March 2018

I am strong!  And now, I am smart.

—The Hominids (Saturday Night Live, 1979)

The ability to adapt nature to our needs is a remarkable and inventive talent.  If you want to use that talent to earn a living, it helps to be able to adapt human nature to your needs.

Matt told us about how he and four other engineers founded a company on a shoestring budget in their spare time.  The co-founders got along so well with each other that the attorney preparing the founding legal documents empowered the company instead of the co-founders.  All were equal partners and all had inventive talent but the company had nothing to sell.  Matt soon invented a marketable product that benefitted small businesses and that became the focus of the company.  He applied for a patent and, being the team player that he was, unconditionally assigned the patent rights to the company.  Customers liked the product and prospects looked so good that the company decided to sell stock to get money to manufacture 200 of the product.  Investors instantly provided $250,000.  The government granted the patent.  And everyone lived happily ever after?  No.

The day after the patent issued and became the property of the company, most of the co‑founders voted to oust Matt from the company.  Soon after, only two co-founders remained.

Like Aesop says, try before you trust.  The attorney should have empowered all of the individual co-founders instead of the company.  A goldenparachute clause could have protected Matt from loss of his invention by causing the patent rights to revert to him if he were fired.  A little caution can go a long way.

Thank you, Matt, for sharing this valuable lesson with us.