Nothing that I could not re-license again later. I lost the patents in progress as I didn’t have the resources to continue with them, but this was actually a blessing in disguise. Rather than protecting the IP by patents I was forced to concentrate on trade secrets which if you have the choice is a much better way to go.
If anyone is interested in learning more I wrote a rather long blog post about the whole experience [1].
I was in a situation where angry clueless investors wanted to keep the software as an asset they were entitled to, but it was close to worthless without the engineering knowledge. They tried to shop the MVP around but got nowhere. If I could have kept it I would have tried to keep it running on the side.
One of the best comments I ever heard was from a Windows engineer talking about a source code leak several years back: "Sure, but how are they going to build it?"
Sure if your investors are going to be idiotic about the situation then this might not be possible, but it is an option worth exploring and in my case it worked out well.
danieltillett|10 years ago
If anyone is interested in learning more I wrote a rather long blog post about the whole experience [1].
1. http://www.tillett.info/2015/06/24/why-i-kept-my-startup-in-...
guelo|10 years ago
13of40|10 years ago
danieltillett|10 years ago