Found+READ: Comments by Blake Senftner

Blake Senftner — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 05:46:16 GMT

Taking care of your body has huge mental rewards. Often I find myself realizing solutions to issues right after getting my wind back from a 45 minute treadmill, or during a break from a several mile hike. Eating well and exercising gives me the stamina to push through crunch periods when others’ fatigue renders them useless. Meditating, maintaining a presence in the now and trusting one’s decision instincts goes a long way towards silencing the inner critic. I’ve also found that if I’m feeling stressed to check my thinking against this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion
which is a great means to tell if you’re playing yourself and cut it out.

Blake Senftner — Sat, 26 May 2007 18:50:56 GMT

We were bing informal, no agreements, at first. Essentially enlisting personal contacts. Now we have an agreement, that lists out a decending percentage for each party in a relationship chain.

Blake Senftner — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:37:21 GMT

My startup has hired the marquis patent firm, Fish & Richardson, to handle our patents. (F&R is considered the #1 patent firm in the world.) This is after working with another patent firm, then asking F&R to review their work and they pointed out numerous loop holes someone attempting to work around our patents could use. Although using patent firms is quite expensive, and we are the typical cash poor startup, their experience is quite valuable. Between both patent firms, the sophistication of our description and claims is significantly higher than what we could have done ourselves. Additionally, they handled filing our PCT (international patent) applications across a broad range of international territories.

Do we really need this? I think we do. We’re launching a significant technology with disruptive applications in multiple industries. We’re also aware of at least two, possibly three, other stealth startups working on variations of our main concept. If our early patent filing can block or force license payments from them, that is great for us. Without the patents, they could do the same to us.

I seem to remember that Friendster received a patent on their Social Network business model, and with that they were able to force the other social networks to pay them a royalty. For a company that innovated like they did, I think that it is just for them receive royalties.

Blake Senftner — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:01:04 GMT

Very useful. Thanks for the post!

Blake Senftner — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:33:36 GMT

Perhaps these will help?

http://smallbusiness.aol.com/manage/finance/article/_a/st…
http://www.entrepreneur.com/money/taxcenter/article178812…
http://www.startupnation.com/articles/1178/1/AT_How-to-Wr…