Business Problem Solvers with Eric Alspaugh, Episode 9
In this episode of Business Problem Solvers, Eric Alspaugh speaks with Mark Pound, CEO of CurbCut OS, a team of disabled-led accessibility advocates with over 29 years of combined experience, creating digital experiences that empower, inspire, and include everyone. Mark shares his 30 years of entrepreneurial experience and insights on creating an inclusive digital landscape.
Tune in to the episode to hear about:
- Mark’s Entrepreneurial Background and Motivation: Mark Pound talks about his 30 years as an entrepreneur, driven by a desire to solve impactful problems influenced by disabilities.
- Understanding Digital Accessibility: Mark emphasizes that digital accessibility is about usability for all, not just legal compliance.
- Market Potential and Brand Value: Mark discusses the $1.2 trillion spending power of the 25% of the global population living with disabilities.
- Team Building and Leadership Lessons: Mark stresses the importance of thoughtful hiring and openness to feedback.
- Practical Tips for Entrepreneurs: Mark suggests using mock-up websites to validate ideas before launch.
Learn more about Mark Pound:
* Connect with Mark Pound on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markpound
* Follow CurbCut OS on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/curbcutos
* Visit CurbCut OS’s website: http://www.curbcutos.com
About Business Problem Solvers:
Welcome to Business Problem Solvers Podcast, where legal insight meets entrepreneurial innovation. Are you a startup founder navigating the complex legal landscape of entrepreneurship? Are you seeking practical advice, actionable strategies, and expert guidance to propel your business forward? Look no further. In each episode of Business Problem Solvers, seasoned attorney Eric Allspaugh takes a deep dive into the intersection of law and business, bringing you insightful interviews with a diverse range of industry experts, thought leaders, and successful entrepreneurs.
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Read the entire transcript of this episode:
Introduction to Business Problem Solvers Podcast
Eric Alspaugh: Welcome to Business Problem Solvers Podcast, where legal insight meets entrepreneurial innovation. Are you a startup founder navigating the complex legal landscape of entrepreneurship? Are you seeking practical advice, actionable strategies, and expert guidance to propel your business forward? Look no further.
Eric Allspot is a seasoned attorney. Based in the vibrant startup hub of California. And he’s thrilled to be your host on this exciting journey. In this podcast, we’ll dive deep into the intersection of law and business, bringing you insightful interviews with a diverse range of industry experts, thought leaders, and successful entrepreneurs.
From intellectual property and contract law to corporate governance and regulatory compliance, we’ll cover the essential legal topics that every startup needs to know. Our guests will share their wisdom, [00:01:00] experience, and practical tips to help you navigate legal challenges, seize opportunities, and build a thriving business in today’s dynamic marketplace.
So whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, this A budding startup founder, or simply curious about the intersection of law and business join Eric on business problem solvers podcast, as we explore the legal insights in entrepreneurial inspiration that will fuel your journey to success.
Meet Mark Pound: Entrepreneurial Journey
Eric Alspaugh: Hi, welcome to the show, Mark. I really appreciate you agreeing to come on board. Uh, for my viewers and listeners, I want to introduce Mr. Mark Pound, a friend and colleague of mine for 15 years. We met working at an incubator many years ago and have had, uh, lots of interactions with startups and Mark has had some ups and downs and some good exits and is, [00:02:00] uh, working on a fantastic new project.
And I’d like him to, uh, introduce himself and give us some background so we can get started.
Mark Pound: Oh, thanks, Eric. Uh, yeah, geez, it’s been 15 years. Really? Uh, I didn’t realize it’s been that long. Uh, so hi, everybody. Uh, Mark Pound. I am CEO of CurbCut OS. CurbCut OS is in the digital accessibility industry. Uh, myself, I’ve been a serial entrepreneur for over 30 years.
I always tell people I’m not crazy. It’s how I’m built, even though I have a love hate relationship with it. Um, geez, where else can I go? Eric, did that answer your question and what you need from me at this point?
Eric Alspaugh: Sure. Uh, could you share some of your, uh, education and any other, um, [00:03:00] interesting facts, just so everybody’s grounded and knows a little bit about Mark?
Mark Pound: Yeah. So interesting facts.
Mark’s Ventures and Challenges
Mark Pound: Um, why I do what I do, there’s a common thread to everything that I do. It is not just about the money, is I look for where not only just problems need to be solved, but what’s going to have impact, what’s going to have impact on, you know, as far as human health or humans and, or animals.
And the reason why I say that is my first venture was in animal health. Uh, where we created at that point in time, quite a while ago now, what became an air Nike shoe for horses to jump and run on. And it solved a major weight problem in their hoof. Uh, that’s a whole story in of itself. Second venture, I was in diabetes and we commercialized a very unique diabetes.
device that we had [00:04:00] to go up against a healthcare system that didn’t want it. And so we went straight to the patients and we got the patients to go to their primary care and basically tell them, I don’t care what you say, I’m going. And the result was they started feeling better and our strategy paid off where they went back to their primary care and the primary care started doing.
Labs on them and they start and they noticed they were feeling better Those doctors who didn’t want to work with us Ended up contacting us and wanted to go out for dinner and discuss and find out what we were doing to help their patients Because they had no idea what we were doing how we were doing it because to them all the modalities were already done Uh what led me up to today?
I was actually working on another health care venture That I had to put on the shelf Because it was just before it’s time and the world of digital accessibility at that time. I came into this over three years ago and took over a company and [00:05:00] where my passion resides in this and it doesn’t look like it.
But I live with invisible disabilities. Um, I was a quadriplegic on the football field back in high school. Um, obviously, as you would be able to tell, uh, I recovered from that. I never told anybody about it because I didn’t want to be perceived as weak. And I kept that a secret for a very long time in my life.
Um, I ended up with spine and nerve damage from that. And then fast forward many years later, I was in a really bad car accident where the witnesses thought I was dead. And recovered from that with obviously that then exacerbated my nerve damage and my spine damage. I lived in chronic pain for 10 years of my life so bad I was an insomniac.
Um, I wouldn’t have wished it on anybody. And the reason why this story is so critical to where I’m at today. is, you know, I grew up in health care, as you could [00:06:00] tell from my prior ventures, and I thought I had it, you know, it’s like, you know what, I got this, I’m gonna get all figured out, it’s done. And what I realized was, I had to fight.
And I had to fight every single day. And probably because I’m bullheaded. And, um, has had that entrepreneurial spirit. I said, you know what, it’s either me or what’s going to take over me. And I finally said, that’s it. I it’s, I’m going to own this. And I never realized the journey was going to be what it was.
Um, but what that made me realize is more people are born without a disability. In other words, my point here is most people end up with a disability over the course of life. It could be an accident. Like me, it could be a chronic disease. It could be you’re getting older and amazingly enough, 25 percent of the population [00:07:00] and growing, having some form of a disability, visible or invisible.
And so I came into this venture. With the understanding that, you know what, we only get one chance at this life. There’s, we don’t get to hit the reset button and change needs to happen. This industry, uh, from my perspective is broken because here we are in 2024. And 96 percent of digital assets, just the homepages are considered inaccessible.
That’s a global statistic. And so what I realized was here, we have a market that’s broken. Um, the solutions aren’t working. They may have worked at some point in time, but they’re not working. And so that needed to change, uh, awareness needed to change. And so that’s what I set out on with this journey. Um, I will tell you in the journey of taking over a company instead of building a company from scratch has been [00:08:00] a huge challenge in itself because I ended up this company when I took it over, had no departments, it had very few people, it had no systems, it had nothing.
And we were growing 200 percent year over year. And what I tried to do during that time was try to create systems in the departments. And since we were bootstrapped for a reason, um, I realized that wasn’t possible. So fourth quarter last year, I basically tore the company to the ground to build it back up.
So then we can scale and get the solution done at the same time, the right team, the right culture, the right, everything in place, and bring that historical knowledge and traction forward. And so here we are today.
Eric Alspaugh: Awesome. So I want to delve into some, uh, specific anecdotes and stories that you might have to share, uh, with our listeners on that.
Digital Accessibility: An Emerging Necessity
Eric Alspaugh: [00:09:00] But first, can you explain. Digital accessibility and give me a couple of examples that are easy to understand because It is a relatively new concept for many people like myself
Mark Pound: Well, i’ll tell you it’s two years ago. I went on a media tour and what hit me was Every single outlet and I was on cbs in florida every single outlet from radio to tv the question was What’s digital accessibility.
And that was a great wake up call because then the questions that would ensue after that, one of them kind of puzzled me because someone would say, show me a website that’s accessible and one that’s not. And I said, well, we do code level audits and remediation. You won’t notice the difference and they would look at me like what do you mean we won’t notice the difference and like you don’t and they’re like [00:10:00] well then how does somebody with a disability engage with a website well because we work with the code, then their assistive technologies that they use which would could be screen readers braille boards anything as such.
Knows how when it hits that website, that assistive technology then understands that, oh, here’s the order, the headings, the images, the graphics, the color contrast, you know, and they could be such minute changes, even though it’s complex. They could be my new, because we don’t really even change the look of the brand and that’s the other fear.
Oh, you’re going to destroy my brand. And so now, you know, part of this is dispelling that fear, pulling people off that ledge and getting them to understand that this isn’t something created, something for just people that are. Have a disability. No, this is actually applicable to everybody. And let me expand on [00:11:00] that real quick is there’s a lot of cross market benefits in, you know, the name of our company, for example, curb cut OS.
Most people don’t realize what the curb cut phenomenon is. The curb cut phenomenon is. You know, in the physical world, for those of you old enough, you’ll remember when we had, you know, very sharp curves everywhere and they came along and chopped them all up and put ramps fast forward, here we are today and more people without a disability use those curb cuts than people with a disability, same captioning.
Same thing goes for when you blow up the screen on your mobile phone. So, and then the list just goes on and on and on. So there is a lot of cross market benefit.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay. So that actually, what you’ve just shared is very surprising to me because in my mind, I was, conjuring up an image of an [00:12:00] old commercial where they were selling telephones with giant, uh, calculator sized buttons.
And so, uh, what you’re, what I’m hearing from you is that in fact, you can work with. People’s websites and have it seamless that, uh, somebody who’s not disabled might not even notice that there’s assistive technology that’s running behind the scenes.
Mark Pound: Exactly. Uh, and it’s just not websites. It’s it’s well, it’s websites, apps, documents, design.
Uh, the list just goes on and on. It basically anything that is digital has a compliance element to it.
Legal and Compliance Aspects of Digital Accessibility
Eric Alspaugh: Let me ask you about compliance. Is there a federal statute or state statutes for digital accessibility? Because I think that most of my listeners [00:13:00] would be familiar with ADA compliance rules.
Mark Pound: Yeah. And I’m taking a heavy breath because this is going to be a long winded answer.
Um, there’s many, but let me preface this first is there’s more to this than just legal compliance, that’s one component, and I’ll leave that out there for future discussions. On what else is beyond this, but within the legal within the legal realm, you’ve got web content accessibility guidelines, otherwise known as WCAG, which was drafted and then overseen by the W3C consortium.
So you got that one. That is that is global. Okay, so that applies globally. Then you, and within the U S you have ADA title two and title three, which is now being more enacted and more engaged than it was in the past. You have also section 508. [00:14:00] If you do business with the government, you better be compliant with section 508 because if they audit you and find out you’re not, then you’re going to get kicked out.
In fact, we helped a client that did get kicked out of that and lost multi millions of dollars of contracts. There’s also a new one called section 504, which is applicable to healthcare that is now enacted and signed. That’s just within the U. S. Then you go to Canada, you’ve got AODA. I can’t remember what AODA stands for because there’s so many acronyms.
They have that in Canada. You go over to Europe, you’ve got EN 301549, but then that is going to be bundled into the European Accessibility Act, otherwise known as EAA, which is going to be enacted in law as of June next year. And the penalties aren’t going to be anything that’s [00:15:00] kind. Let me put it that way.
So we like to say EAA is very similar, if not the next GDPR.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay. Wow. That’s amazing. Uh, that. It’s rolling out and I’m, I’m curious of how this will receive publicity if it’s going to be from enforcement mechanisms from government or private individuals making complaints and drawing attention to this.
Do you have, uh, any examples of federal in the U. S. or Europe where enforcement actions have already begun?
Mark Pound: So, enforcement is traditionally by individuals or law firms that are engaging in this. Uh, at the federal level, they are starting to pay attention to this, the DOJ is getting involved. Uh, the DOJ right now [00:16:00] has a proposal out there for the medical device industry.
Uh, and, which kind of surprised me because we all know how government works, however, if you look at this. Proposal they have in the med device industry. What they’re realizing is we have an agent population, which is becoming the majority, if not the majority. Birth rates are declining. You’ve got healthcare costs, which is skyrocketing, and then you’ve got CMS, which is your Medicare and Medicaid.
And they’re trying to look at this and go, wait a minute, there is an emerging tsunami coming with an aging population, medical devices, the cost of care, which includes caregivers, because these devices are not accessible.
Eric Alspaugh: Wow. It’s going to be a very, very big deal. So you set aside some of these, um, some of the rollout issues as [00:17:00] being related to legal issues, and you highlighted some industry standards, uh, what are some of the other issues that are ushering in digital accessibility?
Market Opportunities and Brand Value
Eric Alspaugh: Is it, uh, you mentioned brand awareness or do private companies in the U. S. have? benefit plans or some other program to highlight digital accessibility or promote it?
Mark Pound: Well, it was interesting. So just in the short time I’ve been involved, which is three years, um, it can’t, it has started to, the trend is moving away from this being taboo.
Let’s not talk about it. You know, it’s just under the table to people are starting to now pay attention. And I think part of it is the regulations. But the other part of this is, you know, if we look at the overall population of people with disabilities, it’s 1. 85 billion. In other words, 25 [00:18:00] percent of the population, anywhere you go, if you’re at a concert, you’re at a football game, look in that stadium, 25 percent of those people in the stadium have some form of a disability.
It’s pretty large, and it’s growing. COVID contributed to it, for a matter of fact. Chronic diseases contributed to it every single day. So is the aging population, in addition to accidents and everything else. So, if we look at just that population alone, they have a spending power of 1. 2 trillion. Now, if we expand beyond that, and these are all cited studies, And there’s an additional study that says, okay, if we take that population and then include the friends and the family or the siblings, well, that includes, that’s under family part, but then that market goes to 13 trillion.
Now, here’s where it gets even more interesting. Part of that study was, and the way they discovered it is, 82 percent of that [00:19:00] population would spend more with companies that are doing something about digital accessibility. So not only is there an unlocked market opportunity here that where companies are looking for growth There also will enhance the brand value because if you look at this from a generational standpoint if you go Sub 40 and 40s, maybe in the 30s and younger and you talk about digital accessibility Many cases we’ve been in instances where we don’t even bring it up that generation brings it up and they’ll go.
Hey What’s going on with digital accessibility? And we’re like, that’s awesome because that’s what we do. And so we’re also in an age where everything is becoming so digitized by the second. We are living in a world where we, when we want something, we get it. If we don’t get it, then we go somewhere else.
And so here’s another statistic just in the blind population alone. McKinsey did this [00:20:00] study, 6. 9 billion was lost in abandoned shopping carts. So there is a huge economic factor. Now on the marketing side, there is proof. That this enhances SEO. So there’s, there is an investment opportunity to actually get an ROI on.
There is an ROI from unlocking a market opportunity that everyone has ignored. There is another opportunity in this where you look at your NPS score, which relates to your brand. And we’re going to get into looking at business metrics because when you start looking at NPS scores. And you start looking at what, what’s your drop off, what’s causing that drop off, how does digital accessibility impact that drop off and how can it enhance it?
And so there’s also been studies and people looking at how it enhances that value of your brand as well. And [00:21:00] again, that correlates to generational too. Because in the younger generations, when they look at this, they look at brands holistically. And if they’re not socially responsible, if they’re not addressing the population at large.
Then they’re going to look somewhere else.
Eric Alspaugh: Got it. Uh, I’m not familiar with the NPS score. Is that a something that a digital marketing folks, uh, know about? Is that a return on investment? What kind of standard is that?
Mark Pound: It’s called a net promoter score and it’s tied to brand value. I’m not a marketer myself, but I know it at that level and I know it has impacts on brands and it is measured routinely.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay, great. Uh, I’m, I’m going to have to mark that one down as something to look up. That’s something I hadn’t, I’d never heard of. It’s, it’s interesting. So, um, uh, It’s interesting that you’ve had in this [00:22:00] particular business, the opportunity to really take it over from someone.
Team Building and Startup Advice
Eric Alspaugh: So that’s a gives a unique perspective.
And can you, I don’t know if you want to share anything that you’ve learned from this experience, or if you want to share any experiences from startups, some anecdotal stories about transitions, and things that you discover, maybe how you discovered them. And the purpose of this ultimate really, really is to well for me to laugh, but also for our list for our listeners to to maybe find something in a blind spot, something that you wouldn’t think of until you’ve experienced it.
And then there’s some value from listening to people that were pioneers in the space.
Mark Pound: You know, when one thing that comes to mind all the time, and I was guilty of this when I was younger, get out of your own way, [00:23:00] um, stop treating, stop treating your ID and what you’re working on as your baby. It’s not, it’s a business.
And if you don’t take it as a business. Then you’re eventually going to stumble and fizzle out because, well, it, you hire somebody and they’re not working and you just tolerate it. And it’s like, no, there is truth in the statement, hire, slow, fire, fast. You got to build the right team. If you don’t have the right team, you’re going to be doomed.
You can take, and here’s a, here’s something I like to say is there’s no shortage of ideas. They’re a dime a dozen. Teams aren’t. You can take, if you lined up five teams, gave them all the same ideas and we interviewed each team, we could pick out which one’s going to work, if any of them, because it’s all [00:24:00] great during the honeymoon phase.
Oh my God, we’re going to change the world. Things are going to be amazing. But what, what is not realized is, Get ready because there’s going to be carved balls. There’s going to be brick walls. There’s going to be hurdles to jump things, the duck, and you’re going to have to wake up every day. And you’re going to have to look at this and go, okay, it’s not the greatest day in the world, but I got to keep pushing that boulder up the hill because if I don’t.
Then what’s the alternative I let go of and it runs over me. But at the same time, when you’re doing that, you also have to be aware of what’s the culture you’re creating. Who, who am I surrounding myself with? And then from a monetary standpoint, are we, did we do a market analysis? One of my favorite things I ever ran across is when I was helping an accelerator and I came across the guy, he had some kind of mobile device.
I don’t know what it was. It was like a snap on to phones or [00:25:00] something. And I’m like, Oh, that’s pretty cool. So what’s your marketing? Cause I don’t know. We just make them when we sell them. And I thought, Oh, you’re going to be dead in a short period of time. So it’s people become, you don’t become so infatuated with your idea that you can’t get out of your own way.
You got to listen to others.
Eric Alspaugh: On, on that, I was going to ask what tools. Can you suggest as practical or easy for those? I deal with inventors a lot to do they need to change their perspective? Do they need to go out in the market? What can they do to fact check themselves on their idea that they’re enamored with?
And get them to look at it as a business. What kind of practical tools?
Mark Pound: Well, I think it goes back to, if I understand the question, [00:26:00] you know, it goes back to what I said before, getting out of your own way, and here’s why. And I made this mistake, my very first venture, which I was too scared to release and let people see and give me feedback.
Cause I didn’t, I want to protect it so much that I wouldn’t let it breathe. And it cost me because two years later, I saw my same exact thing come out onto the market, same exact thing, and I couldn’t let go of it. So, obviously you gotta protect yourself, but at the same time with protecting yourself is let it breathe.
And one of the tricks is if you have a product and you want to sell it in the market, mock it up, create a website, mock it up, and then sell it and put up there, Oh, it’s already sold out and see what the demand you get for it.
Eric Alspaugh: And
Mark Pound: just don’t look at the product. Look at your [00:27:00] marketing. Marketing is going to sell the product that the product’s got to sell, you know, It has to address a pain or it has to be a want, you know, as opposed to a need It could be a need but still you got to position that thing correctly And then at the same time you got to be willing to say, you know, what let’s make some adjustments Don’t get so fixated.
So I don’t know if that
Eric Alspaugh: answers your question That was a a great uh tip these, uh, garage inventors to go ahead and create a Wix, create a website that. is has the appearance of a minimally viable product, even if you don’t have one, just so you can walk yourself through those steps and then have the courage to experiment, put yourself out there and we can come back to the IP and that the technical stuff, the legal, boring stuff in a [00:28:00] minute.
And I do want to hear about that. course. Um, something else you said that was super valuable and interesting is your experience with team building and advising startups. And this is come up again and again on this podcast. How do you form a team? Where do you find the right people? And are there quick things that you can do to evaluate them?
Or is this 30 years of hurdle hopping and experience of running into things and getting knocked down and picked up. Are, can you give any tips on team building?
Mark Pound: You know, I wish I could because if I could, that I would be a billionaire because it’s here. Here’s the thing. And it’s startups is you can go through [00:29:00] teams or go through team members quick.
You, you may have, and I just experienced it with this, with this venture I took over. Is the original founder, um, didn’t work and he left and that’s fine. That’s okay. Uh, and there was many reasons behind that. I won’t go into that, but the reason why I say that is I didn’t push him out. He may think that, and I’m just being transparent, but what he didn’t understand is this is a business.
And so what you’re going to find with people is. Think about beyond the honeymoon phase, because the honeymoon phase is we’re going to conquer the world and make a billion dollars and we’re going to be on Fortune and Forbes and we’re going to be on TikTok and we’re going to be in everything. We’re going to be known.
You know what my response to that is? Good luck. Because that rarely happens, [00:30:00] um, at the same time it can happen. Or if you don’t want that, it doesn’t have to happen. But back to the team part is you could have somebody and they could be a great fit for a year. And then you’re, you hit another level. And you have to scale and you quickly find out you’re outstripping their skill set you you’re going to have to turn that roll over because here’s the approach I like to take is, you know, I typically like to do three chain three times is.
First one. Okay. We’re learning. I’ll help them grow. Let’s grow. Let’s go. Okay.
Identifying and Addressing Skill Gaps
Mark Pound: Second time it happens again. Okay. Maybe it was something I did wrong or maybe something just happened. Lost in translation. So we sit down. We go through everything again. Third time it happens and it’s like, [00:31:00] okay, something there’s a disconnect.
And I’m not saying I’m right. I don’t believe in command to control structures. So it’s equal listening and equal coaching or guiding at the same time. But when you start to understand there’s a disconnect. And their skillsets just aren’t hitting where they need to be. Then it’s time they need to be replaced.
And it could be a Mecca bull too. And there’s some situations where like, you know what? You’re right. Uh, as long as they don’t have an ego to themselves, they can say, yeah, you’re right. I am way beyond where I can. I, it’s not a service to me for it to be here or you, or you transfer them over into another area if you can, but most startups or bootstrap companies, you don’t have that luxury.
So make sure you know them, but also make sure you’ve been through the good, the bad and the ugly with them, because when things [00:32:00] go sideways is you’re going to see a side of that person you’ve never seen before.
Eric Alspaugh: Sure.
Managing Team Dynamics Post-Funding
Mark Pound: The other thing you’re going to experience is. When your company gets funding, people change overnight and I’ve had that happen in all my prior ventures is the money hits next thing.
You know, everyone’s I need this. I need that. Well, I deserve this. Well, now that we’ve got all this money, let’s go do that. And it’s like, no, you don’t understand. There’s a budget here to the budget. Now you’re responsible for your budget, but then greed also sets So part of that grief factor comes in and you have to be able to manage that.
So I think what you know, you’re hearing his, it’s not an easy road. And the reason why I said, I think early on is I’m not insane. I’m just built this [00:33:00] way.
Because I have a love hate relationship with it because it’s, it’s, it’s. People only want to see the tip of the iceberg. What they don’t see is what’s underneath the water. And that’s what you’re living the majority of the time.
Eric Alspaugh: Absolutely. Absolutely. Nature and nurture. So I’ve got, I’ve got a couple of things that I want to talk about, including, I guess, the HR, um, and anecdotal.
Legal pitfalls and things like that.
Intellectual Property Strategies
Eric Alspaugh: I, I am the patent and trademark guy. I’d like to hear your perspective, um, from startups, uh, what kind of, how you prioritize intellectual property. And I ask in particular, because you said, don’t be afraid. Let your baby, uh, breathe a little bit, get it out there. And in the context with medical device, you need to have your, and [00:34:00] pharmaceutical, you need the patents, um, before you can disclose.
And there’s certain industries, which more amenable to disclosure. And so share with us some of your thoughts on intellectual property strategies, and then if you have any thoughts. Funny, uh, anecdotal stories about good things or bad things. I’d love to hear those too.
Mark Pound: So IP, um, you know, some of the lessons I’ve learned and again, whether I’m right or wrong, but these are from my own personal stories.
are just because you come up with the name. Don’t rush out and trademark it because you don’t even know if it’s going to stick. So when you hit on something, you’re going to know it when you hit it and you’re going to know I gotta get this thing trademarked.
Eric Alspaugh: Because
Mark Pound: That’s a process in of itself. You just don’t fill out a form and then, [00:35:00] Oh, hey, it’s all going along.
Oh, no, no, no. It’s a process. And I’ve learned in USPTO, Uh, it kind of depends on who you get. Something can just fly through and they’re like, Oh, wow, I can’t believe this happened. Other times you’re like, Wait a minute, why are they questioning this? This doesn’t make any sense. So, you know, those things happen on the patent side of things, you know, that’s a loaded question because if you look at it from so many different angles and so many different industries, obviously in healthcare, yes, I mean, it’s unvoidable.
You need to do that. If it is a tchotchke where, you know, it’s going to have a limited lifespan. You know what? I wouldn’t do it. It’s speed to market and making sure you’re always staying one step ahead in the technology industry. I take the approach that [00:36:00] technology changes so fast by the time you file it, and by the time it’s granted, it’s already going to be obsolete.
Or you gotta be careful, too. You can file your provisional approval. We’re saying grants you certain capabilities because of when it’s, it’s time stamped. And if anybody comes in after you, then at least you have rights. However, is once you go to utility, it becomes public. And then you got patent trolls who will try to reverse engineer that and beat you to market and do all kinds of things.
And so really you got to be careful when you open that door.
Navigating Trade Secrets
Mark Pound: And so lately I’ve taken the approach of going the trade secret route. And you know, and then they’re, Oh, that’s the easy route. Oh, no, no, no. Uh, uh, you got to have NDAs done. You got to say confidential. You got to write confidential. Because if anybody hears anything, It’s not preceded [00:37:00] or signed by an NDA and preceded with the words confidential or statement of confidential in a document.
It can go to court and that court will say, and this is actually case law, the court will find somebody and say, Okay. Did they disclose to you that it was confidential and if they say no, boom, you’re dead.
Eric Alspaugh: Got it. Got it. That’s wow. You hit on three of the four in one answer. That was fantastic, Mark.
Trademark, patent, trade secret. We didn’t talk about copyright, but that’s okay.
Mark Pound: Yeah. I’ve never really gotten into that, that side, Eric, because I just, maybe it’s just, I haven’t had the time, but again, it’s, I’ve never come across something that I had enough value to, you know, copyright it.
Eric Alspaugh: Sure, sure. Well, that’s a whole, a whole separate topic, but that was a great answer.
And you really touched on a lot of fun stuff, which people aren’t familiar with. It’s [00:38:00] new. I think 2018 there was a federal trademark act or excuse me, a federal trade secret act, which, uh, it was mainly legislated and passed to protect us companies from foreign countries, uh, stealing and selling products back into the U S and there was never a national standard for, for trade secret protection.
And your example touched on the very important. There’s a set a few elements to protection under the Federal Trade Secret Act. And one of the requirements is that you take reasonable steps to maintain the confidentiality. And what’s the easiest, best way to document that? It’s to have a robust program of confidentiality agreements and clauses and [00:39:00] in the All the relationships you want to document, uh, confidentiality.
So thank you. That was very cool.
Mark Pound: Yeah. I had a mentor at one point in my life and we went down trade secrets and he goes, Mark, I’m going to tell you a situation. He was actually called as an expert witness in a trial over trade secrets. Okay. Asked that very question and disclosed. No, I wasn’t. And that judge right then said, Done.
It’s disallowed. They’re free to do anything they want.
Eric Alspaugh: Wow.
Mark Pound: Wow.
Eric Alspaugh: Let that be a warning, folks. That’s a tidbit right there. Gotta have it in the contracts with everybody. And, uh, and trade secret in software. If you’re not doing hardware, if you’re doing marketing sales in [00:40:00] software, trade secret is fantastically valuable.
So it doesn’t necessarily require patents. So boxing it in and treating it as an asset. Of trade secret and taking formal steps to protect it, uh, is a, is a, is a necessary requirement in my books.
Mark Pound: Yeah. Yeah. And being careful of who, what you even disclose.
Eric Alspaugh: Yeah.
Mark Pound: I like, I like the, in that, in that light, Eric, what I like to do is you have to find out, especially if you’re in software is what is that one, Area or I like to call them gateways.
What is that gateway that if you pull it out, the whole thing doesn’t work, but if you put it in, then it all works. And as long as you control that piece, then [00:41:00] you can tell everybody, everything else, that.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay. That’s a, that’s a great practical tip that needs to be discussed in house and understood, strategized and protected.
Mark Pound: Absolutely.
Eric Alspaugh: Do you have any, um, pitfalls? You alluded to some trademarks being just, Oh, the examiners let it through. And then sometimes you’re like, why are they giving me a hard time over this. I have to tell you that. Marketing people, uh, typically unsophisticated marketing people have a difficult time thinking about, well, I just described my product in the best way so that it’s easy for people to conjure up the image and people don’t think about the, the government’s purpose behind [00:42:00] trademark, which is.
paternalistic and helping people who can’t read maybe be able to understand the source of that product or service easily. And that’s the underlying purpose of trademark law, not I want to protect my logo and the way it looks.
Mark Pound: Yep. Yep. And, and that was a big one. Very first time I ever filed a trademark.
I lived in Northern California at the time and my AP attorney was in San Francisco. I don’t know why I’m saying that, but is the wake up call I had was he goes, yeah, we’re just going to file a wordmark. I’m like, what do you mean a wordmark? What about this? What about that? He goes, no, no, no, no, no. Throw that out right now.
Let’s, let’s just get the name. Well, what do you mean by that? And most simple, just like going into a word document and typing it out and then submitting it. And I’m like, really? And he’s like, yeah, that’s it. That’s it. And then the [00:43:00] process just to get that done was fascinating.
Eric Alspaugh: Were you successful with obtaining a registration on that mark?
Mark Pound: Yeah. Yeah. That was my very first company.
Eric Alspaugh: Neat. I love that. So I’m gonna transition, I can, uh, talk IP and, and trademarks and trade secret all day with you, but, um, and not with the company that you’re working on currently, but I’d like to hear about maybe HR and, uh. You know, that team building and some things that you might have experienced or that saved you lots of money or something that costs you a lot of money in managing the team or hiring experts or.
Subcontracting an HR department, any, anything you want to tell us about?
HR Challenges in Startups
Mark Pound: Yeah, you know, one lesson I learned over the years [00:44:00] was HR is a very expensive department because if you have, like all my companies, I, all my companies have been virtual before virtual was ever a thing and what hit me was, Every state is different.
Every state, not only with the employment laws, taxes, everything is different. And if you don’t address those accordingly, you’re opening yourself up. So in this day and age, it’s even more important. Thankfully, now there are some services out there, and I would highly recommend don’t bring your HR in house first.
Outsource that to a company, and there’s many of them. I’ll just, I’m not going to name names. Some of them are really bad. Some of them are really good. What’s new? Um, but let them [00:45:00] handle it. Let them, you know, come in, do an analysis, and say, okay, here’s what we need to do. And at least that gives you a peace of mind But you’re still going to have to manage that even at that because if they mess something up And then it’s like why is this?
Oh, we didn’t realize that. Well, then you can get it fixed, please So it still has an overhead element to it But not to the extent of what you would have to deal with when you brought it in house And it also allows you to scale a lot quicker And at some point in time, once you hit a certain cashflow status, and you’re like, wait a minute, it just makes more sense to bring it in house at that point in time, along with other departments, then you do that.
But until then, no, I wouldn’t even mess with it.
Eric Alspaugh: It, it actually reminds me of, uh, what we were talking about earlier with, um, The inventors, the originator, the founder of the company [00:46:00] holding on maybe too tightly to their baby and using an HR outsource as a way of, I don’t know, taking emotion out or changing perspective.
Uh, so that you can evaluate how the resources are being spent and leveraged inside the company. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That’s always scary.
Mark Pound: One of the things in HR too though, Eric, is, it’s a very interesting dynamic because you always have to protect your backside. And what I mean by that is You know, you look at how do I, how do I look at this first?
Well, if you’re just starting out, what do I need to do to even create some validation? Okay, let me go get some key advisors and get these key advisors. And they need to be what I mean, key advisors, because that [00:47:00] is An appeal to others and that will pull them in that will help you bring It may help you bring uh, and be a good filter for some good people into the company But the other thing too is and there’s a lot of pitfalls is oh, we’ll just contract everything Okay, but when you do you better be very careful Never treat that person as an employee As there’s now plenty of case law and microsoft was one of them.
They’ve gotten a lot of trouble treating their contractors and employees
Eric Alspaugh: Okay,
Mark Pound: and it’s fine line and you gotta look at everything you do Because if you if you ride that edge and it gets pushed over and that person gets mad at you watch out the barrier
Eric Alspaugh: Okay practice tip Not write that down listeners write that down steer clear of the line So, uh, changing [00:48:00] gears on you, I’d like to reserve the right to interview you or have you on as a guest in the future, um, if you’re willing, but are there any, you know, on, on the backside of things?
Relocating and Community Involvement
Eric Alspaugh: Are you, are you involved with any, um, community groups or organizations? How do you see your role? I mean, your business is already in the community of helping. Uh, and so you’re very cognizant of people with, I don’t know if you’re able to people, disabled people, however you want to characterize it. Does your company, uh, or you personally get involved with other charities or community organizations?
Mark Pound: Not right now, but it’s in the plan. And, and, and the reason behind that is, is we just don’t have the capital to get involved where we want to get involved at the level we wanna get involved. However, it [00:49:00] is on the radar. However, we do also have alternative strategies to get involved with the community at levels that then establishes.
That’s that beginning phases of the snowball.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay. I didn’t mean to ambush you with that one, but it comes from another question, which is, I know you from Southern California, and I know that you relocated to a new community just over a year ago. And so, how does that factor in and, and, Are you comfortable telling people about where you’ve moved from Southern California to?
Mark Pound: Oh, well, you know, what’s interesting, I, the reason why I laugh is, you know, we looked all over the country, just a little backstory. And we end up looking at this one state and I’ll get to it in a minute. And I’m like, Oh my God, it’s beautiful. It reminds me of Denver in the nineties. Cause we lived in Denver then.[00:50:00]
And I didn’t realize how many people were moving here until we moved here. And then I heard, really? And I was, I was shocked. And so it’s Boise, Idaho. And then come to find out, you know, uh, there’s a lot of Californians moving here, Oregonians moving here, uh, people from Arizona, people from Texas. So it really kind of shocked me.
And so, you know, you have to be careful because if you ever run across the native, you know, we’re not originally from California. So I say, well, we’re originally from, we’re originally from Missouri. So, you know, we kind of diffuse that because some of the born and bred Idahoans, uh, really dislike Californians.
Eric Alspaugh: So that’s another practice tip, folks. Uh, when you’re, when you’re traveling to other states, [00:51:00] and you might have originated from California, say that you’re from Missouri. I know that when I, when I travel outside the United States, I, I have, Said, Oh, I’m from Canada.
Oh, that’s great. So how do you like the community in Boise? And are you able to put down roots and get involved in the community?
Mark Pound: So I work too much to get too involved, uh, but you know, the neighborhood we’re in now, we’ve, we’ve got some good friends in this area, none of which are from Idaho, by the way, uh, California and Texas.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay.
Mark Pound: Um, but yeah, and we happen to live in an area that is closer to downtown and we live on, live up in the foothills and yeah, it’s, It’s a slower pace of life [00:52:00] with so much to do. It’s endless. Once you go up in the mountains, it’s amazingly beautiful and unspoiled. And it’s the other part that that hit me, and this was a welcome piece, is the friendliness.
It was like when we first got here and people are so friendly, I look at my wife and I go thinking, what do they want, what do they want something and finally we just got like, oh, actually, no, they don’t, they’re just friendly. So that was a very welcome thing, amongst other things too, because we’ve been to so many other areas.
Eric Alspaugh: Awesome. So you’re an ambassador for Boise, Idaho.
Mark Pound: Yeah, I’ve been told that. Cool. Well, where else can you live? I can go snow skiing in less than an hour. I have a river, uh, we can float within not even 15 minutes of my house. I can go [00:53:00] water skiing in 45 minutes. And if I want to go far away in the mountains, then that’s about two hours and you can go into what’s known as the Aspen of the North, which is Sun Valley.
Eric Alspaugh: Awesome. Awesome. That’s amazing. I’m glad that’s, uh, working out for you. And will you please allow me to, uh, have you back for a follow up with some, some more, um, pitfalls and, and humorous stories.
Mark Pound: Absolutely. I have
Eric Alspaugh: plenty to share. All right.
Conclusion and Contact Information
Eric Alspaugh: And if anybody wants to get in touch with you, should they look up your company website or email you?
Or what’s your, the best way somebody can get in touch with you?
Mark Pound: Uh, probably the best way is LinkedIn.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay, great. So everybody, it’s Mark Pound in Boise, Idaho. [00:54:00]
Mark Pound: Yeah. If you just look that up and you look up the company name, Kirkcut OS. You’ll find me and I would say that’s the easiest way because the email is too long.
Um, the website, you wouldn’t reach me directly from the website. Obviously that’s on purpose. Uh, so yeah, LinkedIn would be the best way and then we can connect from there and then transfer that over to email. Awesome.
Eric Alspaugh: Any, any final thoughts?
Mark Pound: Um, no, but the next time we do this, I’m going to bring something out of left field and hit you with it.
Eric Alspaugh: Awesome. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate you so much.
Mark Pound: Yeah. Likewise, Eric. Stay
Eric Alspaugh: tuned for upcoming episodes where we’ll cover topics ranging from business formation and fundraising to contracts and compliance. [00:55:00] Subscribe now and never miss an episode of business problem solvers. Business problem solvers podcast is proudly brought to you by Eric B.
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