Time and time again, many startups tout their solution as better, faster or more user friendly than their competitors’, not realizing that the competitors also make the same claims. By doing so, they sound like every other startup with what seems like a good idea, but without a tangible or functional explanation of what really makes the company or solution different. Investors, partners, advisors and potential customers have heard these high level claims of a startup’s potential competitive differentiators before, and are not easily impressed. Before a startup can provide IP protection for competitive differentiators, the startup must be able to specifically identify the functional features of their solution that differentiate them from the competition, and provide or enable such features. Once doing so, the startup then needs to consider which tools in the toolbox of IP protection (trade secret, copyright, trademark, patent, contractual) to deploy to protect its competitive differentiators.