Getting a meeting with a prospective licensee feels like a big win, and it is. You may have spent months, sometimes years, developing your technology, filing patents, building prototypes, researching the market, preparing presentations and trying to figure out which companies might actually be interested. Then one of those companies
If you’re developing healthcare technology today, one of the most important questions you can ask yourself isn’t whether your innovation works—it’s whether you’re thinking too small. That may sound surprising, especially if you’ve spent years developing a technology, validating it, protecting it, and refining its commercial potential. Most innovators become
Most early-stage founders think about R&D spending in one direction: money out. You fund the research, develop the technology, test it, refine it, protect the intellectual property and keep investing until, hopefully, you have something you can bring to market. That makes sense if you think of R&D strictly as
The Real Reason Your Patent Isn’t Getting Licensed Here’s what venture capitalists and startup researchers have known for years: startups don’t usually fail because the market rejected them. They fail because the founders give up. Paul Graham of Y Combinator calls it “startup suicide.” Noam Wasserman’s research found that
Expanding into a new market always looks exciting from the outside. Maybe it’s a new country, a different industry, another customer base, or a distribution channel you haven’t pursued before. You look at the size of the opportunity and naturally start thinking about how much business you could generate. But
You’re in the raise. Maybe you’ve had a few good conversations. Maybe you’re already in due diligence with one fund and circling back with two others. You know the round is coming — it’s just a matter of when. And the burn clock is ticking. Every founder who’s been through
You believe you have valuable intellectual property. You’ve spent time developing it, probably spent money protecting it, and perhaps built prototypes, conducted testing, refined the technology, or even generated some initial market interest. Now you’re ready to license it, but you don’t necessarily have the experience, contacts, or time to
I had a client reach out to me after what he described as a strong call with a potential licensing partner, and from the way he explained it, you could understand why he felt that way. The company was engaged, they understood the opportunity, and the conversation had moved beyond
When someone brings me a new technology, product, or piece of intellectual property, the first question is rarely about the invention itself—it’s whether they’re prepared to build an entire business around it. That’s the real fork in the road: take on the cost and complexity of commercialization yourself, or license
