Meet Peter Pappas, Engine Advisor on IP

I’m really excited to launch Engine’s Senior Fellows Program. Starting with Peter Pappas as our Senior Advisor on intellectual property and other policy issues, we plan to expand the program with fellows on net neutrality, women in tech, and other relevant areas that affect the startup community.

Peter, who made his first public appearance with us at a patent reform panel in San Francisco, and then joined us in DC for Startup Day on the Hill, is the former chief of staff at the USPTO where he worked with Director Kappos and the White House on policy initiatives. In this position, Peter was intimately involved in the formulation, and passage, of the 2011 America Invents Act. And since then, he has been working with the USPTO and the White House on additional patent reform legislation that targets patent litigation abuse and fills in the gaps that were not addressed by the AIA.

Having advisors is essential for us as we continue to conduct existing policy work, and enter into new debates. Peter’s experience and expertise are particularly crucial right now, as we push the Senate to pass comprehensive patent reform.

Speaking of which, here is Peter's first op-ed for us on why we need to restore a patent system that support true innovation.

Watch Peter introduce himself and tell us why he’s excited to be here!

Critical Mass Supports Timely Patent Reform

This morning, we -- and 5600 other people -- sent a letter to the Senate urging real patent reform. Those people include 1507 entrepreneurs, 758 investors, and 1006 inventors -- at least 150 of whom own their own patents. This should serve as yet another reminder of the critical mass of job-creating entrepreneurs and businesses that support patent reform; the Senate should take note and act swiftly.

This letter is in addition to a letter the Senate Judiciary Committee received from U.S. Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and 15 others  late last week. Signed by a broad coalition of Democratic and Republican senators, the letter cites widespread support across the county and in Congress for reforming the U.S. patent system to protect America's most innovative industries, as well as Main Street businesses and entrepreneurs across the nation, from abusive lawsuits and costly settlements.

As the Senate receives this letter, over 100 people will meet at Stripe’s office space tonight to talk about patent reform, listen to a panel of experts -- including former USPTO Chief of Staff and Engine Fellow Peter Pappas -- and formulate a plan of action for passing meaningful reform this year.

With the majority of patent troll targets making under $10 million in revenue, this is an issue so important to our community, and the economy as a whole, that we cannot afford to wait for action. When small businesses face dubious multimillion dollar lawsuits, our innovation economy suffers.

With the Senate poised to take up this debate in earnest early next month, we are entering the final, and most important, stretch of this battle. And we need you more than ever.

If you signed today’s letter and want to do more, or if you're just joining this coalition, stay tuned for the launch of fixpatents.org, a site that will help you call your Senators directly. A number of Senators and Representatives in Austin last week confirmed that making a phone call is the single most influential action you can take to encourage action in return, so we hope you’ll join us.

As we celebrate today’s actions, we also know there is still a lot more to do. Don’t stop here. Help us see this through.

Julie Samuels Joins Engine As First Executive Director

The Engine team and board are excited to announce that Julie Samuels has agreed to join as our first Executive Director, and has been appointed President of Engine Advocacy and Engine Foundation.

Julie has served on the Foundation board since its formation in 2012, where she has been an invaluable resource for the organization. Now we’re delighted to have convinced her to join us full-time.

Julie’s appointment is a major turning point for us. Today, Engine is a still-growing nonprofit organization (two, technically) and our staff produces economic reports, and provides policy guidance, direct advocacy, and member services to hundreds of startups. Engine’s staff and volunteers have done an amazing job of self-directing and building the organization you see today, with leadership coming from within the team, and from board members.

Julie’s job is now to take the organization through its next growth phase. She has committed to growing the team (we’re hiring!), launching a new policy fellowship program, building up a more substantial and diverse funding base, and exploring the social issues around technology in addition to Engine’s core set of focus areas. 2014 is going to be a big year.

And for those who don’t know Julie, she’s joining us from the Electronic Frontier Foundation where she was a Senior Staff Attorney, and the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents (we swear). She’s also on a number of advisory boards, is a regular speaker at a host of prestigious places (CES, Harvard, Princeton - you get the idea), and Julie started her career as an entertainment and IP attorney. But Julie’s no ordinary lawyer. She was an advocate and journalist before law school at Vanderbilt, and interned at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications -- where the modern internet browser was born -- while still an undergraduate at the University of Illinois.

Since then, Julie has argued in the Megaupload case, has written a number of briefs for our nation’s highest courts, launched TrollingEffects.org and advised countless startups. Not to mention the hard work of maintaining a Twitter account in her dog’s name! (You can follow Julie on Twitter here.)

We believe there’s nobody better to represent startup entrepreneurs around the country, and make sure we do everything we can to foster economic growth, innovation, and achievement -- in the United States and abroad.

If you’re at SXSW this week and next, please stop by any of our many events, including this immigration reform event with many of our tech partners, and give her a warm welcome.

You can also find the press release about Julie’s appointment here.

Engine Discovers Tech Cities Across America

This year, Engine is hitting the road to tell the stories of entrepreneurial communities in cities and towns all across America. With a video series, produced by our own Daniel Schwartzbaum, we’ll shine a light on founders and entrepreneurs, asking them why they do what they do, and what it is about their community that gives them the support they need.

We chose Portland for a our pilot project -- just a short flight from our home here in San Francisco, but light years away in terms of community building. What we found was a collaborative atmosphere where founders, capital investors, city and state government, and other local organizations came together to build, with intention and thoughtfulness, a community that feeds on the boundless energy of its proponents.

With the generous support of the Technology Association of Oregon, and their President, Skip Newberry, we have started to put together the film on what we found.

Here is just a taste: the preview trailer we produced for TAO’s office opening party last week. The full episode will be out soon. During the rest of this year, we want to discover more tech cities around the country -- let us know if you and your community want to be involved. We can't wait to hear your story.

Help Us Make the Voice of Startups Stronger

Over the last 18 months, Engine has grown quickly from loose coalition, to more formal coalition, then finally becoming a legal nonprofit. Now we’re ready to take the next step: embarking on a fundraising campaign to help seed the organization, and ensure it will be around for a while to come. 

Since one of Engine’s key functions is connecting startups with government, and policy makers with startups, we’ve put a lot of energy into bringing the community together. Already during Engine’s short lifetime, our members have met with hundreds of policy makers, we’ve brought 70 innovators from across the country to meet with members of Congress in Washington, D.C., and 15,000 calls were made from Engine supporters to Congress during the Stop the Wall campaign against SOPA/PIPA. In addition, on the education front we’ve published hundreds of informative blog posts and key pieces of research, including our Technology Works study.

This work depends on the support of startups, larger tech companies, and individuals who believe in the work we’re doing, and want to help support our research and advocacy. Since we do not charge startups dues to join, and hope we never have to, we need your support -- your support is critical to our continued ability to bring the community together, undertake research, and develop successful campaigns to educate lawmakers, local elected officials, and the public about the impact the tech sector can have on economic growth and job creation.

We need you to make the voice of startup communities stronger. You can donate through the site, or contact us at giving@engine.is for more information.

Entrepreneurs Tell Lawmakers What They Need

At the end of February, Engine took 32 startups from across the country to the very heart of policy-making in Washington D.C. for our second annual Startup Day on the Hill. The aim was to facilitate interactions between lawmakers and entrepreneurs in order to build mutually beneficial relationships.

Participating startups include Etsy, Lyft, Yelp, and Maybrooks, among many others.

Here’s what Stacey Delo, Maybrooks Founder, had to say about her experience in Washington D.C. and what she went to talk about.

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Debi and I founded Maybrooks as an online resource for smart moms – at all stages of their careers – to go to find jobs, post jobs, and connect with like-minded women.

We built tools to harness the powerful word-of-mouth network among moms, and empower them to help each other find flexible careers. And there’s one key differentiator -- our growing job board that features meaningful opportunities for highly experienced working women who seek job flexibility. The site is a place where small businesses and startups can find overqualified talent on a flexible basis, and where large corporations can tout their amazing flex policies.

Just before our trip to D.C. with Engine, the New York Times ran a piece about how men are benefiting more from the economic recovery - from a jobs perspective - than women. As a result, our visit, and the opportunity to talk to lawmakers about women and jobs was well timed. Debi and I were particularly interested in telling policy makers about the large, smart, work-ready talent pool of women looking to put their skills to work with some level of flexibility.

To help craft our message, we built a survey to identify what working moms want when it comes to flexibility, and found that sixty percent wanted full-time job opportunities with options for flexibility. Ninety-four percent of the respondents said job flexibility was as or more important to them than money. See an infographic of the results here.

On the Friday before our trip, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer demanded that all remote-only workers come into the office, opening a floodgate of conversation nationally about workplace flexibility particularly as it pertained to working mothers. I felt fortunate to have the survey data showing that the majority of women we interviewed wanted full-time work with options for flexibility, not necessarily an entirely remote-work setup. (Here’s our take on the conversation about women in the workplace.)

The survey also highlighted the fact that 94 percent of women say flexibility is as or more important than money, yet 78 percent say finding flexible work is very or extremely difficult. These numbers, together with our belief in the Maybrooks platform as a way to raise awareness and make it easier for women to find the right job convinced us that attending Startup Day on the Hill with Engine was the next logical step. With the numbers and the platform, my meetings in D.C. allowed me to talk directly to lawmakers about supporting policies that keep women in the workforce, contribute to job growth for women, and provide greater flexibility and income parity with men.

I was so grateful to have this opportunity to meet face-to-face in small groups with some of the most influential people in D.C., not to mention the cool factor of simply being able to “check in” on Facebook at The White House. We were inspired by the country’s CTO Todd Park and his team, who are keenly in tune with the needs of startups, and working to operate their portion of government with as much agility as possible. I was also honored to sit at a dining room-sized conference table with three of the most accomplished women in government, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Rep. Anna Eshoo, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- all Democrats of California.

Impressed with how all the government officials were so open and willing to listen to startups and their needs, Debi and I thank Engine for opening this important line of communication between the tech community and Washington.

Stacey Delo, cofounder & ceo
maybrooks.com

@staceydelo

@maybrooksjobs

Join us for Startup Day on the Hill

Over the last year, Engine has worked to improve the entrepreneurial environment by providing knowledge to both lawmakers and startups about the issues that impact our community. We’ve released our first paper, met with officials in our offices, and brought entrepreneurs together around issues. One of our most successful events has been Startup Day on the Hill. Last year, we took 18 startups from all around the country to talk about the products and services startups are creating and how archaic laws are impacting their ability to innovate. Now we’re gearing up to do it again.

This year, Startup Day on the Hill is aimed at showing lawmakers that startups are creating jobs all across the country and spurring economic growth across many sectors of the economy. On February 26th and 27th we are taking Congress by storm. We’ll be meeting with the Chief Technology Officer at the White House, talking to Senators and Representatives about how immigration reform impacts the technology community, and educating our elected officials about the issues that directly affect our ability to invent, start companies, and create jobs.

The startups coming to Washington are making the next generation of educational toys and inventing new approaches to semantic search. They are pioneering medical devices to help detect and prevent heart disease, and building low-cost satellites to provide universal access to information about the changing Earth. These are just a few examples of the work that we’ll showcase for legislators -- work that is disrupting industries, creating new economic opportunity, and creating greater social good.

Check out our website to find out more about the agenda and consider joining us, too. Make your voice heard.

Why Joining Engine Matters

Here’s a secret from a former Capitol Hill staffer -- it only takes about twenty phone calls about an issue to merit a briefing in a staff meeting. Just a handful more will get lawmakers to reconsider. Can you imagine how easy raising a round of funding would be if you only needed a hundred users?

Making laws is a cumbersome process, and changing them is nearly impossible. Whether you like it or not, lawmakers you may never have heard of -- and the decisions they make -- affect how you run your business. They have a say in how you use data generated from your users, payment processing, and hiring.

Thankfully, laws are written, tweaked, and sometimes completely overhauled based on the concerns of those who make their voices heard. While the lawmaking process might seem long, laborious, and as about as comprehensible as the reasoning behind the fiscal cliff, it really just comes down to constituents (DC-speak for users).

Take SOPA/PIPA for example, where constituents succeeded in making their voices heard. The technology community stopped the proposals, but we were forced to rally in the eleventh hour with our backs against the wall. Engine is changing that.

Engine is proactively involved in the lawmaking process, rather than just waiting to react. We get startups a seat at the table, ensuring you have a say about the laws that affect the way you run your business. We’re meeting with lawmakers, doing the research about startups’ impact, and building a community where you can contribute your opinions. But we can’t do that without your support.

I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have time, I am building a business, I’m not really political anyway. We understand that. We’re there when you need us, doing the legwork, and giving you the opportunity to educate the government about your business at the start of the conversation. Being a member of Engine means that you will know in advance when you need to be caller number twenty.

Disagreeing Doesn’t Mean Disengaging

Uber’s recent win in Washington DC over taxi regulations has sparked some debate about the approach startups should take to dealing with government. Working with state, local, or federal government is never a perfect process, companies often rightly feel that revenue, consumer access, or effective competition are threatened by new laws or existing regulations. Whether a process involves clash or compromise, results aren’t guaranteed.

At Engine, we have worked with policymakers on proposals that impact startups’ businesses, like Startup Act 2.0, and have helped to stage wide-scale protests, as was the case in confronting SOPA/PIPA. Both approaches brought results, though not perfect solutions, and moved things in the right direction for the startup ecosystem.

No startup should hesitate from playing hardball by harnessing user-advocates who are passionate about their products if they think customers deserve to be heard. Nor should an entrepreneur shy away from engaging directly with government where discussion might improve policy. Personalities, politics, and ideas will clash whether they are trumpeted in the public square or discussed behind closed doors. We need more, not fewer people involved in the lawmaking process.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to startups. Disagreements public and private occur constantly in DC, Sacramento, Albany, and Des Moines, and involve some of the largest companies in the world. When AT&T sought approval to acquire T-Mobile, more than 40,000 public comments were filed with

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Engine is building tools that make it easy and effective for entrepreneurs to connect with and influence government. In the end,

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whether you work with Engine, call on your users to tweet support, or meet with a representative one-on-one, as an entrepreneur, you should feel empowered to engage with your government. Our stories and experiences matter and should help guide these debates. Startups working with government -- choosing to engage and doing so in an effective manner -- go beyond simply creating debate, they foster a stronger ecosystem for our businesses and our community to thrive.

Continuing the Conversation: A Roundtable on San Francisco, Prop E, and Technology

The move by San Franciscan voters to approve Proposition E earlier this month was something of a coup for the tech industry. This shift in tax policy aims to encourage hiring and new business development in the city and saw support from the mayor, tech companies, and leaders in the venture capital community. While the impact of the reform will be evaluated over the coming years, the coordination of the tech and startup community around this policy is an encouraging achievement.

The important question we face after the success of Prop E is how to keep the dialogue between government, citizens, and innovators moving forward?

Technology companies and other interested advocates including the San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology and Innovation (sf.citi) backed Prop E, arguing the reform would be a catalyst for job creation in San Francisco. A video released during election season by sf.citi highlighted the important role technology can play in improving local governance and day-to-day problems.

For years, licensing, policy, and regulation have pitted the tech industry against itself, seeing companies use government as a wedge against competitors. Working together with businesses and other stakeholders to address policy challenges will help our communities and country emerge stronger, more efficient, and more prosperous. The first step is coming together. Engine has been working in local communities across the country as well as here in the valley to make local startup policy a priority. We encourage you to join Engine to be part of future success stories in your own backyard.

Next Thursday, we are going to continue this conversation. Please consider joining Engine for a roundtable on technology, economic growth, and local policy at 10am December 6. For more information, email us at info@engine.is.

Photo courtesy of  MomentsForZen.

Engine Welcomes Reps. Chaffetz and Goodlatte

Last week, Engine hosted Representatives Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. The lawmakers, both Republicans, joined a host of startups to discuss issues involving copyright, patents, and other intellectual property issues critical to entrepreneurs developing technology products for consumers.

The conversation revolved around a number of subjects. Entrepreneurs expressed concern about a second coming of bills like SOPA and PIPA as well as an interest in fixing the patent regime to keep trolls from harming young companies. We also discussed Rep. Chaffetz’s Internet Radio Fairness Act of the 2012 -- introduced with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon -- which would level the playing field between radio broadcasters online and off.

Rules changing how startups can use and display content will be critical to the evolution of the technology industry. At Engine, we will continue to get entrepreneurs involved in the debate on intellectual property as it affects their businesses.

Watch Commissioner Brill @ Engine for State of the Net West

Commissioner Julie Brill of the Federal Trade Commission joined us yesterday to discuss issues impacting technology companies at an event co-hosted by Engine as part of the Congressional Internet Caucus’ State of the Net West series. The commissioner heard from entrepreneurs, policy wonks, journalists, and activists in the technology and startup ecosystems. You can watch the event in full here:

FTC Commissioner Julie Brill @ Engine from Engine Advocacy on Vimeo.

We are encouraged by federal regulators’ increased interest in connecting with entrepreneurs on policies that influence their businesses. Q&A from the crowd touched on a number of tech policy subjects including Do Not Track standards, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the commission’s work on mobile app privacy, and its actions against larger companies like Facebook and Google. The conversation primarily centered on regulations’ impact on innovation across the internet economy.

The FTC has focused on providing guidelines to developers to better and more clearly inform mobile app users. A recent Pew Internet and American Life Project survey found that more than half of people that use apps decided not to download a program based on information about the data it would need to collect to operate. It will be important for the commission to keep in mind the sophistication of users as it continues to pursue guidelines on the amount of information and disclosure imposed on mobile developers.

We will continue to host events that connect entrepreneurs and startups to policymakers and we hope to continue our partnership with the Congressional Internet Caucus in the future. If you would like to find out more about Engine events join us as a member and we’ll keep you in the loop.