Chapter 8: Protecting Your Turf: Protecting Your Turf
Your intellectual property (IP) is the crown jewel in your start-up business. IP decides how you are different and better than everyone else out there. Therefore, I would encourage you to spend lots of time daydreaming your IP, to make it unique and valuable. Your IP is the foundation for success as a daydreaming entrepreneur.
By the same token, you need to put in every effort to make sure your IP is protected from your competitors or the wrong hands out there. Yet at the same time, maintain some common sense around it.
Many people think that IP protection is simply just registering a trademark or a patenting your processes.
But the truth is that it goes beyond that.
In this chapter, I will share some of the less-known ways from my personal experiences that you can protect your IP and make sure that it helps your business to grow for many years to come.
Your IP
It is the core of your business and you need to get clear about what is your true IP. Often it may not be what you think it is, and you could spend your resources protecting the wrong thing.
Let me use a good example, which is this book.
This book, at completion, will be over 150 pages of practical information. It is copyrighted and protected by copyright laws. One would think the IP is in the content and writing within these pages. But in reality, the true IP does not lie in the value of the ideas contained in this book.
People somewhere in another part of this world could well copy every single page of this book, translate it and have it sold in bookstores in some rural areas. It would be impossible for me to legally find a way to sue them for loss revenue and copyright infringement.
So the true value does not really lie in the content of the book.
When I first started writing this book, I wanted to put my insights and learnings from my life into this one book. I didn’t want to create yet another book about entrepreneurship; because there are thousands of books about entrepreneurship already in existence.
I didn’t want it to be just another guide, framework, method or model for entrepreneurship either because there are already so many out there. The market doesn’t need another one to add to the noise from a certain guy named Viktor Cheng!
I spent some time asking more questions and drilling down, by spending time daydreaming. I thought, “Maybe my practical experience from about 30 years of entrepreneurship should make my book unique.” But even then just my practical and unique experience is not going to be sufficient in terms of delivering unique and differentiated value to my readers. The bottom line is that there are still hundreds of books out there by other successful ‘technopreneurs’ that have been there and done that. So that is not different enough or good enough to have a powerful IP for this project.
So I asked myself, “How else can I differentiate myself with this book?”
Finally I nailed it. I came to the awareness that there are many successful technopreneurs out there, but not all of them are daydreamers. My unique style of entrepreneurship is based on my daydreams, dreaming out possibilities and then being able to convert my daydreams into a real business and grow it.
Going further down this line of thought, I asked myself, “Who daydreams the most?”
Well apart from young children, I figured that young people who are college leavers daydream the most; young people who are just embarking on their careers have dreams about how things can be, how they would like things to turn out in their lives;
young people who have not lost their ability to dream, that ability which is often drowned by the ‘busyness’ and realities of working in a 9-6 corporate job. They haven’t lost their ability to dream because they don’t have the burden of a mortgage or car loan hanging over their heads. They still have the freedom and the ability to imagine what they would like to create in their lifetime. Most importantly, they can believe in their dreams and have the energy to take action to make those dreams a reality.
It was exactly what I was doing at that age. Having the freedom to dream and then, perhaps, the naivety to act on those dreams is the hallmark of great entrepreneurs.
Of course, the downside is that most young daydreamers lack the know-how to create a real business with their daydreams. While full of creative energy, many lack the wisdom, practicality and experience needed to materialise their dreams.
That’s where this book comes in, that I would create the content around these people and connect with them. That is the purpose of this book, to connect to daydreamers who want to materialise their dreams of entrepreneurship.
But this in itself is not sufficient to create a powerful IP that can make this project successful. So I decided to take this a step further, because a truly powerful IP is actionable and has practical usage and hence value for the customer (in this case, you, as a reader of this book).
So I thought of a creating self-assessment for daydreamers who want to be entrepreneurs. Here’s what I feel is exciting, that as a reader, you can score and measure yourself as you go along the journey from a daydreamer to an entrepreneur. At the end of the day, my goal for you is that this book is merely the start of a journey. I would hate for you to simply read this book, feel good that you acquired some knowledge and walk away the next day, with no practical value gained.
That is not my intent, because if that happens, it defeats the whole purpose of your investment of time and money into this book. It will also defeat the whole mission of writing this book.
That’s why I am keen to set up this self-assessment quiz for anyone who has read this book. In addition, I am willing to personally comment and provide personalised advice to any reader who takes a few minutes to fill out this assessment and uploads their profile onto my website community. This will provide you with some good pointers that will help you move from just being a daydreamer to someone who realises his or her dreams.
Of course this is not compulsory in any way, but for those people who would like to know if they are really ‘cut out’ for being a daydreaming entrepreneur and what should be their next step, this could be an invaluable resource for you.
The great thing about this is that you can come back and re-do the assessment over the years and measure yourself to your previous self, to see if you are moving forward in becoming a good entrepreneur and what you need work on.
Going back to this IP thing, the true IP here for me becomes the community I am building with this book. I will aim to provide good valuable content to the community and foster communication with the community, so that community members get to hang out with like-minded people.
Therefore, the real valuable asset that I am building for this project is the community; the book is just one of the cornerstones that I am using to build it.
At this stage, this project is not about making money, it is about me wanting to give back and contribute to young entrepreneurs who can impact and change the world for the better with technology. The book is free and you can also distribute it freely.
That said, this is a good example to illustrate how you can drill down and discover what the true IP in your project is. It’s like peeling off layers of an onion until you can find the fundamental need that your project is fulfilling, which is the same need that I had 30 years ago…when I considered taking my daydreams and making them into businesses.
By drilling down to the fundamental need, you can really make your project unique, different and contribute value to its customers and stakeholders in its own very special way.
To drill down to find your true IP requires time and thinking. Ask the question, “What can I do to make my IP more valuable to my market?” Remember, it may not always be the first thing that comes to mind; invest the time to uncover more ideas and to create a more valuable IP.
Protecting your IP
Once you have identified what is your true IP is, you can then go about and see how you can truly protect your IP. Because if you don’t clearly identify your true IP, you wouldn’t really know what you should be protecting in the first place!
In this case, I am building a community of people who are firstly daydreamers, then secondly entrepreneurs. So how do I protect this IP of mine, which is the community? It is really simple in this case - I believe that by stimulating interactions between community members themselves and with me as the community facilitator, this will be the key to sustainability of the community.
In addition, the relationships and content that is generated within the community will become increasingly valuable for community members. This eventually leads to a vibrant community that members keep returning to as a valuable resource and for support.
Hence my strategy to protect my IP in this case is to ensure that relationships are built, that I provide good content and advice, and that the mechanisms and tools are in place to make it a vibrant and interactive community.
The traditional ways of protecting IP in this project does not apply. Apart from perhaps the trademark and brand of the community, there is nothing legally to protect it, such as patents or contracts.
I hope you get the lesson here; once you have clearly identified your true IP, the key is to devise the right strategy in order to preserve your IP. In this case, the only way to actually protect the IP for this project is to make sure that the community is vibrant and that it flourishes. Using other forms of legal protection will be quite fruitless.
In other businesses I have previously owned, there has been the need to protect the IP in different ways. For example, in some cases the source codes may be highly confidential and encrypted with the latest security measures to avoid anyone stealing our precious code. In such cases, without the code, there would be no business.
A good example is a group that I am currently working with to develop a new method to keep the temperature of computer server farms cool with a new technology. In this case, they are spending $1M just to develop an algorithm that supports their theory. If this algorithm does indeed support their theory then they would need to keep this algorithm under lock and key.
Yet in other cases, like with SCS, and my first business venture while still in college that created an inventory and labelling system for doctor clinics, the products I developed were best protected by having a first mover advantage. We got as many clients as possible in the markets we were operating in in the shortest possible time.
The strategy here was being the first mover. Then we created improvements as we grew so that ‘me-too’ competitors were always left chasing our tails. Being the first mover doesn’t mean you can simply launch your product and then rest on your laurels. The key to a winning first mover strategy in the IT industry is that you need to keep on innovating and improving so your competitors will find it very hard to catch up with you.
In reality, there is no ‘one size fits all’ strategy to protect your IP. You need to play it by ear and identify the best strategy for your unique business case.
To Protect or Not to Protect
My philosophy about IP protection is that sometimes it is better ‘not to protect’. Like in the case where we were so concerned about getting sued by Google, by trying to protect ourselves, we let go a big opportunity and missed the gravy train in a big way.
There are a lot of people out there that advocate the need to protect your IP through patents and so on. Let me tell you, that process is expensive and will take you a lot of time. The other downside to that is that your IP is now available for all to see. What is to stop someone from copying it and tweaking it, then commercialising it somewhere in another territory?
Even if you were aware about it, are you really going to spend the money as a start-up to go and start a lawsuit against that company in territory? To be honest, I believe unless you are doing something that is fundamental science, I would not bother with patents.
A more sustainable way is to let the world protect your IP for you. What do I mean by this?
If you create your project in a sustainable fashion, that will actually help everybody and your customers, and they will defend it for you.
People will rather join you than to create alternatives. Create real value.
Those who survive are those who win the hearts of those who need your product. They will continue to stay with you.
Most great companies in the world protect their IP in this way, by building deep relationships with their market through their brand and value, rather than through legal means.
For instance, I’m not fond of NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). I mean, if you think a piece of information or idea is really your crown jewel, then you should never reveal that in full to other people anyway.
If you are willing to say it then you should be prepared that people may copy what you have and take it further.
The fact is you can’t stop someone from evolving an idea in their head once you have let it out. So if you want to avoid that from happening then don’t say it. Just do it and get the first mover advantage.
Please note that I’m not talking here about people copying your source code, I’m talking about protecting your IP and ideas. For software and code, of course you will need to undergo the necessary legal protection such as copyrights and, more importantly perhaps, keeping it a trade secret.
Now here’s an interesting thought for you; Ideas gets better when they get kicked around. Usually when I start with an idea it is very raw and not very clear. It is very general. However, as I talk to other people and ponder about it, my idea becomes sharper by having others’ input.
Take this book for example, which started off as a project to document my life and experiences. As I worked with my editor, we talked for months - and as we were constantly thinking about the various topics and information in this book, one day the idea of building a community of daydreamers just came about. The idea for the community certainly did not exist at the start of this book project.
Every time I am asked a question, it forces me to think through things. If I kept this book project idea to myself and never spoke to anyone about it, then this portal for daydreamers would never have come to fruition. Of course, there is the concern that my writer could take this idea and run away with it.
If he did, then that’s life and obviously there is nothing much I could do to stop him! But in this case since it is a not-for-profit project, the chances of that occurring are very low, I would hope! So in that sense I guess it is a calculated risk. I figured what better way to create an innovative IT start-up than to use this book as a real life demonstration?
This book has now evolved as an idea; we now have a book that embodies all the points we have talked about, and converted it into a real-life project. I don’t think there’s any book yet that has demonstrated ‘daydreaming entrepreneurship’ as a living application! This distinction further makes this book unique from everything else out there.
This has now become a live start-up project that aims to serve those daydreamers out there who are considering starting up a business to get advice, nurturing and build contacts.
In Conclusion
Firstly, remember to spend time uncovering what the ‘True IP’ for your business is. Spend time bouncing around the idea with your team and advisors to discover if this is truly valuable and unique for your market. Once you have this, dream up ways you can protect your IP, whether it is through a first-mover advantage, an online community, legal means or other ways.