You keep hearing you should "trademark your name." But what does a trademark actually get you, and where does it leave you exposed?

A trademark protects the marks that identify your brand, your name, logo, or slogan, inside the categories of goods and services you actually sell. It stops a competitor from using a confusingly similar mark in your space and gives you the standing to make them stop. That's real power for a growing business.

Here's what it does not do, and where founders get burned. It doesn't protect an idea or a general concept, only the mark. It doesn't cover categories you don't operate in, so registering for one thing leaves gaps in another. And a purely descriptive name ("Fast Coffee") is weak and hard to protect, while a distinctive one is strong. Rights also depend on how you use and register the mark, and getting that wrong can mean building a brand on a name you can't actually defend.

The stakes are highest right before you scale, because that's when someone notices your name and either copies it or claims you copied theirs.

Figuring out what's protectable, and locking it down correctly, is where this gets technical. We do exactly that for founders and creators, free, if you qualify.