Kyle
If you haven’t heard about the JustDecide/Nibletz Startup Dilemma Of The Week then you’ve been missing out on a great feature here at nibletz.com. Every week we partner with crowd sourced decision making platform justdecide.com to help one chosen startup handle an actual real life dilemma that they are going through in the startup process.
There are definitely some great advantages for startup founders in participating in this free feature that takes less than a minute to contribute.
– The founder of the featured dilemma’s startup gets great feedback from members of the startup community
– Members of the startup community get to contribute to a crowdsourced answer from like-minded individuals
– Founders who weigh in on the dilemma may actually be going through the same or similar problem that they can use the same advice for.
This week’s dilemma comes from our good friend Ryan Gambrill the founder of FounderSync in Cleveland Ohio. Fourdersync is a great way for startup founders to get involved and meet other founders whether it be technical founders, biz dev people or other entrepreneurs. From there you can network with great people who are living the same startup lifestyle you are.
Gambrill’s dilemma is actually about a new startup idea he is working on. He has a dilemma that tons of startup founders face, to patent or not to patent. While Gambrill thinks his idea is great, he’s a realist so he knows that it may not take off. If for some reason, the idea doesn’t take off, than Gambrill would potentially be out thousands of dollars in legal and patent fees.
What makes this tough for Gambrill though is he’s a networking pro, a people person and loves to talk. He’s one of those guys that doesn’t believe in “stealth mode” and as such he needs to protect his idea if it’s going to be out there.
A patent isn’t like a copyright. We all know the “poor man’s copyright” and for songs or published works the process takes under $50 and under 15 minutes. A patent can cost thousands. This patent problem of Gamrbill’s is something we hear about all the time on the “sneaker strapped nationwide startup roadtrip” and unfortunately we’ve seen both sides of the issue.
We’ve seen first hand entrepreneurs who have blown their entire savings on a patent for an idea that totally fizzled. We’ve also seen entrepreneurs who went the non patent route and got screwed by a competitor.
What say you startup community?
Weigh in here at justdecide.com
Checkout Foundersync here, sign up it’s free!
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