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- Idea Of The Day - Build The Stripe Atlas for Trademarks to get rid of the legal maze insanity
Idea Of The Day - Build The Stripe Atlas for Trademarks to get rid of the legal maze insanity
Needs To Exist
May 12, 2025
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GM. This is Needs to Exist (aka NTE), delivering you a startup idea to make trademarking as easy as buying a domain.
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Here’s what we’ve got for you today.
Daily Idea - Trademarks, Simplified. Instantly.
Build What No One Touches
Trademarks Made Simple, Finally.
The One Liner
Make trademarks stupid easy. Like, domain-name easy.
The 140 character tweet (or X) version
Filing a trademark sucks.
This makes it feel like buying a domain: one fee, one dashboard, no legal headaches.
The Longer Story Version
The Problem
Startups move fast. The law doesn’t.
Every week, another founder tweets:
“Some scammy Amazon seller just stole our name 😩”
Why? Because they meant to file a trademark, but it felt too annoying — or they hired a lawyer who ghosted them after charging $2,000.
For something this mission-critical, it’s shocking how broken the process still is.
And once you're in, you're locked in. No one switches mid-process. Whoever owns that early trust... wins.
The Solution
Make filing a trademark feel like buying a domain.
No lawyer calls.
No legalese.
No guessing if you did it right.
Just pick your name, describe your business in plain English, and hit go.
Behind the scenes, an LLM + some clever automations turn that into a bulletproof application — filed, tracked, and monitored from one clean dashboard.
Need alerts? Slack or Notion.
Running multiple brands? One login, all visible.
Agency with 30 clients? We got you.
Why It Works
High urgency: When founders realize they need this, it’s usually yesterday.
Sticky: Once you file, you’re not switching providers.
High-trust: Owning the legal relationship early opens doors to upsell IP monitoring, brand protection, domain escrow, etc.
How We'd Build It
🟢 Beginner Mode (Solo Builder)
🟡 Intermediate Mode (Small Team)
Replace Typeform with custom React frontend
Use Pinecone or Weaviate to vector-search similar marks for duplicate detection
Integrate with Notion API for agency dashboard embeds
Add LLM fine-tuning to parse industry-specific descriptions
🔴 Advanced Mode (Venture-Scale)
Build a proper filing engine that maps plain-English inputs → proper classes/codes
Trademark radar: Monitoring new filings that may infringe
Roll out multi-country filing support
Plug in AI copilots for agencies managing lots of filings
Why It Needs to Exist
Because no one should lose their brand to a paperwork delay.
This isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s a “how do we not already have this?”
Every founder needs a trademark — but no founder wants to deal with it. This idea bridges that gap.
Build trust early, deliver value fast, then expand. Just like Stripe Atlas did… but for your brand’s identity.
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Rebuild the rails under industries no one wants to touch.
You don’t need to chase trends to find a great startup idea.
You can just look under the floorboards.
The real opportunities? They’re hiding in infrastructure — the invisible, annoying, brittle stuff powering old industries.
It’s where everyone needs to operate, but no one wants to build.
And that’s exactly why you should.
Example: The Unsexy Foundation
Think about what makes Stripe, Plaid, or Vanta powerful.
They didn’t build shiny consumer apps.
They replaced the pain-in-the-ass workflows everyone else built on top of.
They became rails — essential infrastructure you can't skip.
And once you’re in, you’re sticky. No one wants to rip out the plumbing.
So how do you find these?
Step 1: Look for the Ugly Docs
The best startup ideas start with terrible documentation.
If an industry still relies on:
PDFs from government websites
Fax machines
Portals that break in Safari
“Call our support line” to proceed
...you’re in the zone.
🛠 Tools to help:
Step 2: Build Where Others Avoid
There’s a reason no one wants to start companies in insurance compliance, government procurement, or franchise onboarding.
They’re messy. Filled with jargon. Slow-moving. But you know what else they are?
Defensible.
You can’t ChatGPT your way through regulated workflows.
Once you learn how a system works, you're part of a small club. That’s a moat.
🛠 Tools to help:
Step 3: Be Early in the Stack
If you're the first tool someone uses when they start a business — you get to layer on everything else.
It’s the "own the setup" strategy.
You don’t have to be everything. Just be first.
First tool they trust. First product they log into. First problem they pay to make go away.
From there? Expand.
Offer add-ons, workflows, automations. You’ve already earned your spot.
🛠 Tools to help:
Final Thought
Everyone’s building on top of the stack.
You want to be under it.
Look for the rusty scaffolding.
Then rebuild it — faster, smarter, automated.
That’s not unsexy.
That’s gold.
And once you’re in the stack…
you stay there.
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