Episode #52: Meet the Start-up Reinventing Patent Work with AI

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  Samantha Herrick:
  Today we talk with a company that has designed an AI to defend and enforce your patents.

  Paul Lee:
  It’s a simple mission, but providing exceptional value in the discovery, analytics, and reporting of intellectual property, patent landscape—it’s difficult to come by. There are a lot of walls and a lot of barriers everywhere. We create this next level of transactional efficiency and really set the market standard.

  Ray Wu:
  Happy to connect and build the ecosystem together. I think that’s what we can bring to the table—the network effects and the power of the network.

  Samantha Herrick:
  Hello everyone. Welcome back to this episode of Tech Optimist. Today we meet Patlytics. The people taking us through the episode from the AV team are Ray Wu, Managing Partner, and our guest today is the Co-Founder and CEO of Patlytics, Paul Lee. His background is really interesting, so I can’t wait for you to hear more about it.

  You’ll also hear my voice. My name is Sam, and I’m the guide, editor, and narrative writer for this show. Now, let’s dive in.

  A little bit of an intro into the conversation that you’re going to hear today between Ray and Paul: Paul has a really cool background and has been a venture capitalist for a really long time. Having that special background while now being the CEO of this newer company that helps inventors, engineers, and innovators protect, design, and enforce their patents for new technology is fascinating.

  I don’t know much about patents at all, and Paul does a really good job of explaining what their company does and how their AI can help a bunch of different groups of people. We do a quick dive on their website to talk more about their technology, and Ray also gives some insights on how special it is to have the large venture capital company and community that AV does to help out companies like Patlytics.

  So again, I’ll stop yapping, and we’ll get into the rest of the episode. Sit back, relax, and we hope you enjoy.

  As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not personalized advice and it is not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

  Ray Wu:
  Let me start by saying hi. My name is Ray Wu. I’m the Managing Partner of Alumni Ventures. Today I’m speaking with Paul, the CEO and Founder of Patlytics. We’re truly excited to support the company and be part of this journey together.

  Paul, we’ve known each other for a while. So before we dive into the product details, maybe introduce yourself and your company.

  Paul Lee:
  Awesome. Ray, thank you so much for having me. Super excited to speak with you and discuss many things.

  I’m Paul. I’ve been a venture capitalist for most of my career. Right before this, I was a Partner at Tribe Capital, a $1.6 billion fund investing with the mission of partnering with companies at critical inflection points. I’ve been an early-stage investor for most of my career as well.

  I’ve also been a vertical SaaS, vertical AI guy for the past 10 years, which is why later we’ll get into the reason why I was so attracted to the mission of Patlytics and what we’re doing here in the ecosystem.

  Just as a brief bio—I was born in Korea, grew up in Canada, and attended the University of Waterloo about 15 years ago. That’s also when I met my co-founder, Arthur, who previously founded the company Magic and had many successes there.

  We forged this path just under a year ago with the mission of providing exceptional value in the discovery, analytics, and reporting of intellectual property.

  Currently, we work with IP prosecution and litigation firms, in-house counsel of IP-centric corporations, and researchers to really harness this new power of AI for mission-critical workflows.

  When founding this company a year ago, it was just the two of us. Now we’re a team of 15 people. We’re headquartered in New York and have a couple dozen clients globally, including Fortune 500 companies, premier law firms, and other interesting organizations that have IP. We have synergies and relationships with them all.

  We started this company to wake up the sleepy giant of IP.

  Samantha Herrick:
  For Patlytics, I did a dive on their website so you don’t have to, to provide you with more context and information about what kind of company they are and a little bit about their mission.

  Paul just talked about their mission, but right in massive letters on their About Us page at www.patlytics.ai/aboutus, it says:

  “Create exceptional value in the discovery, analytics, and reporting of IP. Patlytics unlocks massive productivity gains in the IP community by providing a suite of customer-obsessed technology to aid in discovering, analyzing, and reporting on intellectual property data.”

  Now, for those of you who don’t know—which I didn’t—IP stands for intellectual property.

  In Patlytics’ space, that means they’re the premier AI-powered patent platform. They’re your trusted partner in patent creation, protection, enforcement, and defense.

  A little about their leadership team: Paul is the Co-Founder and CEO. Paul mentioned briefly that their other Co-Founder and CTO is Arthur Gen, Paul’s partner in this company.

  On their About page, they emphasize accuracy, insight, and partnership:

  • Accuracy: “Our data is meticulously curated and updated to ensure accuracy and reliability.”

  • Insight: “Gain valuable insights generated by AI to give you a competitive edge in your industry.”

  • Partnership: “We see ourselves as an extension of your team, committed to your success.”

  We’ll learn more about that later in the interview.

  We’ll hop into our first ad and then return to the rest of the interview with Ray and Paul. Like I say every episode, don’t go anywhere—hang tight, there’s much more to come.

  Sophia Zhao:
  Hey everyone, just taking a quick break so I can tell you about the AI Fund from Alumni Ventures.

  Alumni Ventures is one of the only VC firms focused on making venture capital accessible to individual investors like you. In fact, Alumni Ventures is one of the most active and highly rated VCs in the U.S., and we co-invest alongside renowned lead investors.

  With our AI Fund, you’ll have the opportunity to invest in a portfolio built entirely around advancements in AI. This fund consists of 15 to 20 investments in multiple fields where AI is making a huge impact, including machine learning, healthcare, education, transportation, and more.

  To get started, visit us at av.vc/funds/aifund.

  Now back to the show.

  Ray Wu:
  It’s always exciting. Sounds like you mentioned AI—are there any other industry catalysts or trends that influenced your decision to start this company? And how do you envision things proceeding long term?

  Paul Lee:
  Ray, you know this well. Back when I was a venture capitalist and we were doing deals together a couple years ago, AI was not at a critical inflection point.

  Now it obviously is. But during that time, and even now, there’s a lot of discovery, a lot of curiosity, a lot of people wanting to learn more about AI because it’s provided so much value to individuals and organizations in general. People just want more of it.

  When you have that kind of culture and theme, you can run into issues of snake oil—stuff that doesn’t really work, or stuff that’s security-prone, or has huge security risks.

  Paul Lee:
  There’s a bunch of wrapper stuff and a lot of noise. In this age of AI, you need to be very discerning. That’s something on trend with the current market development—the idea and sophistication of how to be discerning.

  Even in this patent AI market, there are many players, and I’d say 95% of them are probably irrelevant. This is mainly because they haven’t truly addressed not only the risks but also the tailwinds they should be following.

  To think deeper about this market: what I currently see is that people want better tech. There’s a big push for higher-value work using LLMs, and most importantly, people crave quality.

  The people I deal with day to day—patent attorneys—are some of the most sophisticated professionals in the world. They’ve gone through advanced education and extensive work experience to get where they are. That’s why quality is so critically important.

  What drives me and Patlytics is that there’s so much information in this patent landscape that’s still archaic. It’s difficult to access, with many walls and barriers everywhere.

  What we do—riding the tailwinds of this AI revolution—is create a new level of transactional efficiency that sets the market standard. Ultimately, this efficiency comes from making more information readily available at a lower cost and much higher speed.

  For example, people shouldn’t have to litigate over things that don’t really matter or later turn out to be trivial. The real value is maximizing efficiency to create that middle point.

  Ray Wu:
  Very, very cool. Maybe share a little about your funding rounds, the VCs supporting you, and what you’re looking for from the venture community.

  Paul Lee:
  With the venture community—first of all, I love it. The venture ecosystem supports and has created some of the best startups in the world. Just by deploying capital, you get to be part of creating opportunities, and that’s super cool.

  It’s even better when funds or GPs—or even their teammates and investment members—can also help on the operational side. And I don’t mean getting into KPI management or all that. Honestly, I’d prefer they stay out of that.

  But in terms of customer development, introductions, key hires, or even what AV did for us—providing temporary office support when we were just kicking things off in New York—that’s been extremely helpful. That’s what makes great VCs: they understand where support is truly helpful and where it’s better to stay hands-off.

  Ray Wu:
  Maybe share some of the VCs currently supporting the company.

  Paul Lee:
  Yeah, so the funny thing about our funding round is that it was completely preempted from the start. Surprisingly, we never even had a proper pitch stack.

  Gradient, APC, you guys (AV), Liquid 2, and Myriad Ventures have all been fantastic on our cap table. Other key VCs and angel investors also joined.

  The round was very preempted and completed quickly, mainly because, in my opinion, you and other supporters recognized that when Arthur and I set out to build this, we were doing it very seriously.

  It means a lot that the support was understood and acted on immediately. So yes, we’ve raised about $6 million at Seed, and once we hit our milestones, we’ll be targeting a Series A.

  Samantha Herrick:
  All right, you know what time it is—we’re wrapping up the episode. Here’s our last ad, and then we’ll finish it off.

  Speaker 6:
  Do you have a venture capital portfolio of cutting-edge startups? Without one, you could be missing out on enormous value creation and a more diversified personal portfolio.

  Alumni Ventures, ranked a top-20 VC firm by CB Insights, is the leading VC firm for individual investors. If you believe in investing in innovation, visit av.vc/foundation to get started.

  Samantha Herrick:
  So again, I want to provide more information on how Patlytics does what they do.

  This is read directly from their website, so I’m reading it for you—but feel free to check it out. The link is in the show notes as always.

  As an AI-powered patent platform, they have an advanced AI engine for intellectual property so you can stay ahead with comprehensive discovery and analytics.

  This AI offers litigation intelligence to safeguard your IP with cutting-edge monitoring and detection.

  They have an AI patent drafting copilot that leverages their engine to save time, control the quality of the invention disclosure, and smart-label figures.

  They also offer office action response capabilities to optimize responses, reduce manual workloads, and significantly increase success rates.

  Their white space detection monitors patent life cycles, pinpoints discovery strategies, and identifies portfolio gaps.

  Patent inventory harvesting provides oversight across all IP assets, streamlines portfolio management, and enhances immediacy.

  Patlytics enables you to access all your data and discover insights in one place.

  They offer market-leading tech and deep industry expertise, combining unmatched knowledge with powerful AI tools built for patent professionals.

  Their comprehensive workflow coverage allows you to manage each aspect of patents—from drafting to litigation—on one platform.

  They provide unmatched quality with AI enablement to navigate complexity with accuracy and precision.

  Finally, they deliver innovative and sophisticated solutions that empower effective patent defense and enforcement.

  Ray Wu:
  Yeah, it’s great to be part of this journey. I’m glad we’ve kept in touch and learned about your funding round. Do you have any requests for the Alumni Ventures community? How can we help?

  Paul Lee:
  No, I mean you guys have been extremely helpful. Again, the office support was amazing. What really impressed me was when Jin and Helen introduced me to, what, 20 different potential customers? I didn’t know AV had those kinds of resources and support—it was such a pleasant surprise.

  I think relevant events and key hires are always helpful. But really, just being there through the ups and downs has been very valuable, Ray. So, thank you.

  Ray Wu:
  Yeah, no worries. When you mentioned Marriott Ventures—that’s the one with Xerox, right? I think I introduced you.

  Paul Lee:
  Yeah, you did introduce me to Marriott. Initially, I was like, “Man, do I talk with them? I don’t know much about them.” I almost dismissed it—I told you, “No, Ray, I do not want the intro.” But you said, “No, these guys are good.”

  So yeah, I chatted with them—Chris, Dean, and the whole team over there have been phenomenal for us as well. Thank you for that introduction.

  Ray Wu:
  Anytime, anytime. Glad to help.

  As a community, we just want to provide connections—within our networks, Alumni networks, and the broader industries. We have a large portfolio, so we’re happy to connect and build the ecosystem together.

  That’s what we bring to the table—the network effects and the power of the network. Great to have you as part of the community, and I really appreciate you spending time with me today.

  Samantha Herrick:
  Thanks again for tuning into The Tech Optimist. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d really appreciate it if you gave us a rating on whichever podcast app you’re using.

  Remember to subscribe to keep up with each episode. The Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions—please email us at [email protected].

  Be sure to visit our website at av.vc. As always, keep building.