Patents: Utterly Useless and Absolutely Essential For Startups

Though patents won’t provide value for years, startups need to build a competitive moat from the beginning

DC Palter
Entrepreneurship Handbook
6 min readSep 13, 2023

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Patent application for flying machine from the US National Archives.

Long before a startup books its first dollar of revenue or even has a fully baked product, investors demand the company have patents, as if they were more important than customers.

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Entrepreneur, angel investor, startup mentor, sake snob. Author of the Silicon Valley mystery To Kill a Unicorn: https://amzn.to/3sD2SGH