Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
For this week's edition, I interviewed Marius Almstedt, Co-founder of Patent Plus, a platform and marketplace for patented technologies based in Germany.
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Here’s what Patent Plus is all about:
🏠 The Basics
The Problem:
This problem is two-sided. There is so much research performed in research organisations creating valuable technologies, but researchers often struggle to find industry partners that will allow them to take the technology to market. Additionally, technology cycles are accelerating and companies face the decision of whether to build or buy new technology. Often, industry players don’t know which research organisations have the best capabilities and available technologies for their new products.
The Solution:
We are building a data-driven platform that allows industry, corporates, and startups to identify technologies and knowledge from research organisations that are not being used yet, but that could be used to develop new products with a commercial value.
The Team:
We are three co-founders. My background is in business, with a focus on innovation management. Simeon has more of a finance background, and our skill sets complement each other very well. And Florian, our CTO, has a background in data science. We also have one full-stack developer on the team and work with some freelancers.
🚀 The Journey
How did you come up with your startup/solution?
While I was doing my Master's in Copenhagen I was working for an advisory firm that advised corporates in Germany on strategy innovation, with a specific focus on how to invest in startups from the corporate side. The return on investment from these activities was pretty low, so our clients started looking into the technology behind the startups, to see whether the technology might be available from a research organisation for licencing, without having to invest in the startup. We didn’t have the expertise at the time to advise them on this, so instead some of our clients started going through a very fragmented process with patent lawyers, conferences, and cold calling to gather the information they needed.
I met my co-founder at university, and we both decided this would be a great problem to tackle. We were lucky that as part of our degree, we could take part in an incubator program whilst getting credits toward our degree. We got some great mentors through this programme, and also ended up writing our Master's Thesis about our startup. For our thesis, we interviewed many people from both the demand and supply sides, and most of those people are actually clients now.
Why is this the right time for this problem to be solved?
The problem we’re tackling has always been there. But now certain use cases make it much more important to access this research data faster, for example, climate tech. To get certain new technologies to market at scale, there has to be a more efficient way for researchers and companies to find each other.
What is a recent success you are proud of?
We recently closed our funding round, which was certainly a success. Beyond this, I am most proud of our customer success stories, because that’s really where we create the value. We had a customer who really wanted to invent a biodegradable plastic packaging, and they used our platform and we were able to match them with a Finnish research organisation. They were looking for the right partner for years, and now were able to find them, and they are co-developing a product that will benefit a lot of people.
What is a recent challenge you have faced?
It’s a constant challenge to recognise that most things take longer than you expect. We always set ambitious goals, but often find ourselves having to review them. To reach our milestones consistently, we focus on accountability and challenge each team member on tasks that worked well and tasks where support is needed.
What do you wish you knew before you started and is there anything you would have done differently in hindsight?
Looking back, we did some unpaid pilots in the beginning, because we wanted to get some initial feedback. However, in hindsight, I would recommend doing paid pilots because the incentives are then better aligned, and the customer will really sit down and think about the value of the product. This gave us even better feedback and brought us to the next level of product development.
🧠 The Lessons
What is the best advice you have been given recently?
If you ask questions in a biased way, then you will likely get the answers that you wanted to hear, and will easily go in the wrong direction. Instead, try to ask open-ended questions and see what direction the other person will take it, or even ask questions that are framed in a direction that you don’t want to go, to see whether that hypothesis is confirmed or not. You have to develop these strategies to really gather honest feedback.
What advice would you give to other young founders?
At the beginning of your startup journey, it is extremely helpful to be a generalist and not an expert in one individual field. Instead, rely on a network of experts who I can go to for advice. Generalists start the companies, and specialists scale them.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far?
If you don’t do something you’re passionate about, you won’t succeed in it. That’s definitely how it is for me. Keep asking yourself why you are building your startup. How will the world be different in 10 years if you succeed? Finding good answers to these questions is essential to push through the hard times.
✨ The Inspiration
Who inspires you?
My dad inspires me on different levels. He’s also an entrepreneur, and he’s always trying to be creative and have fun when working, and I think that’s a really important trait.
What book do you think everyone should read?
Podcast:
Two Sided - This is a great podcast about two-sided marketplaces.