Most founders think about trademarks after launch. I filed mine before.

Here is why that decision matters — and what it taught me about IP strategy as a founder.

The Mistake Most Founders Make

When you are building a product, the instinct is to move fast. Build first. Protect later. The trademark can wait until there is something worth protecting.

This is backwards.

The moment you choose a brand name, you are making an IP decision. You are either building on solid ground or building on sand.

What FoldiePro™ Taught Me

FoldiePro™ is a performance optimisation system for folding bicycles. Before I posted a single piece of content or showed the product publicly, I filed a trademark under Class 12 — vehicles and conveyances.

That decision forced me to think clearly about three things:

1. What exactly am I protecting? Not just the name. The brand identity. The tagline — Engineered for Speed. Built to Fold.™ The visual mark. Each of these is a separate IP asset.

2. What class does my product belong in? Singapore’s IPOS uses the Nice Classification system. Getting the class wrong means your protection has gaps. Class 12 covers vehicles and conveyances — the right class for a physical bicycle product.

3. Who else is in my space? Filing forced me to search the IPOS trademark database. I found who was already there, what classes they held, and where the gaps were. That intelligence shaped my brand strategy.

The Bigger Lesson

Filing early is not just about legal protection. It is about thinking like an IP strategist from day one.

Most founders treat IP as a legal formality. The most successful ones treat it as a strategic asset — something that compounds in value as the brand grows.

FoldiePro™ is where I am applying that thinking in practice. The hardware is the delivery mechanism. The brand, the data, the optimisation logic — those are the intellectual assets.

What I Am Building Toward

This experience is one of the reasons I applied for the Master of IP and Innovation Management at Singapore University of Social Sciences.

I want to take what I learned building FoldiePro™ and help other Singapore founders and SMEs do the same — protect what they build before someone else does.

IP strategy is not just for large corporations. It is for every founder who believes what they are building has value.

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Salleh Ahshim is an IP Strategist-in-Training, founder of FoldiePro™ and GRC.AD, and a candidate for the MIPIM programme at SUSS. Follow his IP journey at salleh.cloud and on LinkedIn.