Category Archives: Uncategorized

My friend Michael Trout says: Fourteen million business plans are submitted each year in the U.S. (according to Google Aardvark) and only 2000-3000 (according to Adeo of TheFunded.com) are deemed successful! So, if you are submitting a business plan then you have a 0.0214% of getting funding each year! From a systemic perspective, most startups…

A lot of people come to me with the question, “I’ve got a great business/product/service idea. What do I do next?” If you find yourself asking this question, my advice is to become a full-time entrepreneur and start a company to make and sell your product or service. In my experience, that is the best…

Ever paused to reflect on the odd nature of jurisdiction? The rules that govern your behavior change as you move to different sections of the earth’s crust. Don’t like the rules here? Go stand on another rock. Land-centric provincialism seems increasingly archaic in the age of the internet, a truly global village where the rock…

The (rather spartan) slides from my recent talk, TOp Ten Legal Issues for Startups, are here: http://www.slideshare.net/bcjb/top-ten-legal-issues-for-startups Video coming soon…

I’ve gotten a little play lately for saying, “Linkedin is your resume; Twitter is your personality.” (Borges, Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing, 2009.) Now I’m being asked, in so many words, “OK bub, you think you’re so full of pith and vinegar… Let’s have a metaphor for…

Three Reasons Why It’s the Dawn of the Entrepreneurial Age. Opening Keynote, TechVenture2009 Conference, 16 Nov 2009, Tampa Some moments matter more than others. Humanity is at an inflexion point in history that makes this moment the Entrepreneur’s moment. When the history of this time is written, they will call it the true dawn of…

Why should I bother with patents? Don’t they take forever to be awarded? Doesn’t copyright last longer? (And aren’t patents evil?) The conservative (as in conservation of value – I’m not using it in the political sense) business practice is to patent wherever possible and use copyright registration or trade secret protection as simultaneous regimes…

Ein minuten, bitte. Aren’t you forgetting something back there? If my company doesn’t get a work-for-hire agreement, why can’t we just get an assignment agreement later?” As assignment is good, but not as good as a work-for-hire. A proper work-for-hire is a permanent vesting of copyright ownership in the buyer. But if there is no…

Why do I need employment agreements? Can’t I trust my own employees? Of course you should hire people you can trust. You may even enjoy a personal bond with your employees and treat them like friends and family. But the employment relationship is fundamentally a business deal. And business deals should be governed by written…