I have a story to tell! I had to wait till a year after this settlement to tell this crazy, cautionary story. The one which we all think will never happen. I’ll likely cry writing all this out. I’ve cried a lot over this, as nothing can prep a person for commercial litigation. Or as a ‘little guy’ actually having to enforce protecting your ‘idea’. You write contracts daily, but you never have to implement them.

This is an important story to tell startup owners, founders and small business owners. It also defines what happens when someone, usually a small business owner or startup team, asks a genuine question about how to protect their IP and so-called ‘ideas’.

A miscalculating statement small businesses and founders are hammered is, ‘Ideas are worthless! Only execution matters.’ ‘No one wants to steal your idea!’ ‘VC’s don’t want your idea!’ ‘Execution only!’ ‘Someone better will do it!’ and so on. This statement needs to be revised (for some business owners anyway). In fact, after this experience, I’m wondering if it’s some sort of gaslighting.

If you have a good idea that you’ve turned into a physical product, it is very much ‘real’, and you should see it as such.

Ideas most certainly are ‘worth something’. Especially ones well formed even without ‘revenue’ or ‘traction’. If you have a patent or a trademark it is very much yours.

I work for a small startup lab. Up till recently, we were a research group. Tiny is a tiny startup of PhD types (only 11). We never hoped to ‘commercialise’, but we made a breakthrough, did so much testing, and decided to do so. One of us who had done a numbers subject with sciences became our numbers person. I was the one who loved thinking of words and ideas, so I did our branding strategy; I took our ‘breakthrough’ and named it, described it, made the branding colours, and did everything. Our other team members all did one thing. This was a challenging work. We had no money and were feeding ourselves with our research work, but despite all this, we created an entire branding, go-to-market, etc strategy.

This story particularly hurts as I was the one who sat thinking of the names, concepts and everything.

As PhD geeks, we began reading all the books on ‘business’ and reading everything we could, and the same statements came up whenever we had genuine questions: ‘How do we protect ourselves when we are speaking to investors ?!’ 'How do we protect ourselves when we are speaking to investors VCS’s ‘who can we trust’. You are bombarded with messages and statements telling you that no one wants your idea, no one cares, all that matters is execution, blah blah blah.

Well, they most certainly do. There are MANY ideas, but GOOD ideas which lead lead to GOOD products that work. It has been a breakthrough of hard work for people in a lab, working day in and day out, which is not 'worthless.

One thing I will honestly thank God for is us having worked in a lab before during our PhDs, working under someone we did patent writing for, and knowing ourselves about IP document templates. We learned to at least get an NDA and a vital document for anyone we interacted with; however, ultimately, we were ‘green’. Our professor helped us with our papers and lawyers, but our professor kept telling us what to add. He also confirmed that we patent and file trademarks for our slogans and names.

And so, we started our fundraising.

It was painful and enjoyable along the way, and as stated, we came across many people telling us the same old story. We met with one very, very huge VC. The parent company is HUGE. We got to know them and had some meetings, and that was it. We got their ‘feedback’ and moved on. That was that. We met many.

Some months later, there was a huge news story about how one of the brands within the same portfolio had had a huge raise and a new valuation, etc. Again, huge companies, another news day. Didn’t register.

I watched a tutorial on YouTube sometime after that, and a YouTube advert came up. It was the company. The brand is in their portfolio. Not only that, they had done a whole new rollout and brand for a new product. There was my friend’s product they’d spent so long making. There was my copy. I wish I was lying, but it was verbatim. Everything. I felt sick and literally vomited. NOTHING prepares you for such a moment. It wasn’t just an identical product, but there were my words, my everything; NOTHING prepares you for that. It is on YouTube in an advert for their big new rollout. MY WORDS. Even my damn copy was stolen EVERYTHING. THE NAME we made for it (well, a similar tone).

I guess this is the ‘execution is most important!’ aka ‘anyone can take your work and steal it after approaching you under the guise of investing, give it to their portfolio company, use it in a new deck for a new raise, and if they have more money they are allowed to. Because you’re small and your ideas are worthless.’.

No. If a person meets you and takes your work, then minus ‘execution’ simply makes a deck with your exact words to fundraise that is most certainly an ‘execution’ which has occurred, but it is the ‘execution’ of copy and pasting your deck to get money. A person can ‘execute’ giving your product to their portfolio company it’s something.

We felt utterly hopeless (and sick). This was a 9-figure company, but it was so blatant. Our tipping point was when we started seeing our stuff everywhere. My words are being used in slogans of other products. It was horrible.

We told our former professor, who was livid and said we should challenge it (God bless him). He has over 60 patents, his ‘day in the life’. He has seen it all. And VCs use him to do due diligence on other people’s inventions. First, he had to review all the contracts we’d had them sign (which he’d helped with) and the chain of events.

THANK GOD he helped us with those contracts because there were little things he put in there which ended up being game changers (for example, let’s say the company is some huge Delaware company you can slip into your contract that any disputes must be done in Texas) small titbit he adds but very critical as public cases are more damaging whilst Delaware has more ‘privacy’. Just little titbits like that. It’s more embarrassing.

We had also filed a patent and trademark at the time. I had yet to learn it would come in useful. The words and hashtags I’d come up with were also terms we used to argue our case. We had trademarked my copy and patented the product idea. When our professor told me to trademark those cool slogans, I never thought it would be helpful, but it did.

After reviewing all communications (we always took meeting minutes being nerds, emails, documentation shares, meeting timelines, and coincidences), he decided we had a case. Our state also has a ‘coincidence’ law template, unlike places like Delaware and Ding Ding! We’d signed our documents to be brought to dispute only in our state. No ‘privacy’ here!

Our lawyer took a long time, but he built a compelling case, and we started with a ‘cease and desist’ letter. It was about 10 pages long and detailed all the events, etc. They came back and disputed, and so it went. After a few letters, we realised we’d be burning money, so he asked us to file a lawsuit. This was beyond anything I’d ever comprehend, but anyone can sue anyone.

We filed it. The company settled. We demanded they remove everything relating to the product, our IP, everything they got during the process, etc. Damages etc. They settled. They did. I didn’t know what it really ‘meant,’ and I guess at this point, their rollout of this was beginning, and then it was…gone. My words were gone from their websites, social media, everything. Most importantly, the ‘roll out’ and product was GONE. GONE. GONE. It happened pretty shockingly.

Maybe we would have never been profitable. We could never succeed, but you couldn’t steal our IP and ‘execute’ it better, and we won. That was years of our lives; if we won or not, we knew we’d tried for it.

We did a successful raise and just did our second, and we are still a lovely little lab.

Another critical thing is to find a mentor, advisor, or someone. We just cried and cried. We couldn’t sleep. We felt lick. You can only spend up to 5 years doing tests for a potential new product. We’d have to move on. It’s not a random consumer product which we could think up again. It would be like doing a PhD again to find another breakthrough. No. Any person who has spent years in a lab working and working and working till a breakthrough and then getting all the certifications knows what I mean. You must do more than ‘redo’ that or ‘find a new idea’.

It was our former professor who got angry with us and said, ‘f**k no, you’ve got to fight this’. He sat with us, going through everything. This is an older man at a university sitting with us, reviewing everything. He kept us going. We wouldn’t have had the audacity to do it without him. I also didn’t know after how much they’d spent they’d fold. You need an older, more experienced person who is really looking out for you.

I hope this story helps anyone gaslit into the ‘your little ideas mean nothing! execution is all that matters!’ ‘The company that goes to market first!’. Even if they don’t ‘execute’, they can take all your stuff for a fundraiser or their own business. The money raised from your ‘idea’ is ‘real’ money. Please spend the money to file a trademark and patent it; it may be a game changer.

Keep your head up, everyone, as my professor told us after the case was settled and resolved. ‘now go off and make those millions!’ (yes, we cried and broke down when he said that, as he had truly been our rock). 😊

PS I pray you never have to go through this. Commercial litigation has changed my views on divorce, business, and everything, and I hope to never experience any situation where I must fight legally ever again. I can’t fathom how people cope with fighting ‘messy’ divorces, etc, with real children after going through this ordeal. It’s unfathomable. This experience has put me off any litigation (personal or professional) for the rest of my life.