I am IP

Dmitri Yanokaro founded I am IP in 2014 with a simple observation: patents are boring, slow, and inaccessible. Most people run away from the word "patents," he noted, because the entire process felt outdated and disconnected from modern innovation. He saw an opportunity to make patent management "sexy, fancy, and more trendy" by building a SaaS platform that would help technology companies and IP managers work more efficiently.

The company started with a clear B2B enterprise focus, offering tiered solutions: solo, team, and enterprise editions with per-user pricing. By 2017, I am IP had achieved $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue and $400,000 in total revenue that year. The early momentum was steady, but Dimitri realized significant technical work was needed. The team invested heavily in building a second-generation platform specifically designed to attract larger enterprises paying higher contract values, delaying near-term sales growth but positioning for longer-term success. The company raised $3 million in total funding, with investors from Sweden and Germany, chosen strategically because those markets were critical to their expansion.

I am IP's customer acquisition strategy was scrappy and direct. Without a defined growth strategy early on, the team relied on cold outreach—finding prospects directly in their platform and calling them. Dimitri and his sales colleagues would qualify leads through Zoom calls, asking about current workflows and desired outcomes. The sales cycle was long—4 to 6 months from first contact to close—but the payback was strong. Word-of-mouth referrals also played a key role, with satisfied customers recommending the platform to others. More recently, over the past four months, the company invested zero dollars in paid social media but instead built organic traction through content marketing and LinkedIn articles, generating 2-3 inbound inquiries per month.

The conversion funnel proved highly effective. Larger customers (400-500 person enterprises) received 2-4 week trial periods to test features against defined KPIs. Smaller customers got a one-month grace period. Roughly 50% of trial users converted to paid customers, and interestingly, the company had never had a customer fail to pay after the grace period. Customer acquisition cost sat at approximately $3,000 per customer for $10,000 annual contracts—solid unit economics. The team's biggest challenge was sales rep retention; keeping quota-carrying salespeople on staff proved "quite tricky," though the core product team remained stable. Enterprise churn was virtually nonexistent; the 1% annual gross revenue churn came almost entirely from smaller customers, typically those facing bankruptcy.

By the time of this interview, I am IP had nearly doubled revenue year-over-year, reaching approximately $60,000-$70,000 in pure software MRR (plus $10,000 monthly in support fees), putting them on track to exceed $840,000 in annualized revenue. The company served approximately 100 customers with just 20 employees—50% engineers and 50% business-facing roles. Dimitri hoped to cross $1 million in total revenue by year's end. The 1% annual churn rate among a customer base where enterprise clients never left reflected strong product-market fit with large organizations. Salesforce became the backbone of their operations, and the focus remained on perfecting the long sales cycle while scaling organic customer acquisition through content.