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Marc Köhlbrugge
PRO
@marc
Actively using the mark already provides legal protection. Even if it's not formally registered. The latter however, does make legal proceedings a lot easier (and less expensive).
Also, start collecting all "evidence" you have of customer confusion. When someone emails you but it's really about the other Prototypr, save those emails! Also reply asking for confirmation that they meant the other site.
All of this will be useful when you take legal action.
Talk to a trademark lawyer. Have them send a cease and desist and file for a trademark registration with USPTO.
If you don't actively defend your trademark you risk losing your rights. You wouldn't want to get into a position where YOU have to change your brand name. Additionally, if you ever plan on selling your business, having a strong mark (registered, successfully defended, etc) will help your valuation.
DM me for an introduction to a really good TM lawyer I've worked with many times before.
Also, start collecting all "evidence" you have of customer confusion. When someone emails you but it's really about the other Prototypr, save those emails! Also reply asking for confirmation that they meant the other site.
All of this will be useful when you take legal action.
Thanks Marc, all the extra info is really useful. I don't know much about TMs but I did register a UK trademark - not sure if that carries any weight anywhere else though.
I'd really appreciate the intro to the TM laywer and will drop you a message!
Recently finished reading:
Poor Charlie's Almanack
Recently re-published by Stripe. It's a collection of Charlie Munger's talks. Although it did get repetitive (many of his talks cover similar topics and ideas), I really enjoyed reading about his mental models. It's the last chapter.
Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Collection of Naval Ravikant's writings, tweets, etc. Talks about achieving happiness and wealth.
SaaS Playbook
Very practical book for SaaS founders. Contains all the fundamentals. Good read for most WIP members I think.
A Man for All Markets
Autobiography of Edward O. Thorpe who invented the first blackjack card counting system to beat the casinos. Later also beat the market with clever trading techniques. Really interesting person and book.
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography
Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin. If not for being one of the USA founding fathers, you've seen him as the face of the $100 dollar bill. Other than that, I didn't know much about him. But after @oskarth recommending me his autobiography I've developed a lot of respect and intrigue into this businessman, politician, scientist, inventor and more.
Currently reading:
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
The autobiography was really interesting and left me for wanting more. So I'm now reading the biography written by Walter Isaacson.
Weird fun fact: When my psych stats professor made tenure, he taught us how to count cards in blackjack, since it's all statistics anyway.
I used that to pay off over $80,000 of my student loans, so it's easily the most valuable thing I learned in all 5 degrees. Anyway, I'm too chicken to drive to Vegas and count there since I'm pretty sure I'll end up in the desert 😆
Anyway, I'm currently reading "Gilgamesh in the 21st Century: A Personal Quest to Understand Mortality"
I prefer either long-form articles or long-form (3+ hours) video essays, and I've been binging content on Star Trek, world building, Dark Souls, game design, game mechanics, branding, and storytelling.
I almost exclusively consume long-form content, though.
I think I listened to all Naval podcasts several times. I definitely need to buy myself an "Almanack of Naval Ravikant." He inspires me always.
As others already pointed out you can just ping me ( [email protected] ) or using the new DM feature ( wip.co/messages/marc ) or by using the widget on desktop (bottom right corner) or if it's something you think is worth a community discussion by posting it here.
As for your suggestion about hiding old posts: some posts are still useful when they are old, so I wouldn't want to automatically hide all. Allow users to flag them is an option, but I try to avoid adding features that require manual labor (e.g. me reviewing flagged posts).
Maybe the most pragmatic "solution" would be to show timestamps (when the post was created or last replied to) so you can just skip over them manually. Would that solve it for you?
I totally agree with not adding manual labor for you.
Perhaps a "hide" feature? And maybe further, if it gets hidden x times by users you could consider hiding old posts... but even if not, the ability for me to hide them for myself would reduce my own personal cognitive load.
It just kinda sucks to want to help and go to "Unanswered" to help but see stuff that is irrelevant (either by date or by subject matter or both).
I very much agree about not removing questions/posts after 30 days (or ever). If they haven't been answered, someone might be able to later. Even if OP isn't active here anymore, someone else in the community might like that info. If they have, the comments could provide really valuable insights.
You're busy enough without extra busywork anyway.
For me it's Twitter and (programmatic) SEO. Those are channels that come natural to me. They are somewhat predictable and I enjoy working on them.
I try to avoid building products that require other marketing channels.
That make sense, especially if it's something that comes naturally for you. Twitter can work really well if your audience is there, especially that the build in public is strong there. :)
Hi Hugo, welcome to WIP!
I have no issue going on calls with people, and I've done marketing for other people quite well, yet, when it comes to marketing my own products or services, it has always been a challenge and feel overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done.
If you have any advice or strategies to help me overcome this internal barrier that is preventing me from achieving the results I want, I would greatly appreciate it.
What helped me a lot is realizing that "selling" is just helping people solve their problem. As long as you believe in your product to be a good solution, and the customer to have the problem it solves, you should feel good about selling it to them.
If you have doubts on whether your product is any good, I think it helps to just talk to customers who are already using it and getting value out of it. And if you don't have any customers yet, just try to find a few people who will use it for free for a while (e.g. during the beta phase). That way you don't feel the pressure of asking for their money.
That's very true! My main issue is mostly related to doing the marketing for customers to know about the product. There's a part of me that is scared of talking about me (what I do) which make it hard to even find free customers.
This has been an issue for a while, so now it's less intense since I've learned to surpass it, but still somewhat present.
What are some of your "favorite" channel for marketing? I'm curious.
I feel like Reddit can be great but you need to understand how it works, and then there's content marketing (SEO, short videos, etc.) which is a bit easier but requires a lot of consistency.
For me it's Twitter and (programmatic) SEO. Those are channels that come natural to me. They are somewhat predictable and I enjoy working on them.
I try to avoid building products that require other marketing channels.
That make sense, especially if it's something that comes naturally for you. Twitter can work really well if your audience is there, especially that the build in public is strong there. :)
Hi James, welcome to WIP!
Design GUI looks intriguing. I'm a Tailwind CSS user myself. Is it useful for that or is it geared more towards people managing their own CSS?
Hey Marc. The extension just needs you to be using CSS variables. It doesn't intrinsically matter if you're also using Tailwind or not.
Having said that you get some extra features if you're using daisyUI or shadcn/ui. You can recreate these features with a custom configuration (www.designgui.io/docs#custom-…), but if you're using either of those libraries you get them out of the box.
Thank you. I will look into this. It's possible the form is accidentally submitted twice, although it shouldn't happen as we disable the submit button after the first click.