From Boston to Chattanooga: Arcangel Wants to Cut Patent Filing Costs With AI

CHATTANOOGA, October 12 (Hypepotamus) - Srikar Srinivasan’s first patent was paid for by a $15,000 loan his parents gave him at the age of 14. 

Years later, as a Babson College student surrounded by entrepreneurs in Boston, he saw friends running into a familiar problem. The reality is that no matter how good an idea is, protecting it can be expensive and complicated. 

Srinivasan started building a solution to help streamline the patent filing process.

“We wanted to solve this problem for our friends…and it sort of spitballed into something crazy,” he told Hypepotamus. 

Now, he’s built that idea into a VC-backed startup Arcangel that aims to ultimately help the “entire lifecycle of IP.” 

Reducing the Work Behind a Patent Application

For founders watching their spending (or aspiring founders looking to bring their first idea to life), Arcangel’s pitch is straightforward: Make filing for a patent accessible before they have a substantial legal budget.

Srinivasan left Babson just before his senior year to focus on the company.

Arcangel handles drafting, due diligence, and schematic drawings before handing the materials to an attorney, he said. Attorneys working with the company review the AI-generated work, make edits, and handle filing.

“We don’t want to replace the job of an attorney. We just want to make their lives easier,” Srinivasan told Hypepotamus. “Since this lawyer isn’t doing the entire process, we only pay them for the end [of the process]. So we can charge a lot less than institutional lawyers.”

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The business model depends on reducing the amount of work attorneys must complete themselves. According to Srinivasan, Arcangel offers provisional patent application services for $400 and nonprovisional application services for a few thousand dollars. He said the company has filed more than 150 patent applications over the past nine months.

Arcangel’s broader ambition extends to trademarks, copyrights, domains, and international filings.

Why Chattanooga?

Srinivasan, a New Jersey native, founded the company alongside co-founder and CTO Taihei Eastwood.

Now, Srinivasan has moved down south to Chattanooga, thanks to an investment from Brickyard VC. Through its pre-seed investment, Arcangel joins Brickyard’s insulator program, where founders from across the country (and across the world) move into its residency program. The Chattanooga firm combines capital with a place for founders to work alongside other portfolio companies. Teams relocate there and build toward revenue targets, according to Brickyard’s description of its model.

Chattanooga’s Brickyard Has Become A Second Home For International Startup Founders

Matt Patterson and Cam Doody didn’t launch Brickyard to be just another startup hub. After successfully scaling the moving logistics startup Bellhop together, the two wanted to break the accelerator and investing mold used across the startup ecosystem. Brickyard calls itself an “insulator” – a spot for founders to dive

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Srinivasan’s first impressions of the city? 

“Everyone is just inherently nice,” he told Hypepotamus. "We want to make the most of southern VC network and build a strong foundation before considering options of moving back to SF or Boston but for the near extended future I think we will be staying here."

The company’s next planned launch is an iOS app intended to let users begin the patent and IP process from their phones…including turning an idea into schematic drawings.

“Lawyers are very expensive. We’re trying to convince users that you can be a full-time worker doing a 9-5 job, you can be a student, you can be a teenager, it doesn’t matter,” Srinivasan said.

For Arcangel, the opportunity is reaching inventors who may have assumed professional help was beyond their budget. Its next test? Growing its customer base. 

The LegalTech Landscape 

LegalTech is one of the darlings of the AI Age, as VCs have flocked to back this largely untapped market. 

In the third quarter of this year, 83 LegalTech startups raised a total of more than $1.2 billion, according to PitchBook data. 

Arcangel joins a growing number of locally-growing LegalTechs. Others building in the Southeast include Tampa-based Trustate, Memphis-based Visalaw, Nashville-based Briefcase, Charleston-based Case Status, alongside Atlanta-based startups Story LLP, Case Nurse, Junior Law, and Lawdie.