PatSnap

Jeffrey Tiong was fresh out of college in Singapore when he stumbled upon a frustrating problem. During an internship at a medical device startup in Philadelphia, he spent countless hours researching patents and intellectual property—work that was tedious, expensive, and time-consuming. Existing tools cost around $100,000 per year, while free government databases lacked basic features. He realized there was a massive gap in the market. Patent databases contained over 300 years of accumulated human innovation, disclosed by inventors as part of a deal with governments. Yet these databases were written by lawyers in impenetrable language. "If we can decode this data source and make it as easy as possible, even a university student can understand how a technology works," he thought, "that will be really great."

Back in Singapore after graduation, Tiong applied for a startup grant from his alma mater, National University of Singapore, and received around $40,000. He spent roughly one-third on servers—cloud infrastructure didn't exist yet—and the rest on hiring developers. But the money ran out quickly. To keep the lights on, Tiong and his team took on consulting projects and applied for additional grants. They also had to acquire patent datasets from governments around the world and spend months cleaning and normalizing the data. Two to three years passed before they shipped their first crude version. During this time, Tiong did minimal customer validation. He pitched the idea to a few prospects, who said it sounded great but wanted to see a working product. He was essentially building in the dark.

When the product finally launched in late 2009, Tiong's first sale came a few months later—to his university library. "I just hustled and talked to the librarian," he recalled. "There was a very nice kind lady [who] just gave us a shot." It wasn't a glamorous start, but it was proof of concept. In 2012, Tiong partnered with someone experienced in inside sales. Together, they built a team in London that cold-called prospects in the US and Europe, delivering web demos. The response was surprisingly positive, especially from R&D departments. These teams had never seen a user-friendly tool for technology intelligence, and they were willing to take a chance on a scrappy startup.

Interestingly, Tiong's original target market was IP attorneys and lawyers—they had the deepest pockets and the most critical need. But they also had the highest standards for data coverage, accuracy, and completeness. PatSnap's early product couldn't meet those demands. Instead, R&D departments became the unexpected goldmine. They had better purchasing power than Tiong anticipated, fewer technical requirements, and they loved the product's ease of use. R&D budgets globally total $2 trillion annually—a market so massive that even incremental improvements created enormous value.

But early customers quickly discovered the product was fragile. During demos, Tiong had to carefully choreograph every interaction to avoid crashes. "We actually had a very curated demo journey," he admitted. "We highlight our product features like some visualization analysis [and] use certain keywords that we know will work." After launch, customer complaints poured in. The team simultaneously had to acquire customers, keep them happy, and stabilize a broken product. It took another 2+ years of intense work before PatSnap became reliable enough for mainstream use. Tiong had to make a painful choice: avoid selling to customer segments that were poor fits for early-stage software, and focus on early adopters within R&D who were willing to tolerate imperfection.

By 2020, PatSnap had grown to 8,000 customers and 800 employees, with clients including Walt Disney, Tesla, and NASA. The company had raised over $51 million in funding. Inside sales remained the primary growth engine for the first 6-7 years. Inbound marketing didn't launch until around 2016-2017. Tiong reflected on the journey with hard-won wisdom: building took longer than it should have, he lacked confidence as a young founder, and he made leadership mistakes that demoralized his team. But he also learned the power of authenticity, self-awareness, and surrounding himself with co-founders and team members who could share the burden. "With yourself alone, you are nothing," he concluded. The biggest challenge now was scaling beyond his founding team's "zero to one" DNA while retaining the entrepreneurial spirit that built the company.