Investor Connect Podcast

Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing.

In launching your startup you must consider your intellectual property strategy.

Intellectual property or IP includes patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. 

You should trademark your company name.

For your technology, you can either file patents or keep it as a trade secret.

If you file patents, you first file a provisional patent which gives you one year to decide if you want to file a full patent.

Half the value of a patent is in raising funding, as investors give you credit for having technology that is substantial enough to protect.

It’s common to file multiple provisional patents and then for the following twelve months consider which patents are going to provide protection against competitors.  

Before the patents expire, you then file for a full patent on the ones you want to keep and you let the others go.

The alternative to patents is keeping trade secrets, in which case there’s no filing required.

If you have trade secrets make clear to prospective investors what value those trade secrets bring to your business.

Those who want to know the trade secrets must sign an NDA or non-disclosure agreement to learn more.

In discussing with prospective investors who have not signed an NDA, talk about the benefits of your trade secrets rather than how they work.  

For example, our trade secrets reduce the cost of product build by 3X. That way you receive credit without having to reveal them.


Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding.

Let’s go startup something today.
-----
For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org

Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/
For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/
For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/
For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/
For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/

For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group

Direct download: CEG_May_2020_Startup_Funding_Espresso_--_Legal_--_Intellectual_Property.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 12:15pm CDT

Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing.

In raising equity funding, you can only raise from investors who are accredited. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) establishes the criteria for those who are accredited.

You can see the specific requirements on the SEC website. Just search online for ‘sec accredited investor’ and it will come up.

The rules were set in 1968 and have changed only once since then.

In short, it’s anyone who has a net worth of $1M dollars, not counting the house they live in.

There’s also an exemption that allows up to 35 non-accredited investors to invest in your startup. This allows for family and friends funding. 

There’s no formal process for achieving accreditation, as most angel groups and startups raising funding require you to ‘self-declare’ accreditation.

There are two ways non-accredited investors can invest in startups: Title III crowdfunding platforms and Reg A+ offerings.

These require specific requirements such as licensing for the crowdfunding platform, and registration for Reg A+ fundraise.

They provide compliance work to allow for anyone to invest in a startup.


Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding.

Let’s go startup something today.
-----
For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org

Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/
For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/
For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/
For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/
For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/

For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group

Direct download: C_EG_May_2020_Startup_Funding_Espresso_--_Legal_--_Investor_Accreditation.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 12:06pm CDT

Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing.

In launching your startup you must consider employment law. 

You should check to see what contracts your prospective employee may have signed with a former employer around non-competes, non-solicitation agreements, and assignment of inventions. 

A non-compete means the employee cannot work for another company that competes with their former employer. If they signed one with a previous employer who is a competitor, then this may be an issue. 

A non-solicitation agreement prevents an employer from approaching your employees to hire them away. 

Assignment of inventions means the prospective employee must sign over their right to inventions during their work at your company.  

All employees should sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding their work at the company.  

All employees should have a contract that defines they are working ‘at will’, which means either the employer or the employee can terminate the relationship at any time.

Also, if offering stock options, this should be documented as well. 

Classification of employees is a key issue as the taxing authorities will see if you have misclassified an employee as a contractor to avoid paying payroll taxes, and meeting minimum wage requirements.

There are also wage payment laws that require payment for hourly workers at a certain frequency such as biweekly.


Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding.

For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org

Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/
For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/
For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/
For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/
For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/

For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group

Direct download: C_EG_May_2020_Startup_Funding_Espresso_--_Legal_--_Employment_Law.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 12:00pm CDT

In this episode, Hall welcomes back Jake Moilanen, Austin General Partner at Seraph Group.

Located in Austin, Texas, Seraph Group brings together successful individuals who share a passion for investing in technology startups. Opportunists join Seraph for a managed and curated portfolio of 20+ companies, for the ability to co-invest on a deal-by-deal basis, and for the opportunity to work with entrepreneurs. 

Seraph Group is an established investment firm providing qualified investors with an effective and economically efficient model to access a strategically-curated portfolio of early-stage companies in high-growth sectors in the U.S. They are currently fundraising and are focused on the Austin environment.

Jake is a serial technology entrepreneur turned investor. A technologist at heart, he has decades of experience from low-level hardware, to machine learning, to scaling super computers. He has used this experience to run all of product at multiple organizations. Additionally, he is a quantitative trader of the public markets, writing fully automated trading algorithms.

Jake completed a BS from the University of Michigan in Computer Science as well as a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Texas where he specialized in New Venture Creation.

Since his last interview with Hall, Jake explains that the company has been spending a lot of time on quant. He also goes into some detail about the exciting discovery the company has recently made. Jake shares what he is passionate about and on the flip side, the sectors he avoids. 

You can visit Seraph Group at www.seraphgroup.net.   

Jake can be contacted via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jakemoilanen/, via Twitter at www.twitter.com/moilanen?lang=en, and via email at jake@seraphgroup.net.

Direct download: Jake_Moilanen_of_Seraph_Group-_FOLLOW_UP.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 11:11am CDT

In today’s show you’ll hear investor perspectives on the COVID-19 impact on the cannabis market.

This is Investor Perspectives, I’m the host of Investor Connect, Hall T Martin, where we connect startups and investors for funding. 

It’s the time of COVID-19, cannabis is currently gaining regulatory approval across the U.S. The lockdown has declared certain sectors, including cannabis, to be an essential service. We have investors and startup founders describe the impact of COVID-19 on the cannabis market.

Our featured guests are:

Matthew Nordgren - 0:44
Davis Hess - 4:40
Marcus Estes - 7:18
Narbe Alexandrian - 10:17

I hope you enjoy this episode.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org

Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/
For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/
For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/
For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/
For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/

For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group

Direct download: Show_2_--_July_IP_Shows_--_Sectors_in_the_Cannabis_Market.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 9:05am CDT

In this episode, Hall welcomes back Mark Peter Davis, Founder and Managing Partner of Interplay. 

Interplay co-founds, incubates and invests in companies. The firm is sector, geo and stage agnostic focusing on disrupting industries through the use of technology and design. Interplay is located in New York City with offices across the U.S., the Philippines and South America.

Mark is a venture capitalist, serial entrepreneur, author and community organizer. Through Interplay Mark has built a platform of service companies that support thousands of venture-backed companies. These companies include Chelsea Capital, Firon Marketing, Founder Shield, Greenparc, Spark Digital, Spoke, Truman James and Venwise.

He is also the author of  The Fundraising Rules, a handbook designed to help entrepreneurs raise capital, and the founder of both the Columbia Venture Community and the New York Venture Community.  Mark also serves as a mentor to numerous accelerators in NYC.

Mark updates Hall on what he has been doing since the last time they spoke. He shares what he is currently excited about and which companies he has had good experiences with. Mark explains some of the challenges startups face and how he evaluates a team in the very early stages.

You can visit Interplay at www.interplay.vc.  

Mark can be contacted via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/markpeterdavis, via Twitter at http://twitter.com/mpd, and via email at m@interplay.vc.

Check out his blog at www.mpd.me, and his book, “The Fundraising Rules” at http://fundraisingrules.com

Direct download: Mark_Peter_Davis_of_Interplay_-_FOLLOW_UP.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 9:02am CDT

1