1. How did you get into intellectual property?

In 1991 I was completing my Master's degree at the MIT Media Lab, when a bunch of seemingly significant discussions were taking place about IP ownership.  People like Richard Stallman were arguing that software patents were bad.  Some of my fellow students were complaining that MIT held an ownership interest in the IP that students created as part of Lab projects. There seemed to be a lot of confusion on the basic issues.  The engineers did not seem to totally grok the legal issues, and the lawyers and politicians did not understand a single thing about the underlying technology.

As a relatively deep geek computer scientist/mathematician, I found myself unable to participate productively in these discussions because I did not understand the legal issues being discussed.  Other than a basic grounding in high school civics, I was not up to speed on constitutional law or modern theories of property ownership. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation had recently been established and a guy named Mike Godwin had demonstrated the value in being a lawyer who understood technology policy issues.  Mike thought my going to law school would be a good idea.  I also had a chance to (quite informally) bounce the idea off the likes of Mitch Kapor, John Perry Barlow, Nicholas Negroponte, Marvin Minsky, and, I kid you not, Noam Chomsky, each of whom had plenty of reservations about adding another lawyer to the world, but all of whom eventually concurred that it would be nice to have more lawyers who understood technology and who could, in the words of Barlow, "avoid being part of the problem."

So I went to law school, moved to San Francisco, and developed a practice handling legal issues for technology companies, including a lot of intellectual property.  Ironically, the issues that inspired my legal career — where the bounds of IP law should begin and end — are still being argued more heatedly than ever.

2. Is now a good time to start up a business?

Yes.  It is always a good time to start a business.  I argue here (http://www.brentbritton.com/?p=71) that the time is ripe for another strong burst of entrepreneurial energy in the world akin to the late '90s.  If you've got a good idea for a business, it has never been easier to start a company with not a lot of capital.  Developments like cloud computing, low-cost rapid prototyping, and back office administrative service providers have really cut startup costs a lot.

3. How important are trademarks?

Trademarks are among your company's most precious assets.  Your trademark protects your brand name, which in turn is representative of your reputation for quality.  Choice of brand name, company name, and domain name should all be made with trademarkability in mind.  To put it bluntly, you cannot sell what you do not own (http://www.brentbritton.com/?p=69).  If you plan to get acquired someday, it will help if you can demonstrate exclusive ownership of your brand names.

4. Can you highlight the most important things that start-ups should be thinking about from a legal perspective?

Most important things?  I have 2:

1. Get it in writing.  Your company is all about relationships.  Relationships with co-founders, investors, employees, customers, and competitors.  If you expect those relationships to be predictable, mutually understood, and ultimately productive, you must — absolutely must — get those relationships memorialized in a written agreement. 

I am not suggesting you should not be as good as your word.  I am not suggesting that your handshake doesn't count.  You should and it does.  But you should not expect these things to be true of anyone else. How do you know the other person is thinking what you're thinking unless you spell it out in detail?

Agreements are the recipes that instruct people and companies what to do in furtherance of their many relationships.  They are little pieces of software that operate on the people and companies who sign them.  They must be complete and fault tolerant.  They must be readable and understandable. But even if they're scribbled slapdash on the back of a napkin, they must be in writing.

2. Be ethical.  Be honest.  Tell the truth.  It matters.  If you goof up, raise your hand and claim the foul.  Don't try to hide it.  A lot of people have gone to jail not for goofing up, but for lying about it after the fact.  A lot of people have lost cases they should have won because the jury found out about a past instance of untruthfulness. 

The law cares about the truth.  Lying about your products to the public is called false advertising or unfair competition.  Lying about other people is called disparagement, libel, and slander.  Lying under oath is called Perjury.  Lying about important facts is called fraud.  Each comes with a host of punishments.    And even though it may appear that bad behavior can lead to success, I claim that kind of success is very short term or else has a steep cliff waiting at the end.  Bernie Madoff made a lifelong career out of lying, and I hope it was a fun ride because now he's going tol die in jail.

People care about truth.  We will forgive you for making a mistake.  We will flay you for lying about it.

As a business person, one is faced with a spectrum of moral choices most every day.  Sometimes the right choice is unclear.  Sometimes the *right* choice and the *profitable* choice are diametric opposites.  When in doubt, tell the truth.

5. Any general hints and tips you would give to people who are thinking about selling their website?

If you're selling a website, you're probably looking to maximize profit on the sale.  One way to do this is to bulk up the portfolio of things you're actually selling.  And one way to do that is to obtain and register as much intellectual property as possible.  Register the copyrights in your written works, audiovisual works, and software, and voila, you've just created new assets where none existed before.  Apply for patent protection on your technical advancements and you've now got something to sell that's more valuable than your inventions alone.  Register your trademarks and you've magicaly created new assets to sell.  Keep your valuable ideas secret and they will retain more value in a subsequent sale of the company. Oh and, by the way, don't just sell the website.  Form a company around the website business and sell that. 

Do all of this and now you're selling not just a website, but a web-based company with a thorough portfolio of IP assets.  Make sure that portfolio is complete and that contracts are in place demonstrating that your company actually owns the IP, and you've got  a lot more to sell than just an undifferentiated website.

6. From a business perspective, which, in general, is the most useful to you: LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter?

You'd think it would be LinkedIn, but it's probably Facebook.  I do not use LinkedIn as actively as I suspect I could.  LinkedIn is my resume, but Facebook is like a cocktail party where I can sorta work the room at leisure.  I have always done well developing business at cocktail parties. 

7. Who is your favourite entrepreneur right now?

Me!  Stay tuned on brentbritton.com for more info. 

Er, no, I mean, all my awesome clients.

But seriously folks, I'd have to say Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com.  Fanatical devotion to customer satisfaction as a new paradigm for wealth maximization. 

I lecture on this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..ILI_EkAcdU

In regards to selling a website, do you have any general advice about
how to approach potential buyers?

Approaching potential buyers…  Not exactly legal advice, but I'll tell you what I know.

 If you have built a company around your website as I advise above, then
you'll be selling the company, which means you can do it yourself or turn to
investment bankers or business brokers who specialize in M&A (mergers and
acquisitions) for small businesses. Seek out highly reputed houses and always shop
around. Fee arrangements vary.

If you have not built a company around your website, you can check out some of the various available website brokerages and exchanges.  Google "website for sale" and see what you think.  I have no experience with any of the companies listed.

If you elect to go it alone, with no help from a banker or broker, then you're really in no different position than any other salesperson with something to sell.  Your job is to convince a buyer to part with their hard-earned cash in exchange for your website, which means you'll probably want to draft up a so-called "one-sheet" or flier describing the site and extolling the benefits of owning it.  Be truthful within the four corners of that document, of course.  Then, identify some likely buyers and get in touch.  It might be nice to open with a polite, direct query letter asking if the recipient would like to learn more about the possibility of purchasing your site.  Be aware that nearly every modern jurisdiction now has laws on the books regulating the dissemination of unsolicited commercial email, so be careful to abide by your local laws.  You may wish to check out more general exchange sites where people sell personal effects, such as craigslist for example. Perhaps you could auction it on eBay?

 I hope this helps.  Best of luck!

-brent

> Entrepreneurial qualities -
what qualities make a great entrepreneur?

1. Be T-Shaped or, even better,
Pi-shaped

Some folks
claim that the best entrepreneurs are T-shaped. 
These entrepreneurs have broad experience up top with a very significant
depth in one area.  You need to be an
expert in one area, but you need to be adaptable enough to be able to
understand a bunch of different areas. 
You need to be half geek, you need to be half showman, and you need to
be very personable, alongside your one great area of expertise. 

I claim
that even better entrepreneurs are pi-shaped, thus: π.  I think you need two areas of great expertise
if you can get them, and preferably two that are not obviously or intrinsically
related, so you can cross them.  New
perspectives always create valuable ideas. 
Transition points between worlds are where the coolest forms arise.  I think the best entrepreneurs have two
disciplines, plus all of the adaptable competence up on top.  They are crossing one perspective with one
entirely different perspective coming to an entirely new place and creating an
entirely new business.

2. You Don’t’ Need an MBA

You don’t
need a MBA, and you don’t need to know a whole bunch about the formalities of
business to be a successful entrepreneur. 
You need to be good at some business elements.  You need to be good at sales, for example, and
you need to know enough math to get through financial statements.  You need to be good at communicating with
other people and perhaps moving them to your will.  You need to know how to wear a tie and shake
a hand, or wear jeans and flip a peace-sign, depending on the environment you
are in.  And that’s another thing you
need to be is adaptable and somewhat chameleon-like. 

The best entrepreneurial
clients I’ve ever had, the ones that were the most successful and sold their
companies for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, had two people at the
helm.  One was really good at producing the
technology and the other was really good at operating the business.  I wouldn’t bet on the technologist without
the business person by their side. 
Someone has got to care about the business, but you don’t need an MBA,
you just need to know how to interact with other people and manage them well
and promote the company with passion.  Which
brings me to…

3. You Need a Heart

You need a
heart.  You need passion.  You need excitement.  You need to be the one person in the world
who cares more about your company or your business idea than anybody else
because if it’s not you, it’s not going to be anybody else.  If you can’t be the single most passionate
person about your idea, then you lose. 
If someone comes along and knows your area and cares about it and indeed
loves it more than you do, you lose, you’re not going to be great.  You’ve got to be obsessed with your
business.  You’ve got to care about it
more than practically anything else in your life except possibly your spouse
and children because no one else will.  You’ve
got to be the leader there.  You’ve got
to be the pied piper because no one else is going to do it for you. 

When I say
you need a heart, I also suggest that you need to really care about
people.  You need to really care about
making their lives better if they are your customers.  You need to really care about making their
company more valuable if they are your strategic partners and if they are your
employees, you need to really care about making sure that they get out of bed
wanting to come to work everyday with you as their leader.  Not just in the sense that you give them
orders and ask them to do things and they do it to please you, but in the sense
that you are their moral and spiritual guide to what your company’s purpose and
vision is all about.  You need to have a
heart and you need to be passionate about your idea and it needs to bleed off
you.  If you can’t pull that off, you may
not have found the right idea yet.

> Creative thinking –
how do you come up with ideas 

> what do you do to get into a creative
frame of mind?

If you're trying to come up
with a valuable business idea to pursue, try this: Find the places where privileged access or market inefficiency creates
chokepoints and crush them!

Observe where someone has
privileged access to a certain functionality, or certain information.  Start a company that routes around that stuff.  Remember what encyclopedias were like before
Wikipedia?  You had to be an ordained
expert to write an article in an encyclopedia. 
Now, everyone can contribute. 

Think about all of the
chokepoints in your life.  Think about
all the inefficiencies, think about times in which you are wasting time, wasting
money, and wasting energy waiting for things to happen that are beyond your
control.  Think about resources you
cannot access or value you cannot create produce due to artificial constraints,
whether they be customary, legal, regulatory, or what have you. 

Contemplate when you are
unable to get something done because you need to go to a special place or see a
special person and pay them lots of money. 
Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to wait?  If you didn’t have to go see that special
person?  Maybe there’s a way to innovate
around that blockage.  Think about that;
find the chokepoints in your life.  Find
the places in your life where you are saying, “for the love of god, why can’t
this be different?” And make it different.

Look very closely at places
where status quo complacency is
tolerated.  Find people who are saying, “Well,
that’s just how we do it here,” or “We’ve always done it this way.”  Think about how to make their lives better.

Think about where people
have pain, and ponder how to make the medicine.

To maintain a creative
frame of mind, question every care axiom and every firmly held belief.  Take your most sacred assumptions and hold
them up to the light and ask yourself, “What if that were no longer true?  What would the world be like then?”

Forget who you are.  Forget your resume.  Forget what you know.  Forget what’s impossible.