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Essential Guide To Protecting Your Startup Ideas From Day One

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Essential Guide To Protecting Your Startup Ideas From Day One

From the minute you come up with an idea for a business, you should also think about how to protect it. Unfortunately, there are many people out there who are more than happy to take an idea and turn it into their own business.

These people won’t necessarily be able to come up with good ideas, but they do have contacts. They know people in the right industries that can make things happen quickly, and before you know it they will have launched before you even have your first meeting.

Thankfully, there are ways to avoid this scenario. You have to be cute, clever, and agile. These tips will help you protect your idea from the moment it comes to you.

Protect Intellectual Property

Intellectual property, patenting and copyrighting is a complex subject. But if you have an original idea that nobody else has come up with, it is essential that you protect it. Good legal advice can help give you the right results, and although it will cost you it is a sensible investment. After all, if you don’t protect your idea, you may not have a business to work on. You can find more about intellectual property services at London IP to get you started.

Work Fast

Working quickly is the best thing you can do to stop people nicking your ideas. Get your startup plan up to scratch and if you are working alone, get things done in a structured but agile way. If you hire a team, think about getting them to sign a non-disclosure agreement and put them to work as quickly as possible. The faster you get things done, the less opportunity there is for theft.

Understand What Is Important

While it can be tempting to tell no-one about your idea, at some point it will become necessary. Whether you are looking for funding or starting to market a product, you will need to work out how to talk about it without giving too much away. Let’s say you have a cool idea for a specialist social network. It’s fine to talk about the over-arching concept of what it is, but you should avoid any mention of the inner workings of how it was built. It’s best to draw up where you draw the line at an early stage so that everyone in your team is used to talking about the product in a safe way.

Go Public

Part of your initial branding strategy should be getting your face out there. People don’t like doing business with businesses, they prefer doing it with people. And having your face as part of the product will help them identify with you. Once they can relate to you they will be more likely to stick up for you in the event there is any dispute over intellectual property. It’s a small thing, but it can be a very effective tactic.

Your product and ideas deserve to be given a chance. And it is only fair that you have the opportunity to create them. Make sure you don’t get stung, and give yourself the best chance of getting them out into the public realm. Best of luck!

I am the founder of Startup Today. I am the main writer and have put in many hours of work into creating this blog. If you want to find out more about me then lets get in contact.

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