Polish Patent Office Symposium – “From start to scale up. Universities perspective.”

Ron Marchant, Ray Wheatley, prof. Tadeusz Uhl and Dave Perry

After the coffee break, the first panel was held, with the theme of presenting the perspective of universities: “From start to scale up. Universities perspective.” Participants of the panel were: Dave Perry from The University of Texas at Austin, Professor Tadeusz Uhl from AGH University of Science and Technology and Ray Wheatley from MS CLP, United States.
Speakers noticed that it is often the case that during the so-called “elevator pitch” young entrepreneurs speak for half an hour and there are no specifics about it. After these 30 minutes, you still don’t know what they want to sell. Prof. Uhl, on the other hand, said that everything looks nice outside, but if it “gets inside”, there is nothing there. They emphasized that good business presentation is the basis and that start-ups need customers. Then they reported that only 30% of start-ups survived the first five years. An important message concerning the financing of start-ups is that too much money is just as bad as a lack of money.
They also pointed out that start-ups had to take milestones and that flexibility was important, and that we could not impose our thinking on them. It is also worth investing in a patent portfolio prepared with Polish lawyer or patent attorney.
At the end of the panel, the listeners asked questions. The issue of lack of knowledge about intellectual property was discussed, which is connected with the fact that we pay attention to marketing in the company, forgetting about intellectual property at the same time.