Two IPs In A Pod
Brilliant inventions, fresh product designs, iconic brand names and artistic creativity are not only the building blocks of successful business - they deliver a better world for us all. But these valuable forms of intellectual property must be protected in order to flourish. We are the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys - the UK's largest intellectual property organisation. Our hosts Lee Davies and Gwilym Roberts chat with entrepreneurs, creatives, patent attorneys and the occasional judge about how patents, trade marks, designs and copyright can improve our lives and solve problems for humanity.
Two IPs In A Pod
INTA San Diego Special with... RightHub
Alex Gray and Asa Le Fustec from RightHub join us to reveal how they're disrupting the IP management industry with their fresh approach. After spending decades navigating the limitations of legacy systems at companies like CPA Global, they decided to build something entirely new – a comprehensive platform that leverages modern technology to eliminate the inefficiencies that have plagued IP professionals for years.
I've seen him do that chat up line elsewhere.
Speaker 2:Always works in gyms, do we? Lee Davis and Gwilym Roberts are the two IPs in a pod and you are listening to a podcast on intellectual property brought to you by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys.
Speaker 1:Gwilym, really, really exciting podcast to come back next, because this is someone that you bumped into. Yeah, it's my gym bro.
Speaker 2:Do I need you to leave me? I dropped my hotel room. Actually, he dropped his card and he came and chatted to me.
Speaker 4:I didn't want him to get lost.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. Do you know what I've seen him do that chat up line elsewhere always?
Speaker 2:works in gyms. No, so yeah, we were chatting away and of course, everybody here turns out to be at Inter one way or another, because you with your colleague who's name, tom Barkley, you were there with Tom as well. That was it, I think I was chatting. Then this morning I bumped in again after my run super fit or what and then we worked out that you're the guys with the robot dog, which is actually in the studio. In the studio disconcerting everybody.
Speaker 1:That is amazing in the green light. At the moment, opinion might take some pickies into video. We don't normally do any visual stuff on the podcast, so this will be. I'll set this a little bit up.
Speaker 2:It's a bit first-class. Oh, he's kicking something Worryingly.
Speaker 5:We're in a glass box If the light goes red.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Skynet's gone live and.
Speaker 3:It's every man for himself.
Speaker 1:So, guys, welcome to the podcast. Can you quickly introduce yourselves? Is that all?
Speaker 2:right, it's hump in the wall, calm down. There we go.
Speaker 4:Yeah, my name is Alex Gray. I work for Bright Hub. I've been there for around three years. I came out of university I went into a marketing job and I kind of really didn't like it and then I took a chance. I knew our CEO, tony Nijm, and I just sort of went a friend of mine whom I knew through. I just went please just get me that five minutes on the phone with him and just maybe you'll take a chance. He all right here, stuck me into a startup. We were about two years old, then a year and a half, and I just went great and, yeah, we went from the bottom all the way up and now in the sales team and under Acer, he's our CRO and he's been kind of guiding us this is all of his idea with the dog and into his kind of his baby yeah, so I'm responsible for the craziness that is RightHub.
Speaker 5:So my background I did 20 years with CPA Global.
Speaker 5:Oh, okay, yeah yeah, and then I decided to have a little bit of break from IP because I felt I was getting a bit tired and old, to be honest with you, and then stayed in contact with Tony and JJ, who are the founders of RightHub. They showed me what they'd been doing and I thought, ooh, this could be really good, fun, Super disruptive, brand new technology. So, yeah, they sent me to do basically the go-to-market and then, you know, they build product but we need to go into distribution. So hence, robot dogs, T-shirts, yeah being different, being new.
Speaker 4:You got the attention Tr. That's being different being new.
Speaker 5:You've got the attention. Tron style booze and stuff. It's all just a bit of fun, really, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Do you want to take us through what Right Hub is up to? Then? What's the plan Do?
Speaker 4:you want me to go? Yeah, okay, so I guess what our main founder was saying is that a lot of the systems are kind of built maybe 20-odd years ago I'm not sending any shots, don't worry. We wanted to make something new. They came they've done 20 years in their biggest companies CPAs, multiple arcs, things, all those kind of guys and they kind of went through and they did a lot of admin work and they hated it and they thought there was something different, and especially because now we've got AI and there's a lot of new tech, so it kind of begs the question why the industry isn't using it. So that is kind of our idea. We got some a nice bit of money. We spent four years developing an all service, all encompassing IP technology platform. Okay, so all your normal portfolio tools, yeah, all task management, events management, and then make it new, make it useful, automated with AI yeah, and then add all the modules on top. So renewals, services, administration, brand protection, searching all of it rotations invoicing.
Speaker 4:Just put it all in one place and let's just stop using so much email, and that's kind of where we're going with it, and who's your target market?
Speaker 5:So it's mainly mid-market. It's fair to say you could use our system as an enterprise. But when you get to larger clients, larger law firms and larger corporates, there's just a degree of sophistication they need which we're not kind of. It's on the roadmap to move in that direction, but right now we're quite happy where the product is. I think it's fair to say, picking up from what Alex was saying about why we started this, a lot of the problems in the industry might have gone a little bit boring. It's because the technology is old, but there's been huge amounts of investment in the big technology solutions. There's a lot of private equity money rolled up in that now and trying to migrate or do anything different is really challenging for the industry. The benefit we had is we had no customers, a blank sheet of paper, and we'd been in the industry for about 20 years each, so we didn't have any of that incumbent legacy to worry about. We just wanted to build with brand new technology how we thought the industry should work, going forward, and that's right.
Speaker 4:Thus the dog being different tech.
Speaker 2:Are we going to come to the dog?
Speaker 5:And it's cool, the dog has actually nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2:No, no, we just saw the dog and we went.
Speaker 5:We just have to have one.
Speaker 2:No, it's working. You've got your podcast, that's the other thing.
Speaker 5:They wanted to get the dog out yesterday for Tony's breakfast briefing. So they almost had the dog. He went I'll bring the dog out. I'm like, don't bring the dog out. The dog's purpose was to get people to come and see us at the stand. That was the whole purpose. It was just marketing, Pure marketing.
Speaker 2:Basically, this is a big space and so standing out and getting attention and there's a lot of service providers here, so you're aiming at private practice or industry or both sides of the story.
Speaker 5:The product will work both across corporate and law firms. There's elements that, for example, law firms very much for the collaboration piece, so the ability to work with their end customers, so they can just employ the platform and give them a portal so instructions and communication across that Law.
Speaker 5:Firms love that because they've been struggling to give customer portals. It's just nice neat and integrated. Corporates like it because on the collaboration side for them, they can invite their agent network straight in. So rather than sending an email, you can do everything within the case record all the time. So it's just all happening with a nice clean audit trail. So it just saves a lot of effort. Communication so speeds everything up. That's what we like. We're just like. Let's just not waste time with things that don't add any value.
Speaker 4:Just focus on the bits of data not to go corporate buzzword bingo, but it's an ecosystem. That's kind of what we went for.
Speaker 5:Keep everything in one place.
Speaker 4:Let's stop traveling to different ideas, different systems, emails, slack Teams, text messages, all that stuff.
Speaker 5:You can start anywhere and go anywhere, which we also like, that phrase.
Speaker 3:Which means it's modular, the platform.
Speaker 5:If you want just the brand protection piece, you can have that. If you just want quote hub, you can have that. If you just just the brand protection piece, you can have that. If you just want quote hub, you can have that.
Speaker 1:If you just want the IPMS site, you can have that, and presumably it talks out and talks in as well in terms of interoperability.
Speaker 5:That's it, so it's completely open-ended, so it's not necessarily. It's kind of like the Apple ecosystem. Ours is actually deliberately collaborative in nature. It's about inviting people in to the same ecosystem as you. It the same ecosystem as you.
Speaker 4:It's not closed. Our model is we don't want to butcher you with user licenses. We don't do that. We want you to bring in as many people as possible without any extra fees. The whole idea is that if you have how many so agents and you're having to email them asking for fee schedules and it is an absolute nightmare to put into a terrible Excel to track it it's a waste of time. So instead, invite everyone in and collaborate in the platform and just tear out the access levels that you want. So let's just keep it in one place, and that's kind of just what we really want to go to.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that the funding's there as well. So this is obviously something where there's a there's a really clear business model.
Speaker 5:The market's got that niche ready for you yeah, I think in terms terms of initial sort of investment for the company. I mean a lot of that is Tony and himself is very well known, you CTO at CPA global. That does make it easy to get investment. He also had a he's already had a successful escorts exits of a software, ipms. I pendo the founder back of the day and sold to CPA global so that allowed us to get initial backing. The journey has been, I mean, super far. You burned through money building tech quite quickly, but then the go-to-market we've come online. I mean we've only really been we're at about 18 months on our go-to-market.
Speaker 5:We've gone from zero to about 4 million ARR revenue numbers and then Anac and then appear and go. We like what you guys are doing. You help solve the problem, help them access segment markets. We've completed that acquisition Just before we came to Inter.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, first Inter, second Inter, this is our second.
Speaker 5:Inter. Yeah, last year we had this it was just me and JJ a little table with a screen.
Speaker 1:I think I remember it actually I'm pretty sure I remember it and a video.
Speaker 2:And a puppet dog.
Speaker 5:No money, nothing. How's it working for you?
Speaker 1:Has it been good, this has been awesome.
Speaker 5:I think it's always an investment. I mean, you know, even the CEO, matt, was coming across and he's realising, without going silly and throwing a huge amount of money at it, if you can set up well here for marketing, you do something different and attract the conversation. We must have done over 100 demos yesterday, I mean.
Speaker 1:I actually don't know what we're going to do with the pipeline at the moment.
Speaker 2:I'll have it. It's fine, don't worry about it, I'll take care of it. Hunger we need that hunger, that's good.
Speaker 5:Because execute well, I think what we did is we just look fresh, new, a bit different, and I'm seeing that around there's a few other companies emerging, new, new businesses that are again they're looking. They're looking quite edgy and a little bit, it's feel, makes me feel good for the direction the industry is going you might.
Speaker 2:You know, you know, don't you? Because I'm a 100 years old and we've made ourselves change our tech. Sadly, not for you guys, because we're very happy where we are, but, but it's a battle to do it. But if you don't do it, you're going to get left behind and clients, as you say, they're looking for portals, they want to be able to extract whatever they want on the spot and all that kind of thing, and some of these old systems don't let you do that. So disruption is what we need, actually.
Speaker 5:Yeah this whole concept. We did a director's from this morning. One of the big things is that migration, the pain of changing your IPMS system, again because of the tools we use. It says two things A, because the UI UX is so basic, it's basically very easy to train people on workflows and what buttons fit where. But the other thing is we use AI tools to then do the data migration as well, so that speeds it up. So, rather than trying to map one sort of data set onto another data set, we just use AI to import it across into our platform so we can onboard much, much quicker and painlessly.
Speaker 5:But I think the other thing is, when you come onto our technology, the whole concept of upgrading disappears. We're releasing every day onto our platform putting something new, so we don't have any kind of blanket. Yeah, let's do a whole release, go up to this product, v13 or 14 or 6 or 7. It's just basically it's the product and as we release more advanced areas of it, it just naturally flows straight through to the end. It's also feedback as well, because we kind of want.
Speaker 4:Obviously we have our idea of what people want to use and that's based on 20 years of experience from these guys. But obviously things are changing so the needs are going to be different. So if there are forward thinking firms that want to use ai and they're going to be more aware of what ai can do, they could come to us and say, well, why can't it do this as well? And that just gives us more fuel to keep going and keep building new stuff. So it's kind kind of just it's moving, it's new.
Speaker 5:There's a few things we've done. We released some and the use case is really funny, because we thought it was one use case. This is about translations and we thought it was more about you know how incoming documents come in and they just get flipped over so you can read something in Chinese and stuff. It turns out when we released that everyone started using it for something different.
Speaker 1:They actually started using it. So that's what happens, they go.
Speaker 5:Actually, why don't we use it for this? They're using it to support foreign filings, so when there's something filing out, they're using the same application that does the translations, along with the, because it reduced the cost of the translations. So now we've kind of pivoted and lent in behind that functionality. But it's really interesting when you put stuff into people's hands, they actually do different things than you expect. So, yeah, it's all an evolution, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm interested in the dog.
Speaker 5:It's come to see you. Yeah, it's come to see me.
Speaker 2:Lee, are you going to describe it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's got four legs, gwilym. They seem to be like multi-jointed, a bit like a dog Not seeing any ears we did think about applying ears to said dog, but apparently interferes with sensors.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it maps for the lidar just a little bit disappointed it's not furiously wagging a towel, because that would have that would have been the isodonic it's got a big spinning nose which is the lidar, which is like the laser directional and it's just a gimmick, right it serves.
Speaker 1:no, yeah, there's a military application in the more complex, so it's.
Speaker 5:Boston Diamantics, I think, came up with it originally. They've licensed the tech to unitary, but they've just basically made this to make it so it'll follow you if you run. It's about spaniel size. I've got two spaniels at home. I might take this home and see what they make of it.
Speaker 1:You run straight out. I have a whippet. I imagine that's not as fast as my whippet.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's probably not as fast as my whippet. It's about as unhinged as my spanner.
Speaker 2:So could it do you renewals? That's my question.
Speaker 5:Well, we should get it working really.
Speaker 2:Have you got the renewals on the controller? My renewals are lapsed. It's my answer.
Speaker 1:Maybe it could bring you a cup of tea. So what tricks?
Speaker 5:It. Maybe it could bring you a cup of tea. So what tricks it can do flips, it does back flips, stand on its hind legs. We need the super user application for that which is our dog handler, friend has that.
Speaker 1:Yes it's.
Speaker 5:This is like my pannier, my female spaniel, wheeze like this. You know this is on the floor.
Speaker 1:It's supposed to be sitting though.
Speaker 5:Yeah, waves paws.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean sitting, though. Yeah, waves paws. Yeah, I mean it's like a dog, not really very much use for anything, but quite cute. Yeah, it is probably your shoe, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, the color might be um distracting it yeah can I ask a ip question?
Speaker 1:yes, are you guys in a quite a unique space, aren't you in that you're, you're building tools for the ip ecosystem, but there is IP inherently in what you do.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Where are you in terms of looking after your own stuff?
Speaker 5:Yeah, so Tony's a patent lawyer originally.
Speaker 5:We rely on firms like Pinson Mason as well, okay, yeah, so you're kind of well-stitched into that, yeah we're quite there, yeah, but some of the stuff we're using particularly around the AI, that's not so much so we're using particularly around the AI, that's not so much so we're using those LLMs, but we've got agreements with them in terms of how we use them. So not all that stuff doesn't go into the public domain. It's proprietary. For how we're using those applications, we have a whole team who specialise in AI. So one of the guys in there he was at a conference with Sam Oldman because he's kind of like a top-tier AI developer. So he's in that world. Yeah, he works for us. He loves the stock.
Speaker 1:Can I ask my data question?
Speaker 5:I've been asking anybody who's got anything to do with data Go for it.
Speaker 1:So I mean, I'm not an IP specialist, I'm the chief executive chief. I've been there 13 years. My background is education. My passion is professional boardings, membership associations. That's what I do, and obviously we use systems to manage membership relationships and those kinds of things. And the big hottie for chief execs of membership associations at the moment, particularly when we're moving towards systems that are heavily influenced with ai, is where's our data? Uh, data sovereignty and stuff like that, any, any nuggets you can give us around that in terms of, particularly as the um, the situation in the states changed we're all concerned about hang on. Well, if you're on something like a well-known branded web services and your data is there and that's in the states is, is that something we should be nervous about? Just thoughts on that, perhaps yeah, I mean data.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's, uh, the world's an interesting place at the moment. We're having it actually on some of the hosting because, um, we get questions on the hosting on RightHub as well, but the reality is actually pretty much everything your email accounts, your Facebook, your Instagram it's all in the cloud. We've already accepted that.
Speaker 1:We've given away. Risk no one knows what the cloud is.
Speaker 5:Yeah, all you can hope is the provider those services on actually something later. But you know, in my view there's two things like chat gpt is a classic example. You get the free version yeah, if it's free, you're the product you're they're using your data to justify. But you can also I think like 20, I think it's about 20 pounds or 25 dollars you can get the private version of chat gpt where it's using and it's not putting stuff out in the cloud. So we use that internally for some of that stuff. So, outside of the technology, I use ChatGPT private version for lots of stuff Presentations, my LinkedIn feed. I get to do all the heavy lifting on writing that stuff because I don't have time to do anything else.
Speaker 1:I need to get smart. It's about being smart, how you use it.
Speaker 5:So some stuff. Like you know, you can use ChatGPT. I use ChatGPT the non-free paying one typically like Google. Now I use it instead of that. But if I'm doing any work, I'm just paying the $20 a month. It's a very small price to pay, but that's the difference. If it's free, you're the product, so you're the data of the product Well, I mean our system.
Speaker 4:We do also have an AI co-pilot tool. It was based on the chat GPT models and we actually worked quite hard to get an agreement with them on an enterprise level to have a zero data retention policy. So obviously, ip data is extremely important and security and the rest of it it's the biggest thing. Our CEO held a conference on AI and two of the key questions that came out is my data. My data is it secure? My data is it secure? We're worried. And his point when it came out is that you still use email. Yeah, email is the same system. It's the same. It's all out there already.
Speaker 4:So it's just a different model. It's just a different avenue, so it's getting a bit more used to AI. But with our systems it's just we're trying to give everyone the most ammunition and information to start using it in the safest way possible.
Speaker 1:And so not to labour a point.
Speaker 5:So I have to keep going. Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 1:Not to labour a point, but because we're the Chartered Institute of Pantonees, we're under eternal attack. But because we're the Chartered Institute of Pan-Attorneys, we're under eternal attack. Our website, our database, it's, you know. I mean we host, with a really good cyber-secure bunch of people who know what they're doing, but the reports are quite terrifying, do you? Guys experience the same sort of thing.
Speaker 4:Is that your IP rich? That's why our CEO spent a lot of money on developers. I think we've got about 80 devs who are extremely savvy in all things. I don't know matrix code stuff. I ain't got a clue, don't ask me. I think he went for going for the smartest people that he knows in terms of getting things secure and safe and building them properly. I think he's probably the better guy to talk to in terms of security and data and the rest of it.
Speaker 4:But I know that his key thing is making sure that we build it correctly from the beginning, so there's less problems to solve afterwards, and that's kind of the way it goes.
Speaker 5:So the architecture itself makes us very difficult. So again because the technology-based one anyway. So our website, for example, our website doesn't lead anywhere, so what we don't do is that you log straight into our platform website.
Speaker 3:That's a classic one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:Very easy to then hack in through the back end. By the way, I think that's what happened to Mark Suspense from Co-op.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, they came in through one particular route.
Speaker 5:So we don't do that. So the way we've architectured it is to keep it quite closed off the system. So there's an inherent security. It's again when users of the platform how they then monitor what they want to give out in terms of who can access the system, what they can see in the system. So they control it. But what we can do is prevent them from our data being hacked and then all these private names, addresses and contact information going in. It's kind of inherent in the design of it. But again, you can do that in 2021. There's stuff you couldn't do in 2060, 50, 60. But that's the reality. It's harder.
Speaker 1:I've got to say thank you so much for coming on. Do you know what? I've really enjoyed this? No, it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:It's been really, really interesting, more than just the dog it was really good. Let's give a shout-out.
Speaker 1:Let's give it a shot, Hang on hang on, because we normally do a close-up. We've not done one whilst we've been at INTA.
Speaker 3:Have we not? Have you got one?
Speaker 1:No, only in that I'm looking at this little robot doggy thing. A few of you.
Speaker 5:What? Oh no, it's just one more bit. Look, look.
Speaker 1:I was going to say look at the little robot doggy thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, oh, dragon Dragon.
Speaker 1:Well, because you can. Well, just because you can, it's like, yeah, you wouldn't normally have a dragon as a pet, would you? Well, you can't, yeah, but now you can Is that the Welsh thing coming through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a big red one with a spike on its tail.
Speaker 1:Actually can any robot pet you on. What do you have on? That's a hard question.
Speaker 2:He does this Asa goes first. Go on Asa.
Speaker 1:Well, it's difficult because I love dogs and I'll probably.
Speaker 5:But we've got a robot dog.
Speaker 1:So if it wasn't a robot dog.
Speaker 5:I'd probably have a robot tiger or something it'd be mental, wouldn't it?
Speaker 4:I mean, it's not a robot tiger.
Speaker 5:I mean, it'd scare the life out of everybody yeah, yeah, I'd say tiger as well.
Speaker 4:Do you remember those pictures of Mike Tyson back in the day when he had a pet one?
Speaker 3:I'm just too scared to go that close to a real one Opinion what would you have Come on?
Speaker 1:you don't get to get on the podcast very often, so producer opinion what would you have for a robot pet? A crocodile You've all gone for some mad things, haven't you? Well, you said you can have anything. Yeah, I know, but you've gone right sort of scary end all of you.
Speaker 5:I thought you were going to say a horse or something, because there is actually a robot horse oh right, full size really okay, well, it's dragons
Speaker 1:it's probably going to be equally as expensive you know what I'm going to have is it going to be a tortoise? It's going to be a tortoise it's always a tortoise, because you know, albert, albert Treacle, he's um and he's sex mad yeah and we don't. You can't introduce him to another male tortoise because he's so sex mad, he will just kill her oh no, oh no.
Speaker 4:And you can't introduce him to a female tortoise, because he will just exhaust her.
Speaker 3:Don't do this to the bro what have you been training him?
Speaker 2:so I'm thinking what have you been?
Speaker 1:feeding him. It's Crocs, the shoes out of the garden and he just tears them apart with these sexual endeavours.
Speaker 2:You could spend your entire life trying to find artificial sex aids for your tortoise. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So a robotic tortoise where he could, happily.
Speaker 2:Don't do that to the robot Happily. This is why AI is going to kill us. We are at an IP conference.
Speaker 4:I'm sure someone will trademark that for you, yeah.
Speaker 1:You're right. So, gwydon, you can give these guys an opportunity to say something.
Speaker 2:No, no just get the name check in there. So Right, Hub. Thanks very much, guys.
Speaker 4:We're Right, Hub. My name's Alex, this is Acel. We've got a really big team of salespeople. I'd say it's Mark Anderson, Tom Barclay, Tommy Behringer and Tony Nijims, our CEO. Just new tech trying to be different, cool, and just come and have a look. Thanks, take care.
Speaker 3:Thanks guys. Outro Music