It's not every day you hear about someone starting their engineering career at Coinbase when they were just 14. But that's exactly how Daniel Ruskin began his journey. Driven by a passion for coding and building innovative solutions – and initially paid in Bitcoin because he was too young for a bank account – Ruskin quickly made his mark, contributing significantly to the software that powered Coinbase's early growth.
Fast forward through college, law school (graduating top 10% from NYU), and stints building impactful products at companies like Checkr (where he helped launch a neobank), Ruskin encountered a major pain point: the patent application process. After navigating the "opaque" system to patent technology for one of his own startups, he knew there had to be a better way.
This frustration became the catalyst for his latest venture, Inventex, launched in December 2024.
The Problem with Traditional Patent Filing
Anyone who has dealt with patents knows the traditional route can be slow, complex, and expensive. It often involves months of back-and-forth, significant legal fees tied to billable hours, and patent attorneys who may not always grasp the deep technical nuances of the invention they're trying to protect. This friction can stifle innovation, especially for startups and smaller companies.
Introducing Inventex: AI Meets Legal Expertise
Inventex, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is tackling this challenge head-on. The company's mission is to revolutionize how patent applications are prepared and filed, aiming to secure that crucial "patent pending" status for companies up to 10 times faster – think days, not months.
How do they achieve this? Inventex employs a unique combination of:
- AI Agents: These sophisticated agents analyze technical data provided by clients (code, design docs, specifications).
- Intelligent Invention Identification: The AI identifies legally patentable aspects of the client's work.
- Prior Art Search: It conducts thorough searches to understand the existing technical landscape and highlight the client's unique contribution.
- Automated Drafting: The system drafts high-quality patent applications.
- Attorney Oversight: Licensed patent attorneys oversee, refine, and finalize the process, ensuring legal rigor.
The key differentiator here isn't just speed; it's also about quality and specialization. Ruskin emphasizes that their AI models are fine-tuned for specific technical areas, creating "true experts" that understand the inventions deeply. This contrasts with the traditional model where attorneys might be generalists.
Securing Investment and Early Traction
The potential of this approach quickly caught the eye of investors. Within just one month of launch, Inventex secured $2.4 million in pre-seed funding at a $10 million valuation. The round saw participation from prominent names like Conviction Capital, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, and Cambrian Ventures, among others.
Investor confidence is bolstered by Ruskin's impressive track record. Maksim Stepanenko, who worked with Ruskin at Coinbase, noted his ability to lead key projects even as a high school student and praised his skill in navigating complex systems. Rex Salisbury of Cambrian Ventures highlighted Ruskin's role in helping build two unicorns (Coinbase and Checkr) before even finishing law school, calling him a "rare combination of talent."
This early validation translates into market demand. Inventex already reports around $250,000 in ARR pipeline, including publicly traded companies and startups like Dirac. According to Ruskin, they currently have "more inbound than we can handle," primarily driven by word-of-mouth and VC partnerships.
A New Model for Legal Services
Inventex isn't just selling software tools to existing law firms, unlike some competitors focused on task automation. Instead, they offer an end-to-end service, moving away from the traditional billable-hour model towards a results-oriented approach. They typically charge clients a monthly fee that covers the entire process from invention discovery to filing and prosecution.
This integrated service model, combining AI efficiency with human legal expertise, appears highly effective and potentially generalizable to other complex legal documentation processes.
Making Patents More Accessible
Looking forward, Inventex is considering offering its powerful drafting toolkit as a white-labeled product for traditional law firms. This aligns with a broader vision where the time spent on patent work shifts dramatically. Ruskin predicts that within five years, drafting (currently ~90% of the time) will shrink to 10%, allowing legal professionals to focus the remaining 90% on high-value strategy.
Ultimately, this shift driven by AI-powered solutions like Inventex promises to lower the cost of filing patents, making crucial intellectual property protection more accessible to innovators of all sizes. It's an exciting development watch in the legal tech space, spearheaded by a founder whose journey is as remarkable as the technology he's building.
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