Brainbase

Greg Holtzman, Marketing Director and Irene Suarez, Digital Marketing Coordinator

Can you give us some background to your business – when you began, what led you into this sector etc as well as an idea of staff and offices that you have?

Brainbase began in 2016 as a venture between our three co-founders: CEO Nate Cavanaugh, Head of Product Nikolai Tolkatsjov and CTO Karl Vallnar. The company started off as an idea generated from wanting to solve patent trolling based on a talk from Union Square Ventures’ co-founder Fred Wilson and a blog post by Elon Musk touching on the subject. This initial idea then developed into what is now Brainbase: a technology company transforming the licensing industry by providing the tools to simplify and streamline the management of intellectual property. We now have around 40 employees across the world and continue to grow, with our headquarters in Los Angeles, California and a second office in Europe.

Can you give us some information about the services that you offer in terms of contract management, product approvals, contract approvals and royalty reports?

Our flagship product that is live right now is called Brainbase Assist. Assist helps companies (brands, licensees and agencies) manage any IP licensing, partnership or sponsorship agreement. The platform helps track legal contracts, IP rights, sales and royalty revenue, product and marketing approvals, your deal pipeline, store brand files and provides predictive analytics on all of your important metrics. It also

integrates with the apps you love, including Slack, Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP and more. Assist has a beautiful and easy to use interface that is loved by brands and agencies such as Kathy Ireland Worldwide, Sanrio, MDR Brand Management and BuzzFeed, to name a few. Simply put, it’s your ultimate brand command center.

What other services does your system offer eg audit tracking, data management, brand protection etc?

Brainbase Assist also offers data management tools that allow brands to compare progress across partners, products, categories, territories, distribution channels and detect issues with our Red Flags feature before they become

critical. We also have an AI function available on our Dashboard that identifies new trends, revenue opportunities, new ideal partners and more. Along with that, brands can track their deals as they’re going through the sales pipeline, which can help build forecasts from start to close. Assist is also fully modular, so you can get started with any of its features, then add on as needed. Assist is also free forever for new brands that generate up to $100,000 per year in generated royalties.

Are there other areas that your system covers?

We’re preparing for the launch of Marketplace, an online platform for brands to find new revenue opportunities entirely online. Licensors, licensees, agents, influencers and retailers will have access to showcase, connect and close deals with globally recognized and emerging brands on a daily basis. We will verify the authenticity of every brand that signs up, and centralize independent, third-party data to help Marketplace users make informed decisions about prospective partners.

What good, or bad, impact has of the coronavirus pandemic had on your business?

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, we were already adept with remote work internally with our employees and externally with our customers. We rely on tools like Asana, Slack and Zoom to communicate and cross-collaborate between every team at Brainbase and onboard new customers in a timely manner. With the future of work now looking to be remote more than ever, we’ve had an influx of prospective customers inquire about working with us since our tools help licensing teams work more efficiently in a remote work environment. We also were able to close an $8m Series A financing round after the pandemic hit, so we’ve truly been lucky to avoid any negative impact.

Technology changes continuously. How do your systems guarantee to keep up to date with the latest available technology?

We’re built on the latest tech stack, and our engineers and designers are constantly innovating and updating our current and future products to make them seamless and easy to use. At Brainbase, our main goal is to modern

ize existing licensing infrastructure and provide a great experience for users on the software side. This includes simplifying complex data analytics so that brands can make better decisions to drive revenue even further. We rely on feedback from our customers to continuously improve our systems and give them the best possible experience while using our products.

What are the unique selling points of your system that you believe make it stand out from others in the market?

At Brainbase, we’re product people first. We obsess over great design and know how to build beautiful products. This outsider perspective has allowed us to rethink the intellectual property industry, and guides our vision to build great software infrastructure for brands that own and license their IP. Soon, not only will brands be able to manage their licensing business with Brainbase Assist, but also monetize their IP with Marketplace and more easily file and store their IP with our future products. We innovate at lightning speed, design with our end-users in mind, integrate with dozens of apps and are only getting better. We’re also working on some new features such as Payments, which will work just like Venmo or Square cash but for licensing royalties. Brand owners are going to be able to collect their money instantly from their licensees, instead of having to wait the net 30 or net 60 payment terms. With many aspects of our features and commitment to innovation, we believe we’re the leader in the IP licensing technology market.

How do you see your system and business developing over the next few years?

With current trends we see occurring within the licensing industry and the continuous growth on an international scale, we see ourselves being front and center in providing efficient licensing management technology for companies of all sizes. Brainbase will continue to grow as a company, innovate current products and build new ones that reflect the needs of the IP licensing community. We will always take on challenges we find within the licensing industry and develop solutions that drive everyone’s business into the future.