David
156 episodes listed below
Real founders, practical IP, unusual products.
Entrepreneurship and Intellectual Property is a founder-interview show about invention after the idea stage. Guests explain sauces, DIY bars, 3D-printed instruments, gaming grips, cat shelves, and other products while the conversation keeps returning to protection, scale, and the messy decisions behind a real business.
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Entrepreneurship and Intellectual Property is a business interview show for people who like the working parts of invention. The conversations start with products. A sauce founder explains why customer reactions mattered more than being stuck behind the scenes. Megan Pando talks through an interactive DIY bar built around projects, cocktails, confidence, and carefully designed beginner instructions. Bet describes Skimpies as a first-of-its-kind comfort product and connects that originality to the value of IP. Alfred Goodrich explains Forte3D through professional quality 3D-printed string instruments and the goal of making strong instruments more accessible. Maurice Manswell talks about gaming grip covers, pivots, and the cliff-edge feeling of starting a company. Chef James Berry brings Pluck, Shark Tank, nutrition, and a broader entrepreneurship path into the same conversation. Ryan Vermeer and Christina Hughes explain Frame Your Feline through patents, services, and the sudden attention that can follow television exposure. Scott Putnam links Swat in Scoop, Inventor's Edge, licensing deals, coaching, and a personal health shift into one founder path. The show works because it stays plainspoken. It does not make intellectual property feel separate from the business. Patents, trademarks, names, secret recipes, drawings, copycats, and defensibility show up as practical questions founders face while trying to scale. The pace is unhurried. Guests get space to tell origin stories before the conversation narrows into strategy. Some episodes are funny because the products are unusual. Others are useful because the founder is honest about burnout, uncertainty, or changing a model that no longer works. The recurring lesson is simple without being simplistic: an idea needs customers, protection, stamina, and repeated adjustment. For PlayNext discovery, the show fits listeners who want entrepreneurship with product texture rather than broad motivational talk. It is especially strong for inventors, small brand builders, and operators wondering when a creative idea becomes a business asset.
Made for: For inventors, early founders, product builders, and curious business listeners who want practical stories about turning an idea into a defensible company.
What sets it apart: The show keeps intellectual property tied to everyday founder decisions, from naming and patents to customer experience, licensing, manufacturing, and pivots. Its product mix is concrete enough to make legal and business lessons feel usable.
My name is David Spears and I am an Intellectual Property attorney who manages patent portfolios for client ranges from start-up companies to multibillion dollar companies around the world. I am also a former college football player for Michigan State University. I am interviewing people who have invested in themselves and Intellectual property, and who then goes on to start a business around their intellectual Property.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Founder interviews connect patents and trademarks to the operational pressures that shape consumer-product businesses.
David Spears keeps intellectual property attached to the messy work of building a product. Through founder interviews, Entrepreneurship and Intellectual Property follows ideas into patent applications, manufacturing, retail, imitation, enforcement, and the search for investment.
A cat shelf comes with patent paperwork; your bright idea may need more than a victory lap.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A plainspoken business story about growth, burnout, and losing touch with what first felt alive.
The episode follows a sauce business as it moves from pop-ups and direct customer feedback into the less visible work of suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers. It also stops to ask what the speaker missed while the business was changing shape.
Megan Pando makes the case that Maker Social sells confidence before craft.
Maker Social comes across as a useful case study in where customer experience and intellectual property meet. Megan Pando describes an interactive bar where guests choose from dozens of DIY projects while having a themed cocktail, but the sharper idea is that the business is not…
A practical, plainspoken conversation that makes IP feel useful in everyday business.
Chef James Berry's visit keeps its focus on intellectual property, branding, and the day-to-day decisions behind building a consumer product. The clearest material comes when the talk gets concrete about register marks, where a trademark symbol sits beside a logo, and how IP…
A playful founder story that makes patents and validation feel concrete.
This episode follows Ryan Vermeer and Christina Hughes as they turn Frame Your Feline into a practical story about invention, patent friction, and the case for moving before the paperwork is finished.
A practical look at knockoffs, Amazon pressure, and how patent timing changes the business math.
RIVERBEND: Secrets to Patent Success They Don't Tell You keeps its focus on the rough edges of patent protection: knockoffs, Amazon sellers watching what moves, and the race to check patent status before copying starts.
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
SaaS operators on scaling, pricing and AI, metrics included.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
Brothers Rami and Sammy Moobasher describe how Clean Green Golf recovers lost golf balls from water hazards and course rough, then grades and resells them at about 50% off in a Bastrop, Texas warehouse.
The pull was customer contact.
Megan Pando explains how Maker Social combines a bar, themed cocktails, and about 30 self-selected DIY projects in a two-and-a-half-hour Columbus experience.
Interview with the founder of Skimpies about her innovative underwear product and the importance of intellectual property for her business.
An interview with the founder of Forte3D about his 3D-printed string instruments and the intellectual property behind them.
Interview with the founder of a gaming accessories company about starting and pivoting a business around intellectual property.
The host welcomes Chef James Berry, founder and CEO of Pluck, and frames him as both a chef and a Shark Tank name.
Ryan Vermeer and Christina Hughes bring Frame Your Feline to the center of the conversation.
An IP attorney interviews an inventor and entrepreneur about his journey from health transformation to creating a fly swatter product and teaching inventing.
Eric Edrickson walks through what happens when a product starts getting copied.
Interview with a co-founder of a card game company discussing team roles and the importance of intellectual property.
Host David Spears interviews Jacob Robinson, co-founder of Dig World, a construction theme park, discussing entrepreneurship and building a business around intellectual property.
The host interviews a nurse-turned-entrepreneur who founded a DIY quilting kit company, discussing burnout and entrepreneurial persistence.