Wunderkind Disrupting IP Management

His role model is Mark Zuckerberg, his twin inspirations are Elon Musk and a talk he heard on the problem of patent trolls from Union Square Ventures’ co-founder Fred Wilson. His name is Nate Cavanaugh, and he is the 24-year-old founder of Venice, Cal.-based Brainbase, a technology company that streamlines the management of trademarks, patents and copyrights — or, in the words of one of his investors, brings “the archaic, paper-shuffling world of IP management into the 21st century.” Brainbase has about 40 employees. Its clients include BuzzFeed, the Vincent Van Gogh Museum, and Sanrio. Its flagship product is called Assist, which includes a dashboard for tracking royalty payments and schedules; analytical tools for comparing IP asset performance by property, territory, partner, category and distribution channel; automated invoice generation and contract management; and artificial intelligence tools to identify potential opportunities for exploiting IP. The company is on the verge of expanding its product offerings to include a marketplace to facilitate IP-oriented transactions and a tool to enable IP filing and renewal.