Tech founders spend their early days obsessing over product, design, fundraising, and customer acquisition. Yet one of the most important assets a startup owns is often forgotten until something goes wrong. As online visibility accelerates and global audiences become reachable on day one, protecting your brand name is no longer a slow legal formality. It is a strategic necessity.
To explore why trademarks matter so much for modern startups and how technology can make registration simple and affordable, we spoke with Andrej Skok, co-founder and Head of Product at Trama. Andrej helped build the platform that has made trademark registration accessible to thousands of founders around the world.
As a Developer turned legal tech founder, Andrej Skok sees trademarks from a very different angle than traditional lawyers. He approaches brand protection as a systems problem, a workflow problem, and ultimately a business empowerment problem. That mindset has shaped Trama into one of the fastest-growing trademark services globally.
Q: You work with thousands of founders across different industries. What do you see as their biggest challenge when it comes to trademarks?
Andrej Skok: Speed. Startups grow visibility much faster than they realise. A founder might build quietly for six months, post the product on social media, and suddenly they have users signing up from five different countries.
That kind of exposure is amazing, but it also attracts a negative kind of attention. People register matching domains, create lookalike pages, or even file trademark applications with the startup’s exact name. Most businesses don’t even realise that they have lost their name before they receive their first cease and desist.
Startups think trademark issues are something big companies deal with. In reality, they are a day-one problem.
Q: How did your experience as a tech founder influence how you approach trademark registration at Trama?
Andrej Skok: I came from product and automation, not from traditional legal practice. When we dug into the trademark process for the first time, it felt like a manual system from another era. Slow communication, unclear pricing, dozens of PDFs, lots of uncertainty.
Modern tech services do not operate that way. They expect clarity, self-service, transparent pricing, and tools that help them move fast. So we built Trama to feel like a modern SaaS product, not a law office wrapped in a website. Everything is structured, guided, and automated where possible, but backed by real experts so founders can be confident they are doing it right.
The goal was simple. Make trademark registration something founders can actually understand and take control of.
Q: As a co-founder, what made you feel that this problem was worth solving?
Andrej Skok: Almost every founder we spoke to had the same story. They knew trademarks were important, but the process felt intimidating, expensive, and very disconnected from how startups operate. Some skipped protection altogether because they did not know where to begin.
We saw an opportunity to remove friction and make something traditionally bureaucratic feel simple and modern.
It felt like one of those problems where technology could make a massive difference. Better workflows, automated checks, a clear dashboard, and expert guidance when it matters. That combination turns trademarks from a headache into a normal part of building a company.
For us, the impact was obvious. If founders could protect their brands early, they would avoid disputes, avoid rebrands, and gain more confidence when growing their business.
Q: What does a strong trademark strategy look like for a growing tech startup?
Andrej Skok: For most tech startups, a good trademark strategy simply means getting ahead of problems before they become too expensive. Many businesses don’t realise that one quick legal review can save them months of future trouble, and Trama offers a free lawyer’s check that makes this easy: it gives founders an early read on whether their name is at risk and which markets they should pay attention to.
From there, a smart strategy is mostly about timing and focus. Protect your name in the regions where you are gaining users or plan to raise capital, and expand coverage as your footprint grows.
And once your brand is out in the world, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on new filings so you can act early if someone tries to register a similar name. In fast-moving tech, a strong trademark strategy is really about giving your brand room to scale without surprises.
