025: Daniel Ravicher, Esq. (Director, Startup Practicum)

Daniel Ravicher on Innovation City

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is evolving in the modern world.

Innovation City gives you a behind-the-scenes look into the next generation of world-changing organizations. As business and culture continue to change at an extraordinary pace—thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, greater connectivity, and heightened creativity—you can stay ahead of the curve, find out what’s coming next, and who’s going to bring it to market.

On today’s episode, Tyler and Michael are at the eMerge Americas conference, recording at the University of Miami booth. Today’s guest is Daniel Ravicher, Director of the Startup Practicum at University of Miami School of Law. Daniel is a patent attorney who has worked on patents, intellectual property rights, and more. He began his legal career in the early 90s during the Dot Com boom. The Startup Practicum serves as an entrepreneurship clinic that connects law students with new ventures in need of legal advice. Find Daniel Ravicher and The Startup Practicum at UMStartup.com.

They discuss:

• Entrepreneurship clinics, the first of which was started in 2012
• The 3 Startup Stages: Seed Stage, Early Stage, Late Stage
• Daniel’s background and how he got involved with entrepreneurial work
• His background in engineering
• Learning that a technical background could prove to be a real benefit for an attorney
• Becoming interested in how to make sustainable businesses
• Working in Silicon Valley
• Pivoting to patent law after the Dot Com Bubble burst
• Analyzing assets of target companies; talent and intellectual property
• The benefits of having and licensing patents early on
• The value of patent monopolies in certain fields
• Patents are just one of the legal services that startups may need
• At what point does an entrepreneur need to seek out a patent attorney/intellectual property advisor
• Experienced entrepreneurs understand the importance of good legal representation
• The 4 Horsemen of IP; trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, and patents
• Triage your legal issues:
  • Adequate agreement between co-founders; “operating agreement” or “shareholders agreement”
  • Prioritizing talent, recruiting, retaining team members
  • Intellectual property
  • Financing strategies
• Moats, or natural monopolies
• Keeping a broad focus for The Startup Practicum
• Teaching people how to sell themselves, teaching law students about business development
• Why law students need to develop an entrepreneurial mindset
• How long it takes to get a strong understanding of the law
• Why lawyers leave the practice of law
• How law clinics compare to medical residencies
• Miami offers risk-taking, diversity, and tremendous opportunity
• Embracing failure
• The importance of venture capitalists to Miami’s growing startup scene