INVENTIONS “Inventions” means all data, discoveries, designs, developments, formulae, ideas, improvements, inventions, know-how, processes, programs, databases, trade secrets and techniques, whether or not patentable or registerable under copyright, trademark or similar statutes, and all designs, trademarks and copyrightable works that I made or conceived or reduced to practice or learned, either alone or jointly with others, during my employment which: (i) are related to or useful in the business of the Company or to the Company’s actual or demonstrably anticipated research, design, development, financing, manufacturing, licensing, distribution or marketing activity; or (ii) result from tasks assigned me by the Company; or (iii) result from the use of premises or equipment owned, leased or contracted for by the Company.
DISCLOSURE: Confidential Information. In the course of providing the Services, I may learn of, or have disclosed to me, various “Confidential Information”. Confidential Information is any information designated or labeled as ‘confidential’ or ‘proprietary’ or which is of the type one would reasonably expect a business to maintain in confidence. Confidential Information includes, for example, technical information such as know-how, formulae, computer software, logic design, schematics, and manufacturing processes; business information such as information about costs, prices, profits, markets, sales, customers, and vendors; personnel information; and information relating to innovative activities, such as inventions, research projects, and plans for future development. Confidential Information includes confidential or proprietary information of a third party to which Company owes a duty of confidentiality or non-use and may also include Inventions (as defined below). Although certain information or technology may be generally known in the relevant industry, the fact that Company uses it, and how Company uses it, may not be known, and is therefore Confidential Information.
What do you call the time time period between creating something original and sharing it with others; pause between invention and disclosure? For a writer, it’s the space between the germ of an idea for a novel and getting that initial bit of feedback from somebody who has read the last sentence for the first time. For a painter it’s the period between having an image flash in your mind and the reaction of the face of the first viewer of her finished painting.
In between comes feverish, inspired, anxious execution. One needs to act on the initial creative impulse as quickly as possible, but also take the necessary time to realize its full potential.
For a startup, just as for any art work, the entrepreneur is paranoid that there is somebody else working on the same idea a the same time. Somebody who is faster and more talented and will bring it to life and be recognized for its invention first.
privacy in the age of social media?
stealth startups in the age where everybody is living in public?
Inventing Stickybits
In the case of stickybits, Billy Chasen and I met for a Pastrami sandwich at New York's 2nd Ave Deli in New York in the Fall. Afterwards we strolled through the East Village and talked about what was on the technology horizon. I was fascinated (like many) about FourSquare and the emergence of Augmented Reality apps. We talked about being able to look through the lens of a Smart Phone and see what things looked like in the past: the "ghost filter."
A few weeks later Billy told me he had a good idea that built off of this. He was quiet about it, and made me promise to keep a secret. I said ok. And as he whispered in my ear, I couldn't help but feel like Benjamin in the Graduate:
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.Benjamin: Yes, sir.Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?Benjamin: Yes, I am.Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Except Billy didn't say "plastics."
He said… stickers.
"Stickers?" I asked.
“Yup, stickers with bar codes that could be put on things and then scanned by an iPhone.”
My first reaction was the disgust of a capitalist when confronted by the poor idealism of an artist: "but stickers are so... so... analog... and business needs to be digital!"
But I stepped back, tried to think laterally, and grasped onto the metaphor of connecting bits to atoms.
Small lightbulbs started to go off. At first we joked about leaving a sticker on a lamp post, scanning it, and recording a video memory. So that somebody else could walk by that lamp post days later, scan the sticker, and watch the trace memory of what somebody else left behind.
We then brainstormed about how stickers could be placed on tables inside of venues and "claimed," as a more granular check in within FourSquare.
Not long thereafter, the fleeting initial idea developed the solid inevitability of a startup that needed to be formed. In short order came the name, stickybits; the requirement to support iPhone and Android devices, and feed into Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare social identities; and the feature of notifying users when their codes have been scanned by others.
Think about an improvisational, avant garde jazz group. Each instrument heads off in their own direction, at the same time, developing their own riff. Despite the seeming chaos of this process, each instrument has an underlying sense of time, of pacing, of a moment in the future when they are going to meet up and compare notes and present themselves as part of a single group to their audience.
Billy and I divvied up our respective areas of responsibility: he would orchestrate the engineering instruments while I would manage the business ones. We would collaborate around product development and creative design. Together, the tasks proliferated: devs in SF, LA and NY worked on mobile apps, while our SF designer iterated on formats for the stickers and the matchbook packaging; our IP attorney in Palo Also filed a provisional patent while our trademark lawyer in NY made sure that "stickybits" and "tag my world" were protected; we closed on our seed financing from Polaris and Mitch Kapor only weeks after we filed the docs to incorporate the company in the first place. It reminded me of one of those flash mobs that arrive at an empty plot of land, divide up all the different tasks of constructing a house, and 24 hours later the house is finished.
This is the sublime joy of starting a new company, from its invention to its disclosure. From the moment the first note is sounded, to the pause following its last note that directly precedes (one hopes) applause. Today, with so many layers of social, mobile and location-based technologies available on demand, the time frame between coming up with a new social media business concept and distributing its product to consumers can be measured in months if not weeks. In the case of stickybits, this journey cost us approximately $100,000 and took about 100 days.
From 2nd Avenue (Deli) to San Mateo (Techcrunch), as it were.
