Exclusive: Inventex founder, an engineer for Coinbase at 14, wants to revolutionize patent applications

Daniel Ruskin began his profession when he used to be an insignificant 14 years previous as an engineer for Coinbase. As he tells it, he used to be a teen “who knew the right way to code and sought after to construct cool issues.”

Clearly too younger to get a checking account, Ruskin did freelance construction paintings he discovered on reddit in trade for bitcoin. There he noticed that Coinbase used to be hiring, and boldly despatched the pinnacle of operations a chilly e mail asking if he may just paintings for the crypto trade.

“Lengthy tale brief, I stopped up writing a lot of the early instrument that powered the Coinbase platform,” he tells techmim. “I didn’t write the v0 codebase…however I did write a large number of instrument that introduced us from 1 to ten.”

After 4 years at Coinbase, Ruskin made up our minds to visit school after which to regulation college. He began a couple of startups alongside the best way, together with an election safety corporate the place he drafted and gained a patent on its generation. 

Pissed off with how “opaque” the patent procedure used to be, Ruskin in December 2024 introduced a brand new Salt Lake Town-based corporate known as Inventex.

Ruskin, now 26, says Inventex desires to ease the method of “getting ready and submitting patent programs” through the use of a chain of AI brokers augmented through approved legal professionals. He believes that Inventex can assist corporations get patent-pending “10x sooner” — in days, slightly than months {that a} conventional company would possibly take.  

The idea that briefly attracted traders and after only one month, Ruskin had raised $2.4 million in a pre-seed spherical to develop Inventex. Conviction Capital, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, and Cambrian Ventures co-led the financing, which additionally integrated participation from Spice up and others. The cash used to be raised by the use of SAFEs at a $10 million valuation.

Inventex intakes the vital technical information supplied through its shoppers corresponding to code, design paperwork, and technical specs. It then identifies what its shoppers have invented that meet the prison necessities for patentability. This contains in search of prior artwork or what has been completed prior to in that exact buyer’s technical box, in addition to “how our buyer is other,” Ruskin stated. 

The corporate then drafts and recordsdata patent programs on behalf of the corporate in the USA and out of the country.

Maksim Stepanenko, who labored with Ruskin at Coinbase, tells techmim that Ruskin impressively began main key bills infrastructure tasks on the crypto corporate “quickly” after he began whilst nonetheless a highschool scholar. So when he heard about what Ruskin used to be doing with Inventex, he signed on as a small angel investor as a part of the pre-seed financing.

“He’s considerate, fast-moving, and strangely excellent at navigating complicated programs,” stated Stepanenko, who’s the founding father of a startup known as Operator. “I’ve been following his paintings ever since [working with him at Coinbase] and used to be excited to give a boost to his new corporate. [He’s] probably the most quietly spectacular folks I’ve labored with.”

‘Extra inbound than we will be able to care for’

But even so velocity, Ruskin claims Inventex’s way will get its shoppers higher-quality patents too.

“We positive song fashions in particular to each and every technical space, and our brokers are true mavens in each and every technical box our shoppers paintings in,” he stated. Conventional patent legal professionals, Ruskin believes, regularly don’t perceive the contours of the innovations they’re protective. The technical-expert brokers are overseen, and delicate, through approved legal professionals.

Ruskin is assured that Inventex has the proper type to be leading edge on this complicated subset of prison services and products.

“Our competition promote instrument as task-based automation to standard regulation companies, and deployment is constrained through their incentives corresponding to a billable-hour type, and the wider scheme of paying for experience as opposed to effects,” he stated. “We upend this through offering the end-to-end provider.”

Inventex’s type may be generalizable, Ruskin claims. For instance, he stated Inventex is these days the use of considered one of its gear to automate MSPB (U.S. Benefit Techniques Coverage Board) lawsuits for the tens of 1000’s of federal staff that had been not too long ago laid off.

“Conventional companies can’t give a boost to that more or less workload,” he stated.

It’s early days but however Inventex has about $250,000 of annual habitual earnings within the pipeline, consistent with Ruskin, together with two publicly traded corporations and a lot of startups. Dirac is one who has given permission to be named.

“We now have extra inbound than we will be able to care for,” Ruskin stated.

Construction unicorns

Ruskin additionally has experience within the fintech house. He joined Checkr, a provider for gig platforms to pay their personnel, in 2022. There, Ruskin says, he helped get started Checkr Pay, “a startup inside a startup.” Right through his time there, Ruskin employed a workforce of 3 engineers and “constructed and introduced a neobank in about 3 to 4 months.” (Checkr raised $250 million at a $4.6 billion valuation in 2021.) Ruskin left that corporate in 2023 to complete regulation college at New York College, the place he graduated within the most sensible 10% of his elegance in 2024.

It used to be right through his time at Checkr Pay that Ruskin were given to grasp Cambrian Ventures’ solo GP Rex Salisbury, who described the younger entrepreneur as the corporate’s “very best speed engineer.”

“Ask the early Coinbase workforce they usually’ll inform you a similar factor, which is beautiful outstanding given he used to be nonetheless in highschool,” Salisbury instructed techmim. “Daniel helped construct two unicorns (Coinbase and Checkr) prior to graduating school and has since long gone directly to graduate regulation college and move the patent bar. [He’s a] beautiful uncommon aggregate of ability.”

He added: “At this early degree, you don’t assessment an organization purely on what it’s, however on what it may be. It’s already outstanding what Daniel has constructed, however given his speed what truly excites me is how briefly he’s accomplished to construct extra.”

Making patents extra available 

Inventex has grown 2x monthly since December essentially via word-of-mouth referrals and partnerships with VCs. The corporate fees shoppers a per 30 days rate to construct a patent portfolio. The cost contains invention discovery, drafting, submitting, and patent prosecution.

At this time, it has 3 full-time staff (all engineers) and a number of other contract patent legal professionals.

Inventex’s closest competition are patent drafting gear like Edge and Resolve, consistent with Ruskin. 

Ahead of Inventex, Ruskin based Motif in July 2024, which had the similar idea, however with a co-founder that “didn’t figure out.”

Having a look forward, Ruskin is thinking about providing Inventex’s drafting toolkit as a white-labeled product for regulation companies so they are able to license its gear “to get their purchasers higher patents, sooner.”

“This aligns with our long-term imaginative and prescient for the sphere of patent regulation. At this time, 90% of the billable time for an preliminary patent submitting is spent on drafting a disclosure; 10% is spent on technique,” he stated. “This may turn in 5 years — drafting will take 10% of the time, and technique would be the differentiated provider supplied through companies. This in the long run brings the fee to document a patent down, and makes the machine extra available to innovators of any dimension.”