
Ask HN: How to sell our IP? - slingcode
My cofounder and I have a payments startup that couples consumer-facing ACH with international payout. We’ve raised about $500k of convertible debt, mostly in chunks of $25-50k from angels (a process that can only be described as excruciating). We’ve both been C-level execs at startups with &gt; $30M in revenue and successful exits, but we’ve had a difficult time raising institutional money - partly because of where we’re located, and partly because we’ve done a poor job of telling our story.<p>We’re set up for consumer-facing ACH, with a nice KYC process (custom Yodlee integration, mobile photo id upload). We have a very favorable banking contract - an FBO account with great pricing, generous limits, a direct-to-Fed ACH provider, and terms that <i>may</i> allow ACH cryptocurrency conversion. We also have the ability to pay out to about 30 countries in South America, Africa, and Asia. The flow of funds is completely automated including reversals. It’s a modern code base : Golang&#x2F;Redis&#x2F;Postgres on AWS (~120k LOC).<p>We’ve just launched the product in beta, and have about a dozen SMB customers but we’re completely broke. Our product is somewhat differentiated (other unique features, not relevant here), but given the increasingly crowded payments landscape, we feel we’d need a 7-figure raise to make a go of it, and that doesn’t seem likely in the short term.<p>With that in mind, we’d like to see if we can find a home for the codebase. Given the rapidly expanding number of companies doing consumer-facing ACH, we feel the product probably has value to someone, but we have no idea how to find them. Normally, a well-connected VC would help with this. Suggestions??
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doug1001
there are companies who specialise in this sort of thing--ie, IP brokers, i
suppose is what they are.

for a flat fee (or a piece of the action) they will search for licensees for
your IP. The largest such firms don't really do any "searching" because they
have built a permanent marketplace of licensors & licensees.

the shop i know about is yet2.com; yet2 was started around 2000 by Ben DuPont.
I have not done business with them, nor do i know anyone who has

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slingcode
Thanks for the tip!

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bob_theslob646
I suggest you do a search of all the VC'S that specialize in financial
services and start shopping around.

Another idea is to try and sell to a competitor as a way for them to
strengthen their patent portfolio and potentially work for them.

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shapiro92
hey @slingcode can you send me an email here hqcx7@slipry.net its a burner
email address so I dont put my real one online.

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slingcode
Sent

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matt_the_bass
How many employees are you? What are your plans for them?

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slingcode
Five employees. Developers can stay on if needed.

