Where's the Exit?: Recent Episodes
Stephen Blake
Helping tech entrepreneurs and business leaders leverage their intellectual property and maximise their exit valuation
If you're an IP rich business and looking to secure investment then this episode is loaded with value for you. Sandy is an investor with a lot of experience and was also the other side of the deal when she founded and scaled her own IP rich business from a university spin-out - a business that is still going strong today.
Among other things, we cover:
- How to access Mercia, whether through their website applications process or getting live feedback over the phone through the hugely popular 'Meet the Funder' program
- What VCs are looking for in terms of IP
- How important IP is in different sectors
- How important are intangible assets in software businesses?
- How clued up are investors when it comes to IP?
- Should you do some freedom to operate work in preparation for investment?
- The importance of making sure your patents actually cover your products
- The relationship between universities, founders and VCs and how it can go wrong
- How getting your IP in good shape has a big impact on your credibility with VCs
A must listen if you're looking to gain investment.
Sandy can be reached through LinkedIn and you can access Mercia through their website.
If you'd like support on getting your IP ready for investment then get in touch with me by email.
In this episode I discuss the landscape of UK government funded advice and support for tech SMEs with Jane Galsworthy. It's a complicated world but Jane has been around it for a long time and understands it better than anyone. She has designed support programs for business and helped shape national policy - always providing insightful comment on LinkedIn.
We talk about what good should look like for government support and identify 3 key areas
- Good business and strategic planning
- Help with innovating and bringing ideas to market
- Access to finance
We talk through each of these and set out how businesses can access the support as startups and scale-ups.
If you have any questions or would like to get in touch with Jane then her Linkedin profile is below, along with the URL for Oxford Innovation Advice.
https://oxfordinnovationadvice.co.uk/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/janegalsworthy/
Matt Sammon has a heap of experience advising all sorts of clients about effective protection and enforcement of their trademarks. In this episode of "Where's the exit?" Matt takes us through everything that a tech business needs to consider from before launch, right up to a more mature trademark strategy that prepares your business for exit. What does it make sense to do and what can you safely leave till later.
Main points
- Trademarks are as much about making sure you can use your brands as it is about stopping others
- Get advice early, while you're naming your business to make sure that the name is free to use
- Register your company name at least and then discuss what you need for the next few years - it's probably not a lot
- You might well be able to delay filing in other countries
- As you grow, stay in touch with your trademark attorney to make sure you still have the right approach as the business changes
- Watch what others are filing in other countries
You can learn more about Matt on his LinkedIn profile and the webiste of his business, Sonder & Clay - both links below
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattsammon/?originalSubdomain=uk
https://www.sonderandclay.com/
R&D Tax Credits is one of those things that a lot of businesses think they have sorted, but they actually don't. And Patent Box seems never to have taken off and provided the benefits it was supposed to for all but a few businesses.
As a tech SME you need to get proper advice to submit the most effective claims in both of these areas, but there are some things that you need to know as the leader of the business so that you make sure you're managing things well. Angela takes us through that.
For R&D Tax Credits the view of HMRC is evolving all the time and businesses need to keep on top of the situation
- What is R&D and are you actually doing it?
- What should a new start-up do to put themselves in the best position to make their first claims?
- Grant funding will mean you can't make an R&D Tax Credit claim?
- Will my client contracts mean I can't make a claim?
- R&D calcs need to be reviewed periodically to make sure you're adapting to HMRC evolution
Patent Box is much more of a 'minority sport'
- You need to be profitable to claim it
- How will my company structure affect my claim?
- It works for a few, but it's not broadly applicable
Professor David Park is Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation within the University of Nottingham's Business School where he lectures and mentors in entrepreneurship, IP commercialisation and innovation. He has first-hand experience raising start-up funds, growing effective, multi-disciplinary teams, and completing £multi-million licensing deals with a FTSE100 plc.
In this episode of "Where's the exit?" David talks to Stephen about what he's learned during his time starting and running his own businesses, his experiences of raising capital based on an IP position and how he went about securing a licensing deal based on patents.
Whether it's trade secrets, patents, NDAs, trademarks, designs, agreements, know-how, data or anything else, intangible assets and the IP that they give rise to are very broad and cover all departments of your business. Getting a handle on all these different assets and managing them centrally cannot be done without some sort of register.
Donal O'Connell was previously VP of IPR at Nokia and now runs his own IP firm that provides one such register specifically aimed at the SME market. In this episode, Donal discusses the breadth of intangible assets and why your business needs to log them so that they can be managed effectively and risks to your business can be offset. As Donal says, "you can't do this on the back of a cigarette packet."
Among other things, we talk through
- What is an intangible asset?
- What risks are you exposed to if you don't manage intangible assets properly?
- What are the benefits of managing intangible assets properly?
- Why using specifically designed software trumps using a spreadsheet
- What to do to get started
Will Chelton has been an in-house IP attorney for over a decade and worked in large tech businesses that are household names and file thousands of patents. More recently he was Chief Legal Officer at a large blockchain business in central London. We get Will's perspective on some of the things tech businesses can do themselves to get a better handle on their IP and manage it effectively.