A Philly startup that turns IP into blockchain tokens is heading to CES

Hundreds of tech companies from across the world descend on Las Vegas next week for the annual CES conference, represented by founders and reps keen on networking and brand building. Among them will be the Philadelphia-based intellectual property company Big Idea.

Big Idea CEO Nate Hecker and COO Jarid Arnold will have a booth at Eureka Park at the internationally renowned consumer technology trade show.

Their platform allows anyone to register any type of intellectual property, tokenizing the rights to that idea. This protects the IP and turns it into a tangible asset that can be traded, bought or licensed. Simplifying the process of registering IP through one platform incentivizes people to document their ideas and protects people in the early stages of creating their work, the duo said.

“There’s that phase where an idea is still evolving,” Arnold said. “But it doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable and it doesn’t mean that, you know, you shouldn’t be able to protect it to some degree.”

The fully remote company is also focused on trade secrets, which is a type of intellectual property that is confidential and can be sold or licensed. Hecker has seen more companies keep trade secrets rather than apply for patents and need to disclose their findings.

“The problem that we found is most companies don’t know how to protect a trade secret, let alone know how to identify what a trade secret is,” Hecker said. “We have a patent pending, dual ledger system that we use that allows us to disclose a trade secret or a vulnerable competitive information publicly, but be able to keep the entity and the contents of it private.”

The pair met through the healthcare space and have worked at three companies together. During the pandemic, both South Philly-based Hecker and Nashville-based Arnold became interested in learning more about how blockchain could be used productively in different industries.

Healthcare tends to be slower at adapting new technologies, Hecker told Technical.ly, so they started researching intellectual property instead, and found that there were opportunities to implement tech.

The cofounder’s ultimate goal is to incentivize employees to document IP and build “intellectual capital,” adding value to companies who use the platform.

“We’re tokenizing the rights to that idea. And so when you tokenize something, now you’re turning an intangible asset into something that’s tangible,” Hecker said. “You’re creating an asset and now that asset can be traded, bought and sold. It can be licensed. Or it can now be used as collateral.”

As of mid-December, the company had raised $50,000 from friends and family and planned to close that round in January, per the cofounders. They plan to launch a seed round in the first half of 2024.

In the meantime: CES.

Arnold and Hecker said they first planned to attend the giant conference as consumers. But after being invited by CES to be an exhibitor, they came to see it as an opportunity to publicly launch their product on Jan. 8, right before the conference opens.

The main goal for next week is to build brand recognition, engage with everyone who comes to their booth and build relationships.

“We see this as a way to amplify our message out, get a ton of feedback from our early users and really just see what their reactions are,” Hecker said. “We’re looking to see who’s interested in this, like which industry really grabs on to this, and who’s really going to be the leader of moving this new type of intellectual property forward and enabling it in the new digital world.”

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.