How many startup ideas have you come up with during the last month? Too many to count? Me too (and I just bought domain names for all of them). As entrepreneurs, we see inefficiencies in the marketplace, and identify key ways to bring more value to the end consumer. With this mentality, every industry is ripe for disruption. The opportunities are endless. Fueling our desire even more is the publicity and praise that comes with success. The entrepreneur has officially taken the place of the rockstar!
But . . . not so fast. Before you will be featured on the front of Inc. Magazine, you need to make sure you do your due-diligence. This is why we caught up with Mary Juetten, the Founder & CEO of Traklight. Her mission is to help entrepreneurs identify and protect their intellectual property (IP). Examples of IP in the real world can include business processes, knowledge, services, brands, inventions, recipes, customer and supplier lists, creative works, etc.
Mary has seen the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to business practices. Her own brother lost a company due to a poor shareholder buy-sell agreement. While in law school she watched countless entrepreneurs struggle with building the right legal foundation for their company, and she even found a company infringing on another brand with their own website, logo, and product packaging. To sum it up: Ignorance isn’t bliss. It’s failure.
When asked if she could describe Traklight in one sentence, Mary told us that, “Traklight’s SaaS platform is an affordable GPS to business owners to navigate risk and maximize their company’s value and also creates revenue for our partners who are needed to address those risks.” In essence, Traklight will find the areas of weakness that your business has concerning brand, legal and IP protection. From there, they will match you with a service provider to help you rectify those issues. A dating site if you will . . . except with less creepy pictures, and more legal jargon.
After raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, and doubling revenues year-over-year, time management has become incredibly important for the Traklight Team (the cool kids call them Trackers). We wanted to see if Mary would give us a run down on her day, and how she stays focused. This is what we got: Early to bed, early to rise. No cell phone before coffee (unless husband is traveling). Print out daily schedule from Gmail (old school style). Gather stuff for the day. Take first pass at the email inbox. Ready anything from Seth Godin, Mark Suster, or Brad Feld. Check up on the Twitter and the Facebook. Never watch the news. Afternoon workout. Post-it notes and To-Do lists galore.
Intellectual property protection isn’t necessarily the first thing on the mind of an entrepreneur. But, unfortunately, it could be the last thing on someone’s mind when they get hit with major legal issues and imminent failure. Could Traklight be the savior of all our legal woes? We’ll let you be the judge. Inspired by TurboTax.com, the Trackers wanted to create a website experience that was so easy to use, you could be clueless (just as you are with your taxes for this year), and still get the job done. Put your IP protection to the test, and let us know on Twitter @StarterNoise if you received a #Pass or a #Fail. www.traklight.com
#Onwards – The life motto of Mary Juetten, Founder & CEO of Traklight
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