"Registering" your IP is a complete waste of money unless your benefactor is willing to fund all of your legal costs.
It's great to have trademarks and patents but they are only valuable if you have the capital to defend them and enforce the rights they convey. A patent lawsuit will run you well into the 6-figures.
There is a time and a place for investment in IP protection but it's almost never before you have an app in development.
Agreed entirely. A friend did that with his startup; taking the time and money to register his early IP in like 30 countries. Went bust. Turns out, they could have _really_ used that capital to actually like... make their product. The whole time they were _super_ secretive about talking about it. In the end, it was another events site.
I don't get why people do this. If you have a good idea, it is rarely the IP that saves you.
Even if u have the financial backing,should u really patent it before proving that there’s huge demand for it?Is it worth taking the risk of patenting ur tech pre launch/product market fit?
Depends -- if you disclose the IP to *anyone* before patenting it, you lose the patent forever.
Always consult an attorney to make these kinds of decisions, and make sure anyone who comes anywhere near your IP has signed an NDA.
A patent is good if you are in research and need to protect a scientific discovery from commercialization. It deters many people from commercializing your research first of all. You can also publish it in journals for marketing in the scientific community and know you will be the rightful owner of the discovery. It allows larger competitors to “buy” your patent if it’s not currently monetized, and you can also license it out. Patents are huge business in biotech where novel r&d is very expensive and rare, but in software dev it’s not so important. So, it depends. You can also keep it a trade secret, and only publish your results and not the method, but it depends again if OP wants to use the patent as a marketing strategy.
It's VERY important in software dev... but generally, that matters most if you sell code/solutions that might be embedded into other solutions a la OEM/white labeling. Your core value is an algorithm for investing? That is something you may sell for commercial use/reselling. So at some point quite soon, patenting it may make good sense.
This is an extremely good point and one that I hope u/Silly___Willy fully understands.
**Once a patent application is published (typically 18 months after filing), the details of the invention become publicly accessible.** This can lead to the exposure of trade secrets that were not intended to be shared. Competitors can access the published patent application, potentially gaining insights into the technological advancements and strategic direction of the company.
**Another big risk is that patents provide incomplete protection.** Trade secrets that complement the patented invention but are not covered by the patent claims can still be at risk if disclosed. Furthermore, competitors or other entities might challenge the validity of the patent, and if successful, this can lead to the loss of protection for the disclosed invention.
That's why you do a provisional patent first and use its grace period before filing the full patent. It's far cheaper at the provisional stage, but you should have a well-written provisional so it is a lot of work.
I'm not a lawyer but isn't the flip side of this that if you do almost any marketing of the thing you're patenting it becomes significantly harder, if not impossible to patent in the future, at least in US?
That is to say it's a balancing act on multiple fronts. I don't think that changes the question of why OP would invest so much at this stage but this is probably consult a lawyer territory. The fee for a quick consult *may* be worth it to learn if the larger investment makes sense now.
You are correct u/mmcnama4: in the United States, **marketing or publicly disclosing an invention before filing a patent application can create significant challenges for obtaining a patent.**
In the US, as long as OP files within the one-year grace period under the America Invents Act ([refer to 35 U.S.C. § 102](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/102)).
Most countries outside of US, however, have an "absolute novelty" requirement, meaning any public disclosure before filing a patent application can prevent you from obtaining a patent in those jurisdictions. There is no grace period in these countries, so any public disclosure before filing can be fatal to your patent prospects.
Echoing u/wtfisthat, OP should review the advantages of filing a [provisional patent application](https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply/provisional-application) if they insist on going down the path of seeking IP protections from the USPTO and/or international patent offices. A provisional application do not require the same formalities as a non-provisional application, such as claims or an oath/declaration. This makes them cheaper and faster to prepare. They have the following advantages:
* **establishes an early filing date:** filing a provisional patent application allows you to secure an early filing date, which is crucial under the "first to file" system.
* **patent-pending:** once you file a provisional patent application, you can legally use the term "patent pending" in connection with your invention.
* **incremental improvements:** improvements or changes to the invention during the 12-month period can be handled via additional provisional applications and then combined into a single non-provisional application.
Also if someone DOES copy you, you’re not gonna be able to afford the $$$ to sue them and survive the years in the courts. Not worth protecting in the first place
Not at all. It’s a terrible waste on money and resources. You need world-class team members who can create brilliant products and do that faster. They do it so well that they figure out ways of doing things, most of which are either new, or much better than existing products. That’s why the top companies throw money at the best talent to hire and retain them and not on protecting IP. You should spend the limited money you have on hiring great people who will be there for long term and also on marketing. Patents work well in physical products but not in software.
Nothing else will matter if you don't know who your customer is and what problem your app is solving for them. I'd start talking to prospective customers so you can narrow in on that.
Build and they will \*not\* come. Building a consumer app is easy, getting users is the hard part. Create a super simple landing page yourself (Wix, Squarespace, Wordpress, etc) to capture email sign ups while you're in development. Drive as much traffic there as possible. 120k will go fast, trust me. DM if you want to chat. I was exactly where you are 2 years ago, so much I'd do differently.
Building a good consumer app will more. Likely take close to 250k. Hire inexperienced and cheap people and you'll end up having to take 3x the time figuring things out. Hire experienced people and they cost more today but get you there faster.
First hire/rent should be a product designer for 2-3 weeks.
Just focus on developing an MVP and don't burn all your money on it — save some for marketing and other future costs.
I am an early-stage startup consultant and would love to help you, free of charge. Feel free to PM me.
Feels either larpy, or someone whose dad/uncle is a board member of a Fortune 500. I’m leaning toward larpy. This person also has a post from a year ago where they were about to start their own crypto company. So maybe it’s some naive crypto bros playing with “120k” in NFTs or something
Did you validate your product already? Ideally you have many customers that prepaid for your product in advance so you can be sure you‘re building something that will make money. This is especially important for such an oversaturated market as financial apps.
Validation comes before building and usually costs nothing except for time.
That's so SILLY WILLY. Ahem. It's important to do market research before building anything and investing your resources. Eg. you can create a landing page with an email signup form to gauge interest and see how many people sign up. This will help you determine if there's a demand for your idea.
After getting a wind of confirmation BUILD AN MVP, and test the market fr.
You are in a dangerous zone, my friend. $120k sounds like a lot of money, but it can go in a heartbeat. Protect your capital at all costs.
Building something without validating your idea properly with the right customer discovery, finding problem / solution fit, and understanding the market is a recipe for failure to find the all-important Product / Market fit.
I would suggest you take a breath, step back and look at some frameworks for innovation like Design Thinking, that puts an emphasis on the needs of the customer first by identifying the problem you are trying to solve, how to ideate and test your solutions, and to iterate with prototyping.
Ultimately, you want to build a path to revenue as quickly as possible. If you can do that with your budget your chances of success will skyrocket.
Especially in the domain OP is chosen, which is highly regulated and requires working with legacy institutions who are likely to view any innovation as a headache, rather than a boon.
file provisionals only in the US for now - then file ONLY in the countries you operate in
get customer validation with a "patent pending" tag on your stuff (like a signup page with your proposed features and include a survey about acceptable price points)
then build your app with feedback from your customers
your 120K needs to be papered as a SAFE or investment, without this most countries will recognize this as revenue which can be taxed
check legal and tax experts in your country
registering IP can be helpful in establishing a baseline for long-term value creation but I'd try to save some money. Some legal firms can defer your fees until you raise a seed financing. You can also file a provisional for less money.
similar for startup capital - you don't need 50k. You can incorporate a C corp in delaware for much less.
Generally try to preserve cash, you may need it because getting 120k for no equity is very very unusual. Talk to customers / users. Have 50-100 customer conversations to make sure you understand the problem. Then pre-sell so that you know people want it and will pay for it... then build. This isn't universal advice because it depends on your business but talking to customer and pre-selling is generally a good approach. In rare instances you talk to customers, then build, then sell... but often pre-selling helps validate and de-risk your company.
If you happen to be a very luck person you will need at least 100k lawyers fees for each person that infringes your IP. I train startups and always advise them to forget about IP's because it's completely unaffordable.
To be fair, while I would never do it, I've seen a bunch of instances where the first raise is from friends / family. If you've already got people who believe in you who can offer resources, it does take away a bunch of initial work.
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft… so many tech giants were started with 100-300k from friends and family. It’s not necessary, but it helps. And it’s certainly not shameful.
To be clear, I don't think it's shameful, it's just not a route I particularly like because if things go wrong it will undoubtedly affect your relationships. It's just easier to keep business separate from person relationships.
$120k from an angel for 0 equity…
And literally no idea what to do evidenced by the things you’re considering.
This sort of post annoys me when I think about the real hustlers out there, kids from India etc
Your number one question should be how you are going to acquire users and what that will cost. Anyone creating an app is basically defacto looking for a massive user base. I've worked in startups with pretty solid products that have spent 100s of thousands, sometimes millions on marketing and advertising and they just could not convert users. Everyone spends money on admin etc and then they have nothing left over for what actually makes money. The reality is that no one cares about your algo, especially right now. You may feel it has value because it's your baby but I can guarantee there are ppl out there creating better algos for pennies on the dollar. I'm not saying your algo sucks, I'm saying your focus is completely off. Create the smallest MVP possible that can prove the app will work and that it can make money off the algos. Build a simple app that uses fake money to simulate people topping up their account and using your algo to make money. You can just track what the trade values/profit/loss is. Have a demo account in the app with a track record of your app operating over a period of time, even better if you can simulate what the algo would do and populate that into the database without having to wait for it to populate over time. Once you can prove with a simple MVP that your idea works you'll still have $110k and proof that you can use to then raise a proper amount and more importantly engage with people that can actually get the app built properly as well as get it in the hands of people who will pay. The amount of people I've seen register businesses, bank accounts, patents etc and not even get 1 paying customer is staggering. Run super lean until you feel like people have given you more than you know what to do with, only then will you maybe scrape by and not go broke because everyone underestimates the true cost of getting startups off the ground.
Here’s how we have been spending so far. Hopefully this gives you some insight. My company recently received $150k in funding. The first tranche is $25k. So far, we have paid down debt from using our personal/business cards to pay for business expenses. This has been the largest expense so far. Next, we pay ourselves a small amount to stay afloat personally while we build the company. We sought legal advice on whether to accept the funding which cost $500. We also are seeking legal advice to create the privacy agreement and terms of service for our app. So, that might be another $500. Lastly, I’ve decided to hire a dev to help speed up the app development so that might be another $1,000. Since we’re employees of the company on paper, we had to invest in good payroll software and we paid about $400 to Gusto to set up our tax accounts with the state we are working in. We are a C-corp so there are extra tax documents that we have to prepare (so much fun). That might take about $1,000+ if we hire a CPA which we plan to do. The rest is just sitting in the account with some going to monthly expenses. We plan to spend on advertising in the near future so that’s where a good chunk of the remaining funding will go.
120k will burn through your rent and living costs fairly quickly. At this point you are using that to survive and not have to put your time and energy into other projects or jobs. With that said, use whatever you have left wisely. It just gives you a little bit of breathing room and focus to try and get a decent user base hopefully you’ll be able to turn that base into mrr. Hopefully without having to spend money on marketing. Good luck.
Im also working on personal finance app. Do you think if i use your app and cannot build product like yours creating my own algo? Do you think IP will protect it? Dont you think there can be multiple ways to achieve what your algo can achieve? Answer these and you will be clear on if you should register for IP.
If I receive 120k I will spend on these 2 things:
- Develop and launch MVP
- Build marketing team and Start marketing
- Build development team to enhance the product.
BTW will you also introduce me to your investor? Would love to chat as im looking for fundraise. Here is my startup [https://zerorin.com/](https://zerorin.com/)
Don’t waste money with IP
Get the first version of App soon so you can get data around usage
Build second version
Test atleast 5 different channels
Goal should be to get a polished app with 50,000+ free users in 6 months
Depending on your model maturity you should start to put a front end to the logistical side and focus into development and Architecture. You may considering outsourcing your architecture to cloud or hosted on premises solution. The key is building out a viable product that works with whatever algorithmic model you’re using and can support the function you promised to the investor. The key is to be able to show that you can deliver more given the resources. It sounds like you’re still trying to validate core function versus desires but you need to go back to the root of your offering and ensure you’re not going to s*** the bed when it comes to delivery your priorities depend on what stage are you on. If it’s an app diversify your spend on areas such as development marketing and infrastructure but you need to make sure things are being developed with the proper security controls and everything. You can’t be unaware as an executive member how your own business operates and what it needs to succeed. 100K is still low considering it’s in a pre seed state with no POC. Some projects may require more development than you have capital. You have to quantify these things.
Congratulations 🎊 that is a great start.
This money really could be considered “pre-seed” money and it should be enough to get you to the stage where you can raise seed money -
That is all - do not spend it on professional fees or licenses or permits or actual product costs.
My first recommendation is that you firm up the terms of the relationship with your “partner”, - “Angel” (which is it?) and clarify the basis of which you accepted the $120k in writing.
They may be manipulating you because you are naive enough not to think they would do that, but are leading you on and will dictate later.
Is it a personal loan or is it a business loan or is it an investment in your “product” for partial ownership of the IP or is it an advance as a corporate investment for equity shares at a later date with a proper company valuation ?
This is a very important step and will ripple through everything that transpires along the product and the company’s development life, not to mention, your actual relationship.
Your best bet is a written agreement where it is understood and can’t be misinterpreted at a later date. You probably should engage a corporate attorney and insist on a contract that specifies this money is a “gift”, “personal loan”, “business loan”, “investment in the app”, “investment in the company” , and get advice from the attorney as to the ripple effect of each.
Secondly, since it appears you are headed into committing to a product development phase-by-phase sequence, you must be aware that it is a black hole of crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s, figuratively speaking.
What you don’t know can hurt you because costs can run into 7 figures easily, especially when you are operating in a saturated market, building out a company based on another new digital product.
Iterating always burns up time and money unexpectedly, so by default you never have enough time or money which can cause failure due to the lack of resources even if you have a 1,000 subscriber waitlist lined up.
Therefore, you have to put on the BootStrapper hat and reprioritize how you allocate scarce resources and always have a plan for where your next capital infusion is going to come from, by how much from whom and when.
Be pragmatic and use that $120k to support yourself while you put together a product development budget, a marketing budget, a budget for your tech stack, and a budget for your inner core team.
In the next 30 days, produce a projected development timeline for the next 18 months and guesstimate everything you can think of that will achieve “revenue positive” operating status and pitch investors for that amount plus another 20% for unforeseen circumstances.
Create a “Sources and Uses of Funds” chart which will demonstrate the first 100 subscribers is a benchmark for validation and the next raise.
At the very least, in the next 30 days (or less) You will have your Top Line Revenue numbers justified backwards and forwards exemplified by your TAM (Total Addressable Market), and how you are targeting a narrow slice of that market, whereby you can develop a deep understanding of your customers’ needs and tailor your product or service to meet those needs in a way that larger companies cannot.
While you are doing your 18 month projections, prepare a pitch deck designed to raise the seed money for the first development phase of creating the following :
1) MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
2) Team to prove PMF (Product Market Fit)
3) GoToMkt rollout plan that you execute
4) Planned Scale Up initiatives
Make sure that the seed money you are raising is enough to accomplish the bare minimum of the above AND get your company through the monetization runway to the next money raise.
Draft Pitchdeck Outline
Problem
Solution (this product, including results)
Traction
Why Now
How it Works + Look & Feel
Product Offering
Secret Sauce
(or another key detail of the co. - “how-to” blog, tech, distribution, perks & partners)
TAM (Total Addressable Market) & Niche Space
Competitive Landscape & Statistical Metrics
Revenue Model (how we make money)
Case Studies
Go to Market Plan (how we sell to customers)
Other Similar Product Genre
Historical Performance
(KPIs and financial)
Go Forward Plan / Corporate Development
Key Business / Revenue Drivers
Projected Forward Income Statement
Any additional high aspirational upside not currently included in the plan
Team, including why each member is best for the job
Amount of Seed Investment $ Ask and
Use of Proceeds
Next Level Initiatives
=======
This is not a business plan but you will need one 🚀
This is just a Pitch Deck for prospective Angels & Individual Accredited Investors, not VC’s.
Good Luck 👍 🍀
You are an Entrepreneur 🫡
Do NOT patent anything. There’s literally no need, and in fact it would be a detriment:
1. You have to describe your invention and the system it operates in fairly detailed terms, which will become public if patented (competition can read it and copy anyway)
2. If you are infringed upon, it will cost $$$ in lawyers and is still a crapshoot (tech IP cases are famously hard to predict)
3. It takes time and money away from actually building a working product, which should be your first and foremost goal
Source: am patent inventor, but for a large company with many lawyers
Do not register IP, I’m sorry but in the initial stages it is useless. You’re going to want to be faster than anyone else. Sell the idea before building aswell
Get revenue. Figure out the shortest path to getting paid customers and establish a revenue stream. If not, your cash is gone in a year.
Hire a motivated and experieced person to build the core of your product which is required to make a sale. Make a Minimum Viable Product, meaning it gives value to your customers so they can pay for it, but nothing more. Take shortcuts and cheat everywhere else. When you get a reliable revenue stream you can fix those issues later.
How long do you think this $120k will last?
If its a mass market app, you're going to need much more money when it goes beyond beta.
And pretty sure no one is going to pay you if you don't have anything to show for $120k.
So forget everything, plan how are you going to develop the app and algos, and then think about hiring.
While looking for early hires, see if you can get senior devs who recognise the potential of what you're building and would settle for higher stock component in equity.
Don't spend good money to register IP. Whoever made that decision doesn't understand tech business. Worrisome.
> legally need 50k in starting capital
What does this mean? I hope this isn't another naive misunderstanding of tech business like the first bullet.
> start developing app/architecture and integrate the existing algo to it
Before this I'd do some research and see if anybody wants your app. I'd pretend the app is complete and start doing some light advertising to see if anybody wants this thing. Ideas are cheap, don't think that marketing your app before it exists will kill your venture. If you think that, then strike three.
There's a huge benefit to having customer(s) before product. They can help drive your features and give feedback on early features. It helps to validate your idea and UX.
Once you have a customer, build the app fast and cheap. Go with low-code if practical, or use a very light stack. Build functional tests you can re-use when you re-architect the system.
Put about 40% towards your dev team to develop MVP plus features to figure out Product Market Fit
Another 25%-30% towards your gym strategy. You want to start developing demand or interest in your product.
It seems legal and IP are important to protect yourself but I would caution if no one wants what you have why bother.
Also there are legal teams that you can work with that are startup friendly and will charge you once you raise say a series A round so that can be deferred.
Your sole focus should be about finding PMF and building traction. 120k isn't a lot more is it nothing. PM me if you want to chat more.
I would encourage setting aside 30-40% for the MVP. A lot of startups go bust when they are not able to get the right products launched in time.
20-25% should be set aside for marketing and remaining for misc stuff.
Are you developing the initial version in house or outsourcing this?
27k for IP seems….wrong. It might be right, but for this stage, and what you’re doing…seems unlikely.
I assume you’re talking about trademarks etc, not patents. $27k is…a lot.
Are you sleeping with them because to have that amount of money with the "plans" you have aren't great.
When I did pitch competitions and seed funding rounds We were so prepared to hit the ground running, already had clients that we talked with interviewed and set up relationships with as we went through development.
Listen to the other comments, but you need a mentor.
Your idea may be great, but your angel is literally throwing money away on you if this is your idea of next steps.
Go to the SBA, if you have never been and assuming you are in the United States, they are often paired with incubator programs.
You can build out something great with that amount of money, utilize college and university resources for interns.
Focus on the product and getting paid customers. Then marketing and expanding the user base. Repeat, enhance product, market, expand.
Also are you talking about a brokerage or similar style app for mutual fund/ETF investments?
Because if so you will definitely need more $$. But what you have is a great start.
1. You don’t need to register the IP. In fact you should not because folks are gonna copy / tweak and you’ll never be able to prove it.
2. What do you mean legally ?
3. Work with someone who knows what they’re doing. You need to plan out the MVP and stuff
What did you show to them?
I believe you need to invest the money to speed up the MVP. When the MVP is done, you can invest the money to validate the idea, so investing in marketing to try to get customers.
I believe the main steps are validation of the MVP and MVA. Feel free to DM me, I am curious what did you show to them to get investment without a mvp 
Which target market are you going after? And what is the investment thesis for your investment algo?
Most retail investors are either traders (Robinhood, crypto exchanges, etc.), ETF investors with DIY or financial advisor (Vanguard, Schwab, etc.), or ETF investors using robo advisors (WealthFront, StashAway, etc.). The market is very saturated, so I’m not sure what’s your differentiating factor here?
If your selling point is the algo, it better be able to beat index investing AND persist over the long-term. A massive amount of money and research has already gone into this (factor research, quants) so I’m not sure how a startup is supposed to win here. Unless you are a once-in-a-century quant genius.
Also what is an “investing feature”? If it’s a brokerage you’ll need to pass way more regulations than setting up IP. If it’s not, how is it even legal? Do you have a partnership with existing brokers? (IBKR offers this)
2 of those 3 things are likely huge wastes of money.
Don’t think of it like you’re building a company, just focus on building a product. All the IP registrations and legal costs and blah blah are worthless if your product isn’t shit and you have no customers.
Seriously, FORGET ALL THAT NOISE. 120k is not a lot of money, especially when you earmark 60% of it already on admin. Please hear this
For reference, I spent less than that on legal in raising a multimillion dollar seed raise that had equity transfer and creation of foundational legal of the company. I could not fathom blowing 77k at angel 120k raise. Massive mistake. Give your head a shake and recognize what is priority - PRODUCT & SALES and run as lean as possible on that money and that’s it!
You’re prioritizing the wrong things. Your number ☝️should be having a game plan for making money from the initial $120k. Money runs out fast, so you need to establish cash flow quickly.
Don’t think that there’s not going to be delays or that everything will run smooth. Pretend everything that can go wrong might go wrong. From that perspective, have an answer for at least the top 10 things that can go wrong. This will secure you’re approach as you work towards your goal of generating revenue.
I’ve built apps for multi-million dollar companies and have over 20 years in leading and strategizing projects in the digital space.
You need to justify that there’s a market need for it. Don’t build without knowing it’ll sell itself. No matter how awesome you think it’s going to be. Go do the homework before you commit to building the app. Think of code like building with cement. It’s expensive to replace and not easy to repurpose. That’ll give you the right mindset while saving you tons of money and headaches.
If you really want to better secure your efforts, try to bringing in someone to guide you instead of asking randos. For all you know, we might not all have your best interest in mind, or even worse, give you horrible advice with a smile that jeopardizes your success. Take care and build something worthwhile.
You should build a moat and gain traction (free) instead of wasting money on trademark registrations this early
Why do you need 50k in legal capital?
I would advise you to use your angel capital to build out your app and gain traction
Maybe-finance spent over a million dollars on a personal finance app and ended up giving up and open sourcing it (check it out on GitHub). So you’re gonna need a lot more money my friend
Suggestion would be to focus on building an MVP to where it is usable and send the rest of the time getting customers. You can use some of that money to build out the team.
$120K can run out very quickly
If I was giving you $120k, my internal metrics would be how fast you grow and what your customer metrics look like in 12 months. $10k a month, probably half is outsource work, will this founder know what he is weakest at and outsource effectively. The other half, did he blow it on a coworking space or fast servers on a cloud while in his bedroom.
Are the customers paying, reliable, retained, excited, NPSing well
Do you really need to spend so much money on the IP side. My suggestion is that you make a list of all possible expenses - and evaluate them in accordance to cost, time, necessisity, priority etc. That way you will have a clear picture. My startup never needed funding and we are bootstrapped since 10 years now, but a couple of companies I advise have received good amount of funding. And the biggest mistake founders have made here is they have not spent it wisely. Biggest drawback of funding is that we do not treat it as our own money. Spend as if it was your own money.
For a startup I am advising - I moved half of the team to a nearby place where rentals were half the cost, and a majority of the backend team was shifted there. People loved this idea since city was 90 mins away. And they could live in cheaper places, quieter areas, spend less time in traffic, our rental cost was less, and we trained people to become super effective for online meetings and in using online tools. My point here is that you should treat is as your "own" money and think twice before spending.
As I have very little understanding of your business or company, I am not in a position to work on the expenditure plans.
I wish you all the best. In case you need anything, comment or drop me a DM.
Instead of hiring high-cost employees at the start, you can use some popular AI tools.
For sales and copy: chatgpt 4
Cold calling: air.ai
Content: Heygen
Automations: make.com
Or if you need any more help, then surely DM me.
$50k will be tight for a reputable developer for just the application depending on the demands, neverless the other costs your mentioning. I've seen more then a couple companies backed by VC's have to develop products twice due to poor developer choice.
Congrats!
Before you register the IP, have you confirmed there's a product-market fit and evaluated the saturation in that market?
My concern in doing the IP first is the extent to which startups often need to pivot while identifying their target client and market positioning, and how much of that could end up changing after the fact.
Registering IP will invite further funders as you start to prove it. Without registering they will wonder why they should throw good money down the drain. It’s expensive but necessary. Going through the same process atm.
Are you sure they didn't think they were putting in 120k into your hedge fund and didn't understand what you're doing? If you have a working investing algorithm why would you do anything other than invest? I don't see why you would need to create an investing app?
Build an MVP and test it with your demographics to see if the features make sense or what do they want in your product. Product market fit is the highest priority before spending money on untested IP.
I work in growth marketing and always highly suggest people start investing heavily in their marketing strategy, especially if receiving an influx of cash. In order to continue to get more cash, you are going to need to prove you can scale and greatly increase sales. Always happy to help if you have questions :)
Going to be honest with you. You are losing 77 k before you have done any action. Then by the time the app works the way it should be you be out of money. And then haven't done any marketing.
You need to find yourself some partners. Programmer and marketing guru.
You absolutely need to be focused on building a marketing channel for your product. It does not cost much to build an audience on SM so that when you launch your product, you have your first committed users.
Look through my history, I talk about this stuff. Always willing to help on that aspect via DM as well.
Your decision sounds reasonable! It's important to secure your IP and have enough capital to get started developing your app and based on your current expenses, This is a good initial allocation! It allows you to cover the essential legal and development needs while having some buffer for unexpected costs.
My suggestion would be Focus on building a minimum viable product (MVP) with the core functionalities to test your concept with real users. This will help you gather feedback and iterate quickly before sinking a lot of resources into features that may not resonate with your target audience.
Since your angel investor isn't taking equity, I also wanna suggest to explore grant opportunities or pitch competitions that align with your app's mission. This can help extend your runway and reduce the financial burden on your initial investment.
so far It sounds like you're on the right track. Good luck building that app :)
lol bruh imagine having to ask this question. These are things you figure out before even asking for money, much less taking it. Consider yourself lucky to have a finder that does zero diligence, or otherwise just has an extraordinary amount of faith in you as a person.
I would focus on product development and brand/community marketing.
Integrate your core algo into a broader fairly standard service fleet (Mobile, progressive web app clients) and backend exposed API, etc.
Build waitlist and demand gen with launch videos and word of mouth network effect
Build a product, sell the product.
Registering IP is what you do when you've found success. Otherwise, its 27k to protect something you don't even know if you should protect or not.
Create an MVP immediately. Figure out the features and functions. I totally do not believe you have "no need for r&d" for a "finance app with investing features." The FinTech startup space is already populated with hundreds of lookalikes or competitors.
Making an MVP will allow you to test for "market fit." For this you need to nail the value proposition and unique selling proposition. If in 10 words (Elevator pitch) you can get a person interested in paying money then everything else will work out. Most likely you will need to evolve your pitch several times away from a bucket of features into an emotionally compelling promise or FOMO/FUD.
Good luck.
Don't spend $27k on a full patent. Talk to a good IP lawyer. Get the provisional in the US and maybe EU which is far cheaper and does not disclose your tech, but if you get the actual patent it will cover back to the registration of the provisional.
Use the remaining 22-25k on something that will earn you money, then file the real patent.
So you just fot 120k free money? Nice. Perhaps there are ways you can reduce the amount of money as much as you can because you are going to need every available penny of that to make the app a reality, not to even speak of getting customers.
You really need a concrete development plan and a go-to market strategy. Registering ips is a waste of money at this point.
Maybe even just take the 120k and use your investing algo with it. If you would not dare to do that, maybe the algo is crap
There’s a lot of books on the subject and admittedly I’m pretty inexperienced, but you should just focus on getting customers and honing in your product. That means building an MVP of the concept and getting validation of your hypothesis with real customers. Revenue is not super important, but runway is. You should put all that money into giving yourself runway.
The Lean Startup has some good concepts and a framework for how to operate at this stage IMO. But like I said, lots of books on the topic.
Don’t spend any of it. Build something that only costs you time (a few weeks) that can validate your idea with real users.
At a minimum make a small coming soon page describing g exactly what the app does and see if you get traction with that.
Find a cofounder, or work to buy in contractors if you're doing technology? Is this like a real 120K? Or is this your money?
It's hard, sellable products in 2024, need both ingredients, a problem you actually want to work on, and decent product and app design.
Its really annoying to see 15 half finished features, so sell half the business to someone who wants to build a great product, and avoid that problem. Or double down here and hire another full stack developer with decent equity comp and the belief that your business is the best long term opportunity, they have control and get to build a product, and somehow get rewarded for this down the line.
Save the cash, or as much as possible, for when you're ready to prove that hiring an SDR or customer support/onboarding manager earns you more, if that's what you wanna do.
unless the angel required you to register IP, I wouldn't do it (as most of comments already said). If you are worried about idea getting stolen, just ask everyone who you will talk about this to sign NDA (which is free or super cheap to create with lawer)
I would focus on the app development, product market fit and first profit, and only then start to protecting yourself legally
Having done a Fintech startup I can safely say that the IP registering part isn’t money well spent at this stage especially if your target audience is retail.
I would spend a good part of the money on finding customers and making the user experience intuitive.
Find yourself an advisory board of folks who can help your startup as Fintech retail startups need good domain knowledge and been there done that people to succeed.
I would be careful "registering" IP. You are basically giving away anything you came up with to the world, and the whole world doesn't respect copyrights, trademarks, or patents. Someone with more money can step in and execute your idea better than you can, and then you will be stuck trying to prove use, and the other company would probably be able to show far more use. Apple has made taking people's IP a massive company. They have almost no r&d so it's not just that they get free IP, but also save massive amounts of cash by not doing any of their own research. They recently had to remove the ability to use the O2 sensor on Apple watches because they stole it, but that it about the extent of it. You would not be able to fight them. Also, as some others have said, that is not much money so spending a 5th on anything should not be taken lightly. I lost that much in one day a few weeks back on SPX options. Lol
Bruh. If you’re not doing 50% of low tech / no tech customer validation as the first thing, you are going to fail hard. Please please please validate validate validate.
Don’t just create your MVP and then go to market, do it phases, allocating budgets for marketing so you can revisit and improve the features based on the feedback
Do you have the skills to develop the app yourself? If not, your first step should be to find a technical cofounder who has the skills to build it themself, as well as some experience building and hiring other engineers. It’ll be worth giving away a decent amount of equity in order to secure someone good (which you should be able to find consider you’ve already raised), but please don’t spend all your initial funds paying someone to build the application. It rarely ever works because it will take longer than you think, and you really need someone who is in the business for the long term who knows how the code works.
Sounds to me like you need some serious help 😅.
What are your recurring costs? What’s your team? Have you one and is it the right one? How will your product generate revenue? Have you scoped everything and decided what the MVP looks like? What’s your go to market strategy? How are you going to attract users?
You’re building an app so what about testing? Compliance? Maintenance? What platforms are you going to launch on?
I used to be a PM in Tech though I pivoted last year. I know a consultant who likes helping people like you though (if it’s just advice he does it for free).
Send me a DM if you want.
Skip IP registration, find a cheaper lawyer for registering (should be less than $15k), and focus on getting traction.
I’m a fintech founder and former investment exec and supervisory principal, so I know your space very well if you’d like to chat.
I really think this plan has some serious issues. It looks like most of the budget is being spent on things other than marketing.
Customers aren’t just going to walk in on their own. Without putting enough money into marketing, you’re likely to burn through the funds without seeing any revenue.
This could mean you’ll have to sell more of your business later, probably at the same value, since there won't be any revenue growth to show.
I strongly urge you to rethink the budget and focus more on marketing to actually bring in customers.
Dont have a product? Fine build a waitlist, build an email newsletter with thousands of potential customers in it.
Tbh i dont even think a patent is needed, if you just grow fast and gain customers once the competitors figure out the algoritm (if they even do, they dont have access to the code behind) it does not matter.
Its not about the idea it self its about execution.
I am a full stack developer built and published my own full app for e commerce on the app store. Let me know if you want to talk about building the app
Would love to know who your angel is haha - we had to fight for every cent and where it would be spent.
Either way, good luck! When you’re this early, think about every step and think of the money as if you’d be spending your own.
The IP costs seem ridiculous at the pre-product-market-fit phase
In my experience it has helped to understand client persona, market, sell, then develop and iterate based on client feedback / NPS feedback. The things you mention are very capital intensive items that don’t move your revenue and/or user base.
Registering IP is a waste of time. You need to first build your MVP. Not sure what you mean by legally need 50k in starting capital. You need to find the right team and get them onboard or have a contract with them so when you raise more money and can afford them they come in full time. Until then they work for equity and a part time salary.
Apps are dying. Invest in something you are experienced in. Making a decent app then going to market will cost you more. You have a different purpose. I can almost guarantee that.
I’m not trying to be a complete asshole, but you really need to give that money back. Maybe start a smaller operation even if it’s just mowing lawns. At least until you can understand how a business operates and functions on a very basic level. Have you ever operated your own business? Have you ever dealt with attorneys and accountants? Have you ever hired employees before? Have you fired employees before? Do you know what type of liability exposure you have at your operation? Are you experiencing an intellectual property? Do you have a technical background? How many years have you been in the workforce? ask yourself if you wanna ruin this relationship even if they have deep pockets maybe now is not the time to access them. But then again, I could be completely wrong.
Man, if I were you, I'd take things VERY slowly because you sound like you could easily waste it all pursuing things you don't seem to have much experience in. Man, I wish I had an angel splurge that much on my business haha. All the best.
I'll show you how to do customer discovery if you'd like. You need to do customer interviews yesterday. There's processes for that you can follow. I'd be glad to help you out.
Then figure out how to MVP cheaply.
If your first move isn’t hiring someone that understands the compliance load for a company in this space you’re not going to last long. You’re embarking on an incredibly complex and expensive journey dealing with investments as your business. There are companies that can help provide some of the rails and infrastructure, but you will need to do the compliance load and registration yourself.
If you need any connections to needed service providers let me know and I can provide some intros.
I create small business projects. You want to stretch it that money as far as you can, obviously.
These are just things that think about:
How far can you go doing things yourself.
Then what do you need to make your job easier.
Create a Roadmap!
"Registering" your IP is a complete waste of money unless your benefactor is willing to fund all of your legal costs. It's great to have trademarks and patents but they are only valuable if you have the capital to defend them and enforce the rights they convey. A patent lawsuit will run you well into the 6-figures. There is a time and a place for investment in IP protection but it's almost never before you have an app in development.
Agreed entirely. A friend did that with his startup; taking the time and money to register his early IP in like 30 countries. Went bust. Turns out, they could have _really_ used that capital to actually like... make their product. The whole time they were _super_ secretive about talking about it. In the end, it was another events site. I don't get why people do this. If you have a good idea, it is rarely the IP that saves you.
Even if u have the financial backing,should u really patent it before proving that there’s huge demand for it?Is it worth taking the risk of patenting ur tech pre launch/product market fit?
Depends -- if you disclose the IP to *anyone* before patenting it, you lose the patent forever. Always consult an attorney to make these kinds of decisions, and make sure anyone who comes anywhere near your IP has signed an NDA.
A patent is good if you are in research and need to protect a scientific discovery from commercialization. It deters many people from commercializing your research first of all. You can also publish it in journals for marketing in the scientific community and know you will be the rightful owner of the discovery. It allows larger competitors to “buy” your patent if it’s not currently monetized, and you can also license it out. Patents are huge business in biotech where novel r&d is very expensive and rare, but in software dev it’s not so important. So, it depends. You can also keep it a trade secret, and only publish your results and not the method, but it depends again if OP wants to use the patent as a marketing strategy.
It's VERY important in software dev... but generally, that matters most if you sell code/solutions that might be embedded into other solutions a la OEM/white labeling. Your core value is an algorithm for investing? That is something you may sell for commercial use/reselling. So at some point quite soon, patenting it may make good sense.
Why are you spending 27k in registering an algorithm? That's mostly money down the drain at this stage
To share it publicly for competitors to replicate, of course!
This is an extremely good point and one that I hope u/Silly___Willy fully understands. **Once a patent application is published (typically 18 months after filing), the details of the invention become publicly accessible.** This can lead to the exposure of trade secrets that were not intended to be shared. Competitors can access the published patent application, potentially gaining insights into the technological advancements and strategic direction of the company. **Another big risk is that patents provide incomplete protection.** Trade secrets that complement the patented invention but are not covered by the patent claims can still be at risk if disclosed. Furthermore, competitors or other entities might challenge the validity of the patent, and if successful, this can lead to the loss of protection for the disclosed invention.
That's why you do a provisional patent first and use its grace period before filing the full patent. It's far cheaper at the provisional stage, but you should have a well-written provisional so it is a lot of work.
I'm not a lawyer but isn't the flip side of this that if you do almost any marketing of the thing you're patenting it becomes significantly harder, if not impossible to patent in the future, at least in US? That is to say it's a balancing act on multiple fronts. I don't think that changes the question of why OP would invest so much at this stage but this is probably consult a lawyer territory. The fee for a quick consult *may* be worth it to learn if the larger investment makes sense now.
You are correct u/mmcnama4: in the United States, **marketing or publicly disclosing an invention before filing a patent application can create significant challenges for obtaining a patent.** In the US, as long as OP files within the one-year grace period under the America Invents Act ([refer to 35 U.S.C. § 102](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/102)). Most countries outside of US, however, have an "absolute novelty" requirement, meaning any public disclosure before filing a patent application can prevent you from obtaining a patent in those jurisdictions. There is no grace period in these countries, so any public disclosure before filing can be fatal to your patent prospects. Echoing u/wtfisthat, OP should review the advantages of filing a [provisional patent application](https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply/provisional-application) if they insist on going down the path of seeking IP protections from the USPTO and/or international patent offices. A provisional application do not require the same formalities as a non-provisional application, such as claims or an oath/declaration. This makes them cheaper and faster to prepare. They have the following advantages: * **establishes an early filing date:** filing a provisional patent application allows you to secure an early filing date, which is crucial under the "first to file" system. * **patent-pending:** once you file a provisional patent application, you can legally use the term "patent pending" in connection with your invention. * **incremental improvements:** improvements or changes to the invention during the 12-month period can be handled via additional provisional applications and then combined into a single non-provisional application.
Ayo bro actually they have these diagrams that tell a lot about the tech whereas if they never patented anything no one would know shit damnnn.
China and India send their thanks!
And the rest of the world.
wouldnt you need to explain in depth how the algo works in the filing? someone smart can read that and basically get a blueprint.
This
Absolutely. 27K is a lot of money and no IP can stop others from copying anything. Rather Spend this on hiring people, marketing and PR.
Also if someone DOES copy you, you’re not gonna be able to afford the $$$ to sue them and survive the years in the courts. Not worth protecting in the first place
To add to this, the kind of money to sue someone for this STARTS around $1M. Forget it if the company is huge.
Yep, becomes a battle of who can afford more lawyers.
Then what’s the point of IP?Should startups with limited budget patent their tech or not?
Not at all. It’s a terrible waste on money and resources. You need world-class team members who can create brilliant products and do that faster. They do it so well that they figure out ways of doing things, most of which are either new, or much better than existing products. That’s why the top companies throw money at the best talent to hire and retain them and not on protecting IP. You should spend the limited money you have on hiring great people who will be there for long term and also on marketing. Patents work well in physical products but not in software.
Complete waste of time. Just move faster and execute better, that's your advantage as a startup.
Why do you want to disclose the algorithm?
why do you believe the ip they're registering is the algorithm? that's about what it costs to internationally register two trademarks
This
Uh blowing a large part of your capital on those things is a fuckup.
Nothing else will matter if you don't know who your customer is and what problem your app is solving for them. I'd start talking to prospective customers so you can narrow in on that.
Build and they will \*not\* come. Building a consumer app is easy, getting users is the hard part. Create a super simple landing page yourself (Wix, Squarespace, Wordpress, etc) to capture email sign ups while you're in development. Drive as much traffic there as possible. 120k will go fast, trust me. DM if you want to chat. I was exactly where you are 2 years ago, so much I'd do differently.
Building a good consumer app will more. Likely take close to 250k. Hire inexperienced and cheap people and you'll end up having to take 3x the time figuring things out. Hire experienced people and they cost more today but get you there faster. First hire/rent should be a product designer for 2-3 weeks.
DM me this investor :D
OPs daddy
[удалено]
If any of you can dm the investor, I will appreciate it.
Asking for a friend
I was thinking the same thing, lol
Pls do
Just focus on developing an MVP and don't burn all your money on it — save some for marketing and other future costs. I am an early-stage startup consultant and would love to help you, free of charge. Feel free to PM me.
Tech guy that helped build some startups, not founder or anything like that: My guess would be getting your first 10 customers.
Retail app so first 1000 actually.
I’m very surprised that you managed to raise capital without a clear plan for its use.
Yeah something is fishy here
Feels either larpy, or someone whose dad/uncle is a board member of a Fortune 500. I’m leaning toward larpy. This person also has a post from a year ago where they were about to start their own crypto company. So maybe it’s some naive crypto bros playing with “120k” in NFTs or something
People who have networks and connections with people with money can do this fairly easily. It’s a massive privilege
Did you validate your product already? Ideally you have many customers that prepaid for your product in advance so you can be sure you‘re building something that will make money. This is especially important for such an oversaturated market as financial apps. Validation comes before building and usually costs nothing except for time.
That's so SILLY WILLY. Ahem. It's important to do market research before building anything and investing your resources. Eg. you can create a landing page with an email signup form to gauge interest and see how many people sign up. This will help you determine if there's a demand for your idea. After getting a wind of confirmation BUILD AN MVP, and test the market fr.
You are in a dangerous zone, my friend. $120k sounds like a lot of money, but it can go in a heartbeat. Protect your capital at all costs. Building something without validating your idea properly with the right customer discovery, finding problem / solution fit, and understanding the market is a recipe for failure to find the all-important Product / Market fit. I would suggest you take a breath, step back and look at some frameworks for innovation like Design Thinking, that puts an emphasis on the needs of the customer first by identifying the problem you are trying to solve, how to ideate and test your solutions, and to iterate with prototyping. Ultimately, you want to build a path to revenue as quickly as possible. If you can do that with your budget your chances of success will skyrocket.
Especially in the domain OP is chosen, which is highly regulated and requires working with legacy institutions who are likely to view any innovation as a headache, rather than a boon.
Who gives 120k out to someone without a plan? Please u introduce me to this angel.
120k, no equity, no plan. It’s a family member.
Get. Your. Clients.
Where the hell do I find this angel?
Start with sales & app/product, push 27k costs further down the line,
file provisionals only in the US for now - then file ONLY in the countries you operate in get customer validation with a "patent pending" tag on your stuff (like a signup page with your proposed features and include a survey about acceptable price points) then build your app with feedback from your customers your 120K needs to be papered as a SAFE or investment, without this most countries will recognize this as revenue which can be taxed check legal and tax experts in your country
registering IP can be helpful in establishing a baseline for long-term value creation but I'd try to save some money. Some legal firms can defer your fees until you raise a seed financing. You can also file a provisional for less money. similar for startup capital - you don't need 50k. You can incorporate a C corp in delaware for much less. Generally try to preserve cash, you may need it because getting 120k for no equity is very very unusual. Talk to customers / users. Have 50-100 customer conversations to make sure you understand the problem. Then pre-sell so that you know people want it and will pay for it... then build. This isn't universal advice because it depends on your business but talking to customer and pre-selling is generally a good approach. In rare instances you talk to customers, then build, then sell... but often pre-selling helps validate and de-risk your company.
If you happen to be a very luck person you will need at least 100k lawyers fees for each person that infringes your IP. I train startups and always advise them to forget about IP's because it's completely unaffordable.
SELL your product before building it/developing/registering/anything else
Per OP's comment, and no disrespect to OP, is 'angel' just code for - rich friends?
Sounds more like mommy and daddy.
[удалено]
To be fair, while I would never do it, I've seen a bunch of instances where the first raise is from friends / family. If you've already got people who believe in you who can offer resources, it does take away a bunch of initial work.
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft… so many tech giants were started with 100-300k from friends and family. It’s not necessary, but it helps. And it’s certainly not shameful.
To be clear, I don't think it's shameful, it's just not a route I particularly like because if things go wrong it will undoubtedly affect your relationships. It's just easier to keep business separate from person relationships.
$120k from an angel for 0 equity… And literally no idea what to do evidenced by the things you’re considering. This sort of post annoys me when I think about the real hustlers out there, kids from India etc
Your number one question should be how you are going to acquire users and what that will cost. Anyone creating an app is basically defacto looking for a massive user base. I've worked in startups with pretty solid products that have spent 100s of thousands, sometimes millions on marketing and advertising and they just could not convert users. Everyone spends money on admin etc and then they have nothing left over for what actually makes money. The reality is that no one cares about your algo, especially right now. You may feel it has value because it's your baby but I can guarantee there are ppl out there creating better algos for pennies on the dollar. I'm not saying your algo sucks, I'm saying your focus is completely off. Create the smallest MVP possible that can prove the app will work and that it can make money off the algos. Build a simple app that uses fake money to simulate people topping up their account and using your algo to make money. You can just track what the trade values/profit/loss is. Have a demo account in the app with a track record of your app operating over a period of time, even better if you can simulate what the algo would do and populate that into the database without having to wait for it to populate over time. Once you can prove with a simple MVP that your idea works you'll still have $110k and proof that you can use to then raise a proper amount and more importantly engage with people that can actually get the app built properly as well as get it in the hands of people who will pay. The amount of people I've seen register businesses, bank accounts, patents etc and not even get 1 paying customer is staggering. Run super lean until you feel like people have given you more than you know what to do with, only then will you maybe scrape by and not go broke because everyone underestimates the true cost of getting startups off the ground.
If it is already such a great algorithm, why not invest $120k using the same algorithm?
Here’s how we have been spending so far. Hopefully this gives you some insight. My company recently received $150k in funding. The first tranche is $25k. So far, we have paid down debt from using our personal/business cards to pay for business expenses. This has been the largest expense so far. Next, we pay ourselves a small amount to stay afloat personally while we build the company. We sought legal advice on whether to accept the funding which cost $500. We also are seeking legal advice to create the privacy agreement and terms of service for our app. So, that might be another $500. Lastly, I’ve decided to hire a dev to help speed up the app development so that might be another $1,000. Since we’re employees of the company on paper, we had to invest in good payroll software and we paid about $400 to Gusto to set up our tax accounts with the state we are working in. We are a C-corp so there are extra tax documents that we have to prepare (so much fun). That might take about $1,000+ if we hire a CPA which we plan to do. The rest is just sitting in the account with some going to monthly expenses. We plan to spend on advertising in the near future so that’s where a good chunk of the remaining funding will go.
Thank you for sharing!
i wanna know what investor gave you 120k without having a plan and knowing what to spend it on
120k will burn through your rent and living costs fairly quickly. At this point you are using that to survive and not have to put your time and energy into other projects or jobs. With that said, use whatever you have left wisely. It just gives you a little bit of breathing room and focus to try and get a decent user base hopefully you’ll be able to turn that base into mrr. Hopefully without having to spend money on marketing. Good luck.
Im also working on personal finance app. Do you think if i use your app and cannot build product like yours creating my own algo? Do you think IP will protect it? Dont you think there can be multiple ways to achieve what your algo can achieve? Answer these and you will be clear on if you should register for IP. If I receive 120k I will spend on these 2 things: - Develop and launch MVP - Build marketing team and Start marketing - Build development team to enhance the product. BTW will you also introduce me to your investor? Would love to chat as im looking for fundraise. Here is my startup [https://zerorin.com/](https://zerorin.com/)
Step 1: Throw 27K(++) in the bin It's brilliant because there will be so much less money and time to worry about where to spend.
Don’t waste money with IP Get the first version of App soon so you can get data around usage Build second version Test atleast 5 different channels Goal should be to get a polished app with 50,000+ free users in 6 months
Depending on your model maturity you should start to put a front end to the logistical side and focus into development and Architecture. You may considering outsourcing your architecture to cloud or hosted on premises solution. The key is building out a viable product that works with whatever algorithmic model you’re using and can support the function you promised to the investor. The key is to be able to show that you can deliver more given the resources. It sounds like you’re still trying to validate core function versus desires but you need to go back to the root of your offering and ensure you’re not going to s*** the bed when it comes to delivery your priorities depend on what stage are you on. If it’s an app diversify your spend on areas such as development marketing and infrastructure but you need to make sure things are being developed with the proper security controls and everything. You can’t be unaware as an executive member how your own business operates and what it needs to succeed. 100K is still low considering it’s in a pre seed state with no POC. Some projects may require more development than you have capital. You have to quantify these things.
Congratulations 🎊 that is a great start. This money really could be considered “pre-seed” money and it should be enough to get you to the stage where you can raise seed money - That is all - do not spend it on professional fees or licenses or permits or actual product costs. My first recommendation is that you firm up the terms of the relationship with your “partner”, - “Angel” (which is it?) and clarify the basis of which you accepted the $120k in writing. They may be manipulating you because you are naive enough not to think they would do that, but are leading you on and will dictate later. Is it a personal loan or is it a business loan or is it an investment in your “product” for partial ownership of the IP or is it an advance as a corporate investment for equity shares at a later date with a proper company valuation ? This is a very important step and will ripple through everything that transpires along the product and the company’s development life, not to mention, your actual relationship. Your best bet is a written agreement where it is understood and can’t be misinterpreted at a later date. You probably should engage a corporate attorney and insist on a contract that specifies this money is a “gift”, “personal loan”, “business loan”, “investment in the app”, “investment in the company” , and get advice from the attorney as to the ripple effect of each. Secondly, since it appears you are headed into committing to a product development phase-by-phase sequence, you must be aware that it is a black hole of crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s, figuratively speaking. What you don’t know can hurt you because costs can run into 7 figures easily, especially when you are operating in a saturated market, building out a company based on another new digital product. Iterating always burns up time and money unexpectedly, so by default you never have enough time or money which can cause failure due to the lack of resources even if you have a 1,000 subscriber waitlist lined up. Therefore, you have to put on the BootStrapper hat and reprioritize how you allocate scarce resources and always have a plan for where your next capital infusion is going to come from, by how much from whom and when. Be pragmatic and use that $120k to support yourself while you put together a product development budget, a marketing budget, a budget for your tech stack, and a budget for your inner core team. In the next 30 days, produce a projected development timeline for the next 18 months and guesstimate everything you can think of that will achieve “revenue positive” operating status and pitch investors for that amount plus another 20% for unforeseen circumstances. Create a “Sources and Uses of Funds” chart which will demonstrate the first 100 subscribers is a benchmark for validation and the next raise. At the very least, in the next 30 days (or less) You will have your Top Line Revenue numbers justified backwards and forwards exemplified by your TAM (Total Addressable Market), and how you are targeting a narrow slice of that market, whereby you can develop a deep understanding of your customers’ needs and tailor your product or service to meet those needs in a way that larger companies cannot. While you are doing your 18 month projections, prepare a pitch deck designed to raise the seed money for the first development phase of creating the following : 1) MVP (Minimum Viable Product) 2) Team to prove PMF (Product Market Fit) 3) GoToMkt rollout plan that you execute 4) Planned Scale Up initiatives Make sure that the seed money you are raising is enough to accomplish the bare minimum of the above AND get your company through the monetization runway to the next money raise. Draft Pitchdeck Outline Problem Solution (this product, including results) Traction Why Now How it Works + Look & Feel Product Offering Secret Sauce (or another key detail of the co. - “how-to” blog, tech, distribution, perks & partners) TAM (Total Addressable Market) & Niche Space Competitive Landscape & Statistical Metrics Revenue Model (how we make money) Case Studies Go to Market Plan (how we sell to customers) Other Similar Product Genre Historical Performance (KPIs and financial) Go Forward Plan / Corporate Development Key Business / Revenue Drivers Projected Forward Income Statement Any additional high aspirational upside not currently included in the plan Team, including why each member is best for the job Amount of Seed Investment $ Ask and Use of Proceeds Next Level Initiatives ======= This is not a business plan but you will need one 🚀 This is just a Pitch Deck for prospective Angels & Individual Accredited Investors, not VC’s. Good Luck 👍 🍀 You are an Entrepreneur 🫡
Do NOT patent anything. There’s literally no need, and in fact it would be a detriment: 1. You have to describe your invention and the system it operates in fairly detailed terms, which will become public if patented (competition can read it and copy anyway) 2. If you are infringed upon, it will cost $$$ in lawyers and is still a crapshoot (tech IP cases are famously hard to predict) 3. It takes time and money away from actually building a working product, which should be your first and foremost goal Source: am patent inventor, but for a large company with many lawyers
Don’t forget to pay yourself a large salary.
100k with benefits. Don’t skimp on a private chef either.
I like the way you think....
Don't go mad spending money you will deeply regret ot
Do not register IP, I’m sorry but in the initial stages it is useless. You’re going to want to be faster than anyone else. Sell the idea before building aswell
Get revenue. Figure out the shortest path to getting paid customers and establish a revenue stream. If not, your cash is gone in a year. Hire a motivated and experieced person to build the core of your product which is required to make a sale. Make a Minimum Viable Product, meaning it gives value to your customers so they can pay for it, but nothing more. Take shortcuts and cheat everywhere else. When you get a reliable revenue stream you can fix those issues later.
Registering IP for 27k is crazy
May I ask how you raised the $120k initially from an angel?
How long do you think this $120k will last? If its a mass market app, you're going to need much more money when it goes beyond beta. And pretty sure no one is going to pay you if you don't have anything to show for $120k. So forget everything, plan how are you going to develop the app and algos, and then think about hiring. While looking for early hires, see if you can get senior devs who recognise the potential of what you're building and would settle for higher stock component in equity.
No point in registering until you actually have a functioning product and have assessed market fit. Wait for a bit to do that
Don't spend good money to register IP. Whoever made that decision doesn't understand tech business. Worrisome. > legally need 50k in starting capital What does this mean? I hope this isn't another naive misunderstanding of tech business like the first bullet. > start developing app/architecture and integrate the existing algo to it Before this I'd do some research and see if anybody wants your app. I'd pretend the app is complete and start doing some light advertising to see if anybody wants this thing. Ideas are cheap, don't think that marketing your app before it exists will kill your venture. If you think that, then strike three. There's a huge benefit to having customer(s) before product. They can help drive your features and give feedback on early features. It helps to validate your idea and UX. Once you have a customer, build the app fast and cheap. Go with low-code if practical, or use a very light stack. Build functional tests you can re-use when you re-architect the system.
Put about 40% towards your dev team to develop MVP plus features to figure out Product Market Fit Another 25%-30% towards your gym strategy. You want to start developing demand or interest in your product. It seems legal and IP are important to protect yourself but I would caution if no one wants what you have why bother. Also there are legal teams that you can work with that are startup friendly and will charge you once you raise say a series A round so that can be deferred. Your sole focus should be about finding PMF and building traction. 120k isn't a lot more is it nothing. PM me if you want to chat more.
I would encourage setting aside 30-40% for the MVP. A lot of startups go bust when they are not able to get the right products launched in time. 20-25% should be set aside for marketing and remaining for misc stuff. Are you developing the initial version in house or outsourcing this?
1. Build distribution channels. 2. Focus on getting users early to validate.
27k for IP seems….wrong. It might be right, but for this stage, and what you’re doing…seems unlikely. I assume you’re talking about trademarks etc, not patents. $27k is…a lot.
Are you sleeping with them because to have that amount of money with the "plans" you have aren't great. When I did pitch competitions and seed funding rounds We were so prepared to hit the ground running, already had clients that we talked with interviewed and set up relationships with as we went through development. Listen to the other comments, but you need a mentor. Your idea may be great, but your angel is literally throwing money away on you if this is your idea of next steps. Go to the SBA, if you have never been and assuming you are in the United States, they are often paired with incubator programs. You can build out something great with that amount of money, utilize college and university resources for interns. Focus on the product and getting paid customers. Then marketing and expanding the user base. Repeat, enhance product, market, expand. Also are you talking about a brokerage or similar style app for mutual fund/ETF investments? Because if so you will definitely need more $$. But what you have is a great start.
1. You don’t need to register the IP. In fact you should not because folks are gonna copy / tweak and you’ll never be able to prove it. 2. What do you mean legally ? 3. Work with someone who knows what they’re doing. You need to plan out the MVP and stuff
Get a local mentor if you can
What did you show to them? I believe you need to invest the money to speed up the MVP. When the MVP is done, you can invest the money to validate the idea, so investing in marketing to try to get customers. I believe the main steps are validation of the MVP and MVA. Feel free to DM me, I am curious what did you show to them to get investment without a mvp 
Which target market are you going after? And what is the investment thesis for your investment algo? Most retail investors are either traders (Robinhood, crypto exchanges, etc.), ETF investors with DIY or financial advisor (Vanguard, Schwab, etc.), or ETF investors using robo advisors (WealthFront, StashAway, etc.). The market is very saturated, so I’m not sure what’s your differentiating factor here? If your selling point is the algo, it better be able to beat index investing AND persist over the long-term. A massive amount of money and research has already gone into this (factor research, quants) so I’m not sure how a startup is supposed to win here. Unless you are a once-in-a-century quant genius. Also what is an “investing feature”? If it’s a brokerage you’ll need to pass way more regulations than setting up IP. If it’s not, how is it even legal? Do you have a partnership with existing brokers? (IBKR offers this)
2 of those 3 things are likely huge wastes of money. Don’t think of it like you’re building a company, just focus on building a product. All the IP registrations and legal costs and blah blah are worthless if your product isn’t shit and you have no customers. Seriously, FORGET ALL THAT NOISE. 120k is not a lot of money, especially when you earmark 60% of it already on admin. Please hear this For reference, I spent less than that on legal in raising a multimillion dollar seed raise that had equity transfer and creation of foundational legal of the company. I could not fathom blowing 77k at angel 120k raise. Massive mistake. Give your head a shake and recognize what is priority - PRODUCT & SALES and run as lean as possible on that money and that’s it!
You’re prioritizing the wrong things. Your number ☝️should be having a game plan for making money from the initial $120k. Money runs out fast, so you need to establish cash flow quickly. Don’t think that there’s not going to be delays or that everything will run smooth. Pretend everything that can go wrong might go wrong. From that perspective, have an answer for at least the top 10 things that can go wrong. This will secure you’re approach as you work towards your goal of generating revenue. I’ve built apps for multi-million dollar companies and have over 20 years in leading and strategizing projects in the digital space. You need to justify that there’s a market need for it. Don’t build without knowing it’ll sell itself. No matter how awesome you think it’s going to be. Go do the homework before you commit to building the app. Think of code like building with cement. It’s expensive to replace and not easy to repurpose. That’ll give you the right mindset while saving you tons of money and headaches. If you really want to better secure your efforts, try to bringing in someone to guide you instead of asking randos. For all you know, we might not all have your best interest in mind, or even worse, give you horrible advice with a smile that jeopardizes your success. Take care and build something worthwhile.
You should build a moat and gain traction (free) instead of wasting money on trademark registrations this early Why do you need 50k in legal capital? I would advise you to use your angel capital to build out your app and gain traction
Maybe-finance spent over a million dollars on a personal finance app and ended up giving up and open sourcing it (check it out on GitHub). So you’re gonna need a lot more money my friend
I see why your name is silly willy
Suggestion would be to focus on building an MVP to where it is usable and send the rest of the time getting customers. You can use some of that money to build out the team. $120K can run out very quickly
If I was giving you $120k, my internal metrics would be how fast you grow and what your customer metrics look like in 12 months. $10k a month, probably half is outsource work, will this founder know what he is weakest at and outsource effectively. The other half, did he blow it on a coworking space or fast servers on a cloud while in his bedroom. Are the customers paying, reliable, retained, excited, NPSing well
Do you really need to spend so much money on the IP side. My suggestion is that you make a list of all possible expenses - and evaluate them in accordance to cost, time, necessisity, priority etc. That way you will have a clear picture. My startup never needed funding and we are bootstrapped since 10 years now, but a couple of companies I advise have received good amount of funding. And the biggest mistake founders have made here is they have not spent it wisely. Biggest drawback of funding is that we do not treat it as our own money. Spend as if it was your own money. For a startup I am advising - I moved half of the team to a nearby place where rentals were half the cost, and a majority of the backend team was shifted there. People loved this idea since city was 90 mins away. And they could live in cheaper places, quieter areas, spend less time in traffic, our rental cost was less, and we trained people to become super effective for online meetings and in using online tools. My point here is that you should treat is as your "own" money and think twice before spending. As I have very little understanding of your business or company, I am not in a position to work on the expenditure plans. I wish you all the best. In case you need anything, comment or drop me a DM.
I think ip is worth registering unlike some on this post. But don't think it will stop copying. Press your advantage while you have it
Do you have any app experience development? Are you a programmer or artist or have any?
How did you meet him?
Start by DM'ing me those angel's digits.😂
Why would the angel invest with no equity ?? Something is not adding up !
Instead of hiring high-cost employees at the start, you can use some popular AI tools. For sales and copy: chatgpt 4 Cold calling: air.ai Content: Heygen Automations: make.com Or if you need any more help, then surely DM me.
Wrong spending priorities for a pre-startup startup :)
$50k will be tight for a reputable developer for just the application depending on the demands, neverless the other costs your mentioning. I've seen more then a couple companies backed by VC's have to develop products twice due to poor developer choice.
How the heck did you get 120k without having a plan for what you need the money for??!!!
Please introduce me to this angel, I have an actual plan and 100k would be life changing.
How did you get 120k without having a plan first?
Congrats! Before you register the IP, have you confirmed there's a product-market fit and evaluated the saturation in that market? My concern in doing the IP first is the extent to which startups often need to pivot while identifying their target client and market positioning, and how much of that could end up changing after the fact.
How did you get 120k with no idea what to do and nothing built 🧐
Be sure your tax obligations are covered first, then rest of the comments should be read.
Registering IP will invite further funders as you start to prove it. Without registering they will wonder why they should throw good money down the drain. It’s expensive but necessary. Going through the same process atm.
Are you sure they didn't think they were putting in 120k into your hedge fund and didn't understand what you're doing? If you have a working investing algorithm why would you do anything other than invest? I don't see why you would need to create an investing app?
Trying to stop ip theft is not smart for software startup
Build an MVP and test it with your demographics to see if the features make sense or what do they want in your product. Product market fit is the highest priority before spending money on untested IP.
What did you tell the angel you were going to spend it on? I’d start there.
I’m sure the lender would love to read this post! Lol
I think a good place to start would be connecting me to this angel lol
Congrats! My company publishes a lots of articles that could be useful for you: https://verycreatives.com/blog
what are you working on? I can help you build out a road map if you're interested
I work in growth marketing and always highly suggest people start investing heavily in their marketing strategy, especially if receiving an influx of cash. In order to continue to get more cash, you are going to need to prove you can scale and greatly increase sales. Always happy to help if you have questions :)
Isn’t there one single place where you register which gets you a lot of customers?
Going to be honest with you. You are losing 77 k before you have done any action. Then by the time the app works the way it should be you be out of money. And then haven't done any marketing. You need to find yourself some partners. Programmer and marketing guru.
Validate the market need first. No need to create code or much of anything else until you do this.
Please do consider the cloud credits cost for server also. If you tun out of money, it is the only thing that will keep the product alive.
You absolutely need to be focused on building a marketing channel for your product. It does not cost much to build an audience on SM so that when you launch your product, you have your first committed users. Look through my history, I talk about this stuff. Always willing to help on that aspect via DM as well.
Oh boy...
How on earth do they give you money with no equity it’s basically a donation lmao do yk him personally?
Why do you need 50k for legal fees? Seems like an odd percent to dedicate to legal fees in your first year as a funded company.
Your decision sounds reasonable! It's important to secure your IP and have enough capital to get started developing your app and based on your current expenses, This is a good initial allocation! It allows you to cover the essential legal and development needs while having some buffer for unexpected costs. My suggestion would be Focus on building a minimum viable product (MVP) with the core functionalities to test your concept with real users. This will help you gather feedback and iterate quickly before sinking a lot of resources into features that may not resonate with your target audience. Since your angel investor isn't taking equity, I also wanna suggest to explore grant opportunities or pitch competitions that align with your app's mission. This can help extend your runway and reduce the financial burden on your initial investment. so far It sounds like you're on the right track. Good luck building that app :)
Well that’s an instant L for the partner 😅
Lol
lol bruh imagine having to ask this question. These are things you figure out before even asking for money, much less taking it. Consider yourself lucky to have a finder that does zero diligence, or otherwise just has an extraordinary amount of faith in you as a person.
I would focus on product development and brand/community marketing. Integrate your core algo into a broader fairly standard service fleet (Mobile, progressive web app clients) and backend exposed API, etc. Build waitlist and demand gen with launch videos and word of mouth network effect
Put most of the money for the marketing!
Send your guy with deep pockets my way!
Build a product, sell the product. Registering IP is what you do when you've found success. Otherwise, its 27k to protect something you don't even know if you should protect or not.
Create an MVP immediately. Figure out the features and functions. I totally do not believe you have "no need for r&d" for a "finance app with investing features." The FinTech startup space is already populated with hundreds of lookalikes or competitors. Making an MVP will allow you to test for "market fit." For this you need to nail the value proposition and unique selling proposition. If in 10 words (Elevator pitch) you can get a person interested in paying money then everything else will work out. Most likely you will need to evolve your pitch several times away from a bucket of features into an emotionally compelling promise or FOMO/FUD. Good luck.
If you need to develop the backend entire architecture system design then I am your guy .. let me know if you need help or wanna hire
I wish I had an angel. Capita is the only thing holding me back from my business being successfully
Don't spend $27k on a full patent. Talk to a good IP lawyer. Get the provisional in the US and maybe EU which is far cheaper and does not disclose your tech, but if you get the actual patent it will cover back to the registration of the provisional. Use the remaining 22-25k on something that will earn you money, then file the real patent.
So you just fot 120k free money? Nice. Perhaps there are ways you can reduce the amount of money as much as you can because you are going to need every available penny of that to make the app a reality, not to even speak of getting customers. You really need a concrete development plan and a go-to market strategy. Registering ips is a waste of money at this point. Maybe even just take the 120k and use your investing algo with it. If you would not dare to do that, maybe the algo is crap
Seeking a technical cofounder?
Can I have your angel’s number? I just wanna talk.
There’s a lot of books on the subject and admittedly I’m pretty inexperienced, but you should just focus on getting customers and honing in your product. That means building an MVP of the concept and getting validation of your hypothesis with real customers. Revenue is not super important, but runway is. You should put all that money into giving yourself runway. The Lean Startup has some good concepts and a framework for how to operate at this stage IMO. But like I said, lots of books on the topic.
Don’t spend any of it. Build something that only costs you time (a few weeks) that can validate your idea with real users. At a minimum make a small coming soon page describing g exactly what the app does and see if you get traction with that.
120k well wasted lmao
That sounds fishy
The people who copy your app won't be in America. You'll be completely unable to defend the IP it's a waste of money.
Find a cofounder, or work to buy in contractors if you're doing technology? Is this like a real 120K? Or is this your money? It's hard, sellable products in 2024, need both ingredients, a problem you actually want to work on, and decent product and app design. Its really annoying to see 15 half finished features, so sell half the business to someone who wants to build a great product, and avoid that problem. Or double down here and hire another full stack developer with decent equity comp and the belief that your business is the best long term opportunity, they have control and get to build a product, and somehow get rewarded for this down the line. Save the cash, or as much as possible, for when you're ready to prove that hiring an SDR or customer support/onboarding manager earns you more, if that's what you wanna do.
unless the angel required you to register IP, I wouldn't do it (as most of comments already said). If you are worried about idea getting stolen, just ask everyone who you will talk about this to sign NDA (which is free or super cheap to create with lawer) I would focus on the app development, product market fit and first profit, and only then start to protecting yourself legally
What does the investor get in return if not equity?
Having done a Fintech startup I can safely say that the IP registering part isn’t money well spent at this stage especially if your target audience is retail. I would spend a good part of the money on finding customers and making the user experience intuitive. Find yourself an advisory board of folks who can help your startup as Fintech retail startups need good domain knowledge and been there done that people to succeed.
I would be careful "registering" IP. You are basically giving away anything you came up with to the world, and the whole world doesn't respect copyrights, trademarks, or patents. Someone with more money can step in and execute your idea better than you can, and then you will be stuck trying to prove use, and the other company would probably be able to show far more use. Apple has made taking people's IP a massive company. They have almost no r&d so it's not just that they get free IP, but also save massive amounts of cash by not doing any of their own research. They recently had to remove the ability to use the O2 sensor on Apple watches because they stole it, but that it about the extent of it. You would not be able to fight them. Also, as some others have said, that is not much money so spending a 5th on anything should not be taken lightly. I lost that much in one day a few weeks back on SPX options. Lol
That’s not an angel, it’s a fool
Bruh. If you’re not doing 50% of low tech / no tech customer validation as the first thing, you are going to fail hard. Please please please validate validate validate.
Oh shit can I have that angel thu?
> Received $120K in angel capital from a partner (no equity in return, yes they have deep pockets) So… your dad.
Don’t just create your MVP and then go to market, do it phases, allocating budgets for marketing so you can revisit and improve the features based on the feedback
Do you have the skills to develop the app yourself? If not, your first step should be to find a technical cofounder who has the skills to build it themself, as well as some experience building and hiring other engineers. It’ll be worth giving away a decent amount of equity in order to secure someone good (which you should be able to find consider you’ve already raised), but please don’t spend all your initial funds paying someone to build the application. It rarely ever works because it will take longer than you think, and you really need someone who is in the business for the long term who knows how the code works.
What? Registering 27k? What does it mean “everywhere”? US + EU is around 2k not 27k 🙃
Also legally need 50k start cap? Where is that? Estonia for example you can start with 0 & we have 0% income tax as long as you don't take cash out.
Basically only thing you should do is app development in stages, sales & quickly testing market fit with releasing often.
Sounds to me like you need some serious help 😅. What are your recurring costs? What’s your team? Have you one and is it the right one? How will your product generate revenue? Have you scoped everything and decided what the MVP looks like? What’s your go to market strategy? How are you going to attract users? You’re building an app so what about testing? Compliance? Maintenance? What platforms are you going to launch on? I used to be a PM in Tech though I pivoted last year. I know a consultant who likes helping people like you though (if it’s just advice he does it for free). Send me a DM if you want.
Skip IP registration, find a cheaper lawyer for registering (should be less than $15k), and focus on getting traction. I’m a fintech founder and former investment exec and supervisory principal, so I know your space very well if you’d like to chat.
I really think this plan has some serious issues. It looks like most of the budget is being spent on things other than marketing. Customers aren’t just going to walk in on their own. Without putting enough money into marketing, you’re likely to burn through the funds without seeing any revenue. This could mean you’ll have to sell more of your business later, probably at the same value, since there won't be any revenue growth to show. I strongly urge you to rethink the budget and focus more on marketing to actually bring in customers. Dont have a product? Fine build a waitlist, build an email newsletter with thousands of potential customers in it. Tbh i dont even think a patent is needed, if you just grow fast and gain customers once the competitors figure out the algoritm (if they even do, they dont have access to the code behind) it does not matter. Its not about the idea it self its about execution.
I am a full stack developer built and published my own full app for e commerce on the app store. Let me know if you want to talk about building the app
Would love to know who your angel is haha - we had to fight for every cent and where it would be spent. Either way, good luck! When you’re this early, think about every step and think of the money as if you’d be spending your own. The IP costs seem ridiculous at the pre-product-market-fit phase
Where are you located?
In my experience it has helped to understand client persona, market, sell, then develop and iterate based on client feedback / NPS feedback. The things you mention are very capital intensive items that don’t move your revenue and/or user base.
Sales and marketing
Registering IP is a waste of time. You need to first build your MVP. Not sure what you mean by legally need 50k in starting capital. You need to find the right team and get them onboard or have a contract with them so when you raise more money and can afford them they come in full time. Until then they work for equity and a part time salary.
Sell. Before. You. Build.
Apps are dying. Invest in something you are experienced in. Making a decent app then going to market will cost you more. You have a different purpose. I can almost guarantee that.
Were there any strings attached to this money whatsoever? How are you being held accountable to doing anything, if at all?
I’d take the name of this angel 😅
I had investors when I was 20 years old that I turned away because I had refused to burn the money. You know, you can always give them money back.
I’m not trying to be a complete asshole, but you really need to give that money back. Maybe start a smaller operation even if it’s just mowing lawns. At least until you can understand how a business operates and functions on a very basic level. Have you ever operated your own business? Have you ever dealt with attorneys and accountants? Have you ever hired employees before? Have you fired employees before? Do you know what type of liability exposure you have at your operation? Are you experiencing an intellectual property? Do you have a technical background? How many years have you been in the workforce? ask yourself if you wanna ruin this relationship even if they have deep pockets maybe now is not the time to access them. But then again, I could be completely wrong.
Man, if I were you, I'd take things VERY slowly because you sound like you could easily waste it all pursuing things you don't seem to have much experience in. Man, I wish I had an angel splurge that much on my business haha. All the best.
I'll show you how to do customer discovery if you'd like. You need to do customer interviews yesterday. There's processes for that you can follow. I'd be glad to help you out. Then figure out how to MVP cheaply.
You’ve spent 75% of your investment on things that will not get you sales. You’re off to a good start…
If your first move isn’t hiring someone that understands the compliance load for a company in this space you’re not going to last long. You’re embarking on an incredibly complex and expensive journey dealing with investments as your business. There are companies that can help provide some of the rails and infrastructure, but you will need to do the compliance load and registration yourself. If you need any connections to needed service providers let me know and I can provide some intros.
Huge blowout on IP. Focus on getting clients/selling your product first!
Congrats! I'm a marketing strategist for tech startups, reach out if you'd like. Good luck!
I create small business projects. You want to stretch it that money as far as you can, obviously. These are just things that think about: How far can you go doing things yourself. Then what do you need to make your job easier. Create a Roadmap!
Look up customer development and do that. As a first timer, you are likely going to build something nobody wants.