Early teams pour everything into the product, then step on landmines in trademarks, work-for-hire inventions, and open-source licenses — discovered only at fundraising or acquisition.
1. Not registering your trademark early
You use a brand name for a year or two, then go to expand and find someone else has already registered it. The cost of rebranding far exceeds the cost of registering early.
2. Unclear ownership of work inventions
Who owns the code your engineers or contractors wrote? Without it in writing, it becomes a giant question mark during fundraising due diligence.
The third landmine is open-source license compliance. Handle these three early, and every future funding round gets much smoother.
