interest in being able to view it and so we spent a bit of time adding the final touches to it before heading off to the conference.
The first talk this morning was Donald Trump’s first apprentice, Bill Rancic. The talk had very little to do about wellness but it was interesting to hear about his experience of the show and about his business life in general. After he spoke there was a Q&A session, where Liam went up to the mic got up to ask a question in front of this room of 1500 people.
He started off, “Hi, my name is Liam Ryan. I am from Ireland and I’m working on a new online solution for the wellness sector. What impact do you think technology will have in healthcare moving forward? “Bill didn’t hear the question properly. So Liam repeated the entire question, “Hi, my name is….” The answer to the question didn’t matter. What was important was that we just advertised ourselves to the entire conference, and boy did it work. People were coming up to us after saying, “Oh, you’re the Irish guy who asked the question. I’d love to hear more about what you’re working on.” Result!
Bill’s talk was a nice way to ease into the day but it was followed up with a fascinating talk from John Casey who is director of international benefits at Google. John is Irish and a graduate of UCD, and he gave an insightful account of Google’s approach on wellness. It was very clear to see that innovation touches all aspects of their organization.
Thursday proved to be even better than Wednesday with some great contacts acquired and a lot of interest generated in getHealth. We also got the opportunity to attend a couple of sessions which allowed us to get a Corporate Wellness Certified Accreditation which we know will be extremely useful to us as we develop the business.
The end of conference event held on Thursday evening was a truly strange affair; dinner at the world famous Medieval Times. If anyone has seen Jim Carey in The Cable Guy you’ll know exactly what I mean. In this “magical” place you sit around a medieval arena watching as horse men perform tricks and fight each other, while we all sit there and eat half a chicken with our hands. The food was pretty awful but the show was entertaining. I wouldn’t bother going again though!
Friday
The conference finished at 12pm on Friday and, in my opinion they saved the best session for last; Peter Saravis, CEO of Evive Health, talking about new tools for increasing employee engagement in health and wellness programs. This was extremely relevant and helpful to us as it explained how even a smallest of changes can improve employee engagement in wellness. For examples, Peter explained how changing the image used on your wellness promotional materials can improve employee engagement if it makes people feel that they can relate to it more. This session was very well attended and I think it underlined the problem wellness managers have in trying to improve employee engagement.
The conference drew to a close shortly after this session and after our fond farewells to our new friends (and hopefully new clients) we headed back to the hotel to gather our things and prepare for the next part of our trip.
Chris and Liam bring getHealth to America: Part 2
Following a relaxing weekend with a visit to friends in Miluakee, Illinois, we travelled to San Francisco on the Saturday evening. Arriving in the city, we were greeted by locals taking full advantage of the Halloween season and at our hotel we marked our arrival in the city with a pint of the familiar black gold.
After an all American breakfast the next morning and casually breaking the shower flooding the entire bathroom, we went on our merry way tearing up San Fran. After taking in the sites and getting lost in Macy’s several times, we made our way to Eric’s house and to our first experience of AirBnB.
Eric was a fencing champion and start-up advisor living on Mason street, who was incredibly blazay about his stunning view from the roof of his down-town apartment.
The next day was an early start for getHealth filled with presentation practicing. After this, we travelled down to Berkley to have lunch with Chris Bruce, local serial tech entrepreneur. Along with working on his own ventures, Chris also provided office space for start-ups in and around the Berkley area. Following a couple of coffees and some great advice from Chris we were on our way again and headed for Palo Alto.
The tree lined streets and packed out coffee shops, fulfilled all expectations from our watching of ‘the social network’. Here, it was great to meet up with a couple of Irish based out there. Enterprise Ireland’s David Smith and Stripe co-founder, Patrick Collison. Both gave us a good insight into the life out there and were able to make some great recommendations as to how we should approach developing our company out there.
On to the second night with AirBnB and a group of young entrepreneurs living close Stanford were our hosts for the evening. There were three companies in the house all working on a variety of different tech solutions and it was nice to sit and chat over a beer about our different experiences of the start-up world. It’s clear that WePay.com, Stypi (a Y-Combinator Startup) and Predictive Edge will be ones to watch in the future.
Tuesday was the big day for us. The meeting with Rock Health in the morning was what we had been looking forward to for the past week.
Rock health is a new start-up accelerator program based in Chinatown in San Francisco. The program is exclusively aimed at helping start-ups based in the health space and the next session commences in January 2012.
We met with creative director Lesley Ziegler whom we presented our concept to. After showing our demo and some Q&A we got some good feedback from Lesley on getHealth which we helped us in resubmitting our application.
After the relief that the interview went well, we took ourselves off down the Golden Gate Bridge. We got stunning weather and were lucky to be able to get some great snaps.
After soaking up San Francisco one more time we headed back down to Palo Alto to meet with Joshua Merril, CEO of Tap Canvas and currently based in 500 Startups. Josh showed us around and pointed out Jawed Karim, the co-Founder of YouTube, sitting by the window mentoring one of of his colleagues’ companies. Josh gave us some good advice on how we should approach setting up a company over in the Bay area. We also meet Dave McClure who was just recently back from Ireland as a judge at the Dublin Web Summit.
There was an amazing buzz about the place. Some teams brainstorming, others on sales calls and a lot of them building the next million dollar company. The atmosphere and vibe was infectious and we could see why the programme is held in such high regard.
After this we headed off to our third and final experience of Air BnB. This time we were staying with Iddo Tal and his family, an entrepreneur trying to make it like the rest of us. Their house was still decked out with Halloween paraphernalia from the night before and they were very welcoming to us both.
As soon as we left our stuff off with them we headed back into town for Silicon Valley NewTech meetup event. Liam had found out about this prior to heading out to the States and had secured us two seats at it. The event was attended by people from all sorts of backgrounds and essentially it was an opportunity for the tech start-up community to come together and to talk about their business ideas. Joshua who we met earlier was attending and the three of us sat and listened intently to some fascinating concepts people come up with for the online space.
Following the pitches, we got a chance to network over some pizza and beer and it was really nice to feel welcomed to this community having only come over from Ireland.
After this event our trip was drawing to a close and all that remained was to get a snap at 5am outside Facebook HQ:
Learn about Product Development at Facebook
I just found a free course you should take time to watch. It’s a 9 lecture course (2/3 minutes each) taken from an interview with Mark Zuckerberg discussing product development and how the product has evolved with the growth of this company.
The interview is chaired by Jim Breyer from Accel Partners: the first investors in Facebook with a $13Million fund back in 2005!
You can find the course at Udemy here: http://www.udemy.com/product-development-at-facebook/
Growing a Company - Iain Mac Donald, Skillpages.com
Last night I attended the 2011 Campus Company Development Programme Awards Evening in Nova UCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre for spinout companies from college research.
While the judges were deliberating on the final presentations, the audience was treated to a presentation my Iain Mac Donald, the founder of Skillpages.com (Iain was the founder and CEO of Perlico that was acquired by Vodafone Ireland for €80M back in 2007).
Iain’s presentation described, in his opinion, the 10 key elements to growing a company, and I’m going to attempt to paraphrase the best I can.
1. Choose Your Market Carefully
Iain pointed out that you must choose a market that is available to you right now. Ask yourself, is it easy to get a customer? Is there an existing engagement in the sector already? It could take two/three, even ten years before you engage them. That’s just too long!
If your market is already educated, your company can capitalize on the benefits of not having to waste valuable money on educating them about your sector.
2. Vision
Have you asked yourself what your personal ambition is? What do you want to achieve out of the company you’ve just started, the company you get up out of bed early every morning for, the company you work long long hours for…it has to be a passion of yours from the beginning!
Think big. Big vision! Take over the world vision! You’ll know what goals you can achieve and when you’ll be able to achieve them.
Your company may pivot from time to time but your vision will kind of stay the same.
3. Do One Thing Brilliantly
Iain describes this as how you and your company will succeed. What is that one thing your company does amazingly? Well conquer it and be the market leaders!
4. Beware of “Experts”
Now this was really interesting point, and one that I have tried to learn fast as a young entrepreneur: You have to be aware of who your talking to and what opinions they give about what you’re working on.
Are they feeding you an expert opinion or are they absolute wafflers?
You’re intelligent: so listen as much as you can and then form your own opinions. Who were the people that influenced you correctly over time?…they are the experts, be nice to them.
Find those experts that believe in you and most importantly, that they have your personal best interests at heart.
5. Hire The Right People
This is a common theme that all CEO’s will talk to you about.
How do you actually hire the right people? Iain simply says you have to sell them on your vision. If you don’t know what’s going on, how do you expect to get people on board.
Hire the people who have “been there, haven’t done that”. The people who have been number 2, who worked for their boss and always thought they could do it better or differently, the people who’d love to take on the responsibility.
These are the people who will make your company.
Don’t be fooled, building a team is difficult and hard. I’m trying to do it with our latest startup and I believe it is the most important thing to get right.
6. Expect Uncertainty
I kinda missed out on this one, distracted by the twitter stream no doubt but here’s a picture of a sign post:
7. Integrity
Plain and simple, but you have to treat your staff, advisors, investors with the upmost respect (you know “Do onto others..” etc).
Pay your bills on time including your taxes and wages. It’s hard to do but Iain recommends doing it right because it will pay off in the end.
8. Work, Very, Very Hard
When you make the choice of starting a company, you have made the decision that requires sacrifices.
Iain stressed that you must prepare yourself mentally. The long days and nights behind your desk, 4hr sleeps, lunches on the go, meetings and meetings, elevator pitches to everyone you speak to…it all takes it’s tole on you. By preparing for it you can pace yourself so you don’t burn out.
Iain also notes that the sacrifices will delivers huge personal gratification, and from a personal point of view, I would not be doing anything different that what I’m doing right now.
9. Get a Good Wife/Husband/Partner
In the life of an entreprenuer, Iain comments that you really need the support of your partner. They need to understand what you are doing and what you trying to achieve with your company. Yes it will be tough and strenuous at times, but try to make it up by simply being in charge of cooking sometime during the week, or by promising that you will make it up after a certain project has ended.
I’ll go as far as saying that you also need to have the support of your family and friends.
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Iain’s final point was one that he spent the most time talking about. He says it is the fundamental and absolutely important decision that can be made for your new company…
10. Start!
Get yourself your business cards. Put the logo on it. It’s official - this is my company and this is what I’m doing. Once you put yourself out there and do that, everything changes.
People will respect you for it and you have made a decision that will change your life, for the good.
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Another few points worth mentioning during the Q/A, Iain made a differentiation between investors and backers: noting that backers are primarily those who support your long term vision.
When asked how Skillpages get their users, Iain highlight 4 key steps: SEO, PR, Paid Activity (such as advertising in a new city etc) but most importantly, viral activity. Ask yourself, in particular if you are an online company, what are the viral points within your site, and why would someone share this content with a friend. By enabling this feature, you will be able to increase traffic and sales.
Iain added that the way they primarily get new users, is that they’ve created a value for the customer. Just think about that for a moment…are you creating real value for your customer? If so, then of course they would suggest it to a friend. Now harness that within your own site.
Finally, Chris asked a question on how Skillpages differentiated themselves to competition in the market place including the likes of LinkedIn. Iain responded to say that the competition is not the problem, you just have to be better that the competition!
You can find Iain on Skillpages here: http://www.skillpages.com/imd
Getting your writing done, fast!
A couple of months ago, I discovered the website, Copyblogger Media. The site is all focused on how to generate more traffic, inbound links, subscribers, paid customers, and how to grow your profile through the content you have on your site.
Without thinking, I signed up for their free 20-part internet marketing course focused on the above that is delivered one by one via email each week. It was free and of course I subscribed cause I was on the learning curve.
They send me different posts each week on different topics but I have to admit, I do not get time to read them often. They’re marked unread in my inbox with the greatest intentions of someday getting to read them. But tonight (it’s funny how these things happen) I managed to open the most recent mail…it was all about being focused when writing and churning out content like blog posts: my biggest problem!
I wasn’t a great student in English class at secondary school, I was more of a sports guy with a tendency to be outdoors as much as I could. In fact, my teacher told me I’d probably fail the honors level course, and that I would be lucky to pass the exam. (I’m happy to report that I not only got my honor, but I wasn’t far down the pack. Take that Sir!)
I really would like to get into writing more. Having working on two internet startup companies, I have learnt so much that I have so much to write about to put down all those lessons I’ve learnt on paper. That was the reason myself and Chris launched this site, we want to get into the habit of actively writing more and more to help inspire others or at least help them learn the key building block as an entrepreneur.
I have todo lists of topics I want to write about the length of my arm, I just find it difficult to just do it! It’s hard after a long day working on your startup to then go ahead and write about lessons learnt that day or from the previous week. But I’m trying!
So: here it is. Read it! Because if it can help you as much as I feel it has opened my eyes or simply helped me focus when I write, you will hopefully get it too!!
By now, you know that content marketing is the new advertising.
Your readers - and those beloved search engines - highly reward those sites that consistently deliver authoritative content that is focused on a topic, industry, niche, or idea.
What does this *really* mean? You’ve got to write. A lot.
Sure, there’s other ways to deliver the goods - audio, video, infographic design, etc. But ultimately, the writer runs this show. And, writing - whether in outline, script, or long form - is what underpins all other categories of media.
Writing is the cornerstone skill of all great content creation. So, when it comes to building your business on the Internet, you’re going to be spending a good amount of your time at the keyboard.
Here’s a stripped-down system for getting your writing done, fast:
1. Know what you’re talking about
Obvious, right? If you’re going to write authoritatively about anything, you’ve got to put in your time. You’ve got to read relentlessly on your subject.
Study, research, painstakingly try to understand the movements and theories and motivations *behind* your product, service, and industry.
Stay current on, or ahead of, the news. Get to know the players involved.
This step (which, by the way, is an ongoing process) eliminates the dreaded moments of staring out the window for ideas. Research *is* writing.
2. Outline every time
If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you ever get there? Don’t ever start blindly typing your essay, article, or blog post without a map.
First, think through what it is you actually want to communicate. Then, write down the skeleton of the thing. Major points, subheads, title.
A simple outline takes the guesswork - and in many ways, the *actual* work - out of the picture.
Give yourself a paved road to walk down, and then walk down that road, simply putting one foot in front of the other.
3. The secret lies in 30 minutes
I stole this technique from Eugene Schwartz, and it is the single most powerful practice for getting words on a page I’ve ever used.
Get a kitchen timer. Or, use the one on your smartphone. Sit down at your desk with your notes, research, outline, and coffee. Set that timer for 30 minutes and punch the “start” button.
*DO NOT* get up from your desk until 30 minutes passes and the buzzer goes off.
Here’s the trick: don’t try to write. Don’t stress about it.
After a few minutes of sitting there, staring at the page, your cat, out the window, whatever, you’ll get so *bored* that you’ll begin to write.
When the 30 minutes is up, go do something else for a while. Then, come back for another 30 minutes of not trying. If you get six or seven of these sessions in during a day, you’ll be so far ahead of the game, you’ll wonder why you ever struggled to write in the first place.
4. Write a lot
It is an immutable law of the universe. The more you do it, the more you’ll do it. It may not get easier, but eventually you will become a writer. And that, my friends, can change your life and your business.
Robert Bruce and his team at CopyBlogger have three great products on offer for everyone to use. They are StudioPress for design, Scribe for SEO (made awesomely simple) and Premise for conversion. Check them out now!
The Colours of the Web
I think it’s fair to say that colours are fascinating. Colours can change how we think, how we feel, how we interact with others. They can be described as light or dark, busy or calming. On the mention of a colour, it will strike a feeling and thought for you. Red!….you’re thinking about a stop sign yea? Or perhaps the feeling of caution, yea?
I don’t know much about colours really. I mean, if you were to show me a design, I can tell you if it looks good or not. I can tell you how it makes me feel or what emotions it would cause me to feel. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what colours could potentially match together though, or what colours would fit to a certain industry.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of colour online. For instance, have you ever thought about how some of the most dominant leaders in a market have an associated blue colour branding. For social media, it’s Facebook and Twitter. For blogging platforms, it’s Wordpress and Tumblr. For communication, it’s Sykpe. For search, it’s Google (blue appears in two letters). For financial services, it’s PayPal.
(Take offline markets too like the airline industry and we take note of the leaders such as American Airlines and Ryanair. I’m actually sitting on an American Airlines flight to Chicago as I write this and the staff are dressed in blue, the seats, walls, floors…it’s all blue.)
Something has to be said to the use of certain colours, and in particular the colour blue for successful companies.
Did you know that Google invested in the research of A/B testing the most effective use of their colour blue? It’s clear that Google value their brand and they looked for the right tone quality, border shading width etc that would support their brand and one that was going to appeal to everyone all over the world.
If you’re starting a company and you’re beginning to think about the design of your logo and how your company looks to your audience, have a think about these things:
- What is the colour of your industry?
- What emotions do you want your audience to feel?
- What colours are used in your competitors branding, and do you think it works?
- Do you personally like the colours?
Then once you’ve answered these, talk to a designer about it. Designers will know exactly what works and…be prepared to listen.
What do you think of the colour blue? Are successful companies blue orientated?
UPDATE: just spotted this read and infographic http://www.colourlovers.com/business/blog/2010/09/15/the-most-powerful-colors-in-the-world, probably where Google found me the image!
Earlier this week, myself and Chris had to put together an informal 1 minute video for an application to one of the most famous startup incubators in the world. Although we did manage to get there in the end, we captured some bloopers along the way.
Sometimes you can’t fight the giggles :)
Cash Flow can win you the Champions League
In life, money isn’t everything, but in a start-up, it is. Many entrepreneurs, investors and business analysts have written and talked extensively about this topic and, having developed our first business to the point it is now, only now can I truly appreciate why.
Tracy Eden, National Marketing Director for Commercial Finance Group recently summed up the importance of cash flow in a blog post back in May. She said “One of the biggest financial mistakes many small business owners make is focusing too heavily on profitability at the expense of cash flow. There’s an old saying that sums it up well: ‘Profit is Queen, but cash is King’.”
Trying to run a start-up without cash flow is a bit like trying to play the final of the Champion’s League when you aren’t fit enough. It is so integral to the success of a venture, that even if you have the best product or best employees, if you can’t keep the show on the road, there’ll be no show.
Perhaps one of the most exciting things about knock-out competitions like the Champion’s League is the fact that it can go to extra-time or even penalties! When the latter happens, often the winner, who comes out, is simply the team that was physically able to keep going the longest.
Let’s say for example the ball in this football match is your product and that if you use the ball/product well enough to score more than you’re opponents, you’ll win the match. For the purpose of this analogy let’s associate winning the match to selling your company or landing that huge customer.
Now your team all has to work together to score enough goals so that you beat your competitors and ensure you achieve the ultimate goal. One of the problems however, is that this is a final, and you don’t know how long it’s going to take to win this match. It could be 90 minutes it could be 120 minutes or it could even be 120 minutes plus a penalty shoot-out.
As a result of this ambiguity, the management team’s job is to ensure their players have the fitness levels to be able to get to the end of the match whatever the outcome. If they don’t have the fitness then they’ll start to get injured and the team could crumple and miss out on the end goal by the narrowest of margins.
Let’s think of the manager, in this case, as the CFO of the company and, the fitness of the players, as the company’s cash flow. As players and whether you play in attack (sales), midfield (marketing) or in defense (product development), you will be relying on the management team to have given you the adequate training to ensure you have the necessary physical reserves to achieve the goal for the team.
The team that has the reserves to keep going will be in a much better chance to win the match than the team who doesn’t. It’s really as simple as that.
So, if you keep cash flow as your number one priority, it’ll keep your dreams of success still alive.
Trademarks for Startups, what you need to know!
Understanding the area of Intellectual Property (IP) is very important for any new startup. You must understand what IP means, how it can be beneficial to you as a new company, and in particular for the purpose of this post - what a trademark is.
It took me a long while to really get my head around it when I applied for my first trademark, and to be honest I’m still not fully certain. But, I can assure you, if you start to engage with trademark attorneys, they have a huge fee, and they won’t educate you on this topic, so I recommend trying to figure it out on your own first.
So a very obvious start, but what is a trademark? - in short: a legal entity to identify a product/service.
Businesses, groups and individuals use trademarks, logos and symbols to generate brand awareness in public forums, in order to make it easier for people to recognise a product, business or individual by simply associating them with their trademark.
The most successful logos are best described as being ones where the actual sign doesn’t even need to be specifically noticed, because when people see a product they will instantly associate that product with their trademark or symbol within their own minds.
Trademarks have in fact made life a bit easier to live as they can be used to crossover language barriers, just by simply showing the trademark and/or symbol to an individual in order to locate a place, group or business in different countries.
http://bizcovering.com/marketing-and-advertising/the-worlds-most-recognizable-symbols-and-trademarks/
I’m sure you can relate to some of the world’s most recognizable trademarks above…right?
There are loads of different forms of trademarks, from logos to text, and from shapes to slogans. I’ll throw in an interesting fact here sure: the roar of a Harley Davidson engine is trademarked (See article from the Wall Street Journal 1995)! No other engine can sound like a Harvey as it is a identifiable asset to the brand. Impressive and legal!
“Identical or confusingly similar”
One fundamental aspect to grasp, is that this form of IP is only granted if your text/logo/etc is in no way identical or confusingly similar to other trademarks in the market (i.e. if I wanted to trademark Macs Fastfood with a big yellow ‘M’ as the branding logo, and “You’ll love it” as the slogan - I don’t think I would have much success!!).
Applying for a trademark - the filing date is so important!
When you apply for a trademark, the legal reference date is the date of filing, and you receive 6 months of international rights based on that filing date. This is confusing, but for example - if I file for a new trademark today, I may not hear any word back from the patents office for say 7 months (generally it’s 3 months), and I won’t know if it’s positive or negative news. But in the meantime I can apply for international trademarks (UK etc) up to 6 months, and base it on that initial filing date for the Irish application. It’s a chance you’ll just have to take. There is a legal play going on here I believe, whereby I can ‘trump’ another companies filing date in another market as long as there application doesn’t trump mine from a previous application in another international recognised state.
What is the difference between a trademark (™) and a registered mark (®)?
When you submit your trademark (and following the initial approval of fees paid etc) you can officially start using the ™ symbol. This states that you have applied for the trademark, and your name will be associated with the papers. It does not mean that you have been granted the legal mark.
A registered mark is the officially stamp of approval to say that the mark is in fact a legally identifiable association with your brand. You own the rights to this and if anyone begins to use that mark, within the state(s) defined on the application, they can be fined and face legal prosecution.
The process from trademark to registered mark can last anywhere from 4 to 6 months, and possibly more depending on any objections to the mark.
Where do I start?
Here’s where you should look you want to get trademark for Ireland (http://www.patentsoffice.ie/) or UK (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/).
but…have you heard of the Madrid Protocol?!
You should also familiarise yourself with the Madrid Protocol (http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/trademark_madrid.aspx). Basically, instead of paying for two trademarks, one in IRE and one in UK for example - you can get a trademark in all 86+ recognised states via one application form and at one price (it may be more expensive but could work out a lot cheaper in the end). Again, if you just file for an IRE trademark, you have 6 months preference on the Madrid Protocol too.
Remember: a startup can trademark a sound, text, logo etc…and it all adds your company’s assets…and I’m talking about the investable type. This is what investors will look for when inspecting your company. It is the arsenal of your startup; protect it, build it up and use it to further your success!
Let me know and if you have a question about trademarks that wasn’t answered here, let me know and I can try to help, or find someone who can.
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