The Perfect Time to Start a Start-Up
As a start-up and intellectual property attorney, I’m often asked, “when is the best time to launch a new business idea.”
My answer is almost always, “now.” You have to be in it to win it in, and there’s no better day to get started than today.
Every day that your great new invention idea just sits in your head, without a business around it, is another day your competitor can launch it instead, and take your dream away from you. Every day is another day they can acquire your customers, and establish themselves as synonymous with the concept. Every day you don’t file a patent application is another day your competitor is drafting and filing theirs. Business doesn’t wait for you to “renovate the house first,” convince your “Uncle Bob it’s a good idea,” “take that trip to the islands,” or whatever the excuse it might be that day. You can live on vacation if your business is acquired. But Today is the day we get started on the great business concept. Yesterday would be better, but we don’t have a time machine, unless, of course, time travel is your business idea.
But, more seriously, in my experience working with hundreds of entrepreneurs, even the most brilliant people on Earth have only a few ideas that are the truly “big ideas” – the ones that set them up for life. Like all creatives, entrepreneurs have to be respectful of the muse. The great entrepreneurs run with their great idea, not away from it.
Good work, as quick as possible, is what drives humanity. And the laws of the patent office, just like the law of the jungle, incentivize that fundamental truth. If you don’t take the initiative, someone else will. So the patent office rewards those who strike while the iron’s hot. The United States changed to a “First-to-File” country in 2012, meaning, the first inventor to file a patent application on their concept gets the patent, not the first person to come up with the idea. Later filers get sued for patent infringement, if they go ahead with the product unprotected. So, my answer is always, run, don’t walk to the Patent Office.
In this time, in 2026, like all other times before, we have limited time, infinite distractions and an eternal spring of excuses. But these excuses are no excuse. They have been, and always will be there. Today is the perfect day to start a startup since yesterday. Don’t wait around for the “better day” to start your business.
