Ken Seddon

The original Oktoberfest was held in 1810 as the citizens of Munich celebrated the marriage of soon to be King Ludwig I and his bride, Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. If you’ve never been, I would encourage you to experience Oktoberfest at least once, as the celebrations today seem to be just as lively as they must have been back then.

The community at LOT Network has been enjoying our own LOToberfest – celebrating a recent growth spurt that also includes some German companies: Volkswagen, Germany’s largest automaker, and Covestro, its largest chemical company.

Since our August newsletter, we have had another 21 companies join LOT. Particularly noteworthy is that the growth comes from the key players across a variety of industries, made clear by the fact that these 21 companies have over $130B in annual revenue!

Our new members include:

  • Oracle
  • Covestro ($13B chemical company)
  • Palo Alto Networks
  • Alcatel Lucent Enterprises
  • Target (#6 US retailer)
  • TS Tech Co. (tier 1 auto supplier)
  • Qualtrics
  • Laird Technologies
  • Lyft
  • Vanguard
  • FIS ($9B financial services company ranked #1 per IDC FinTech Rankings)

We also had many startups join, bringing our total membership count to 178. LOT Network is now able to permanently immunize our members from over 797,000 assets should they fall into the hands of a PAE.

Being a non-profit, the LOT team works for our members and takes great pride in providing creative ways to add value to our members (e.g. discounts from service providers or conference organizers). Another value add is LOT Network BRIDGE, our annual members meeting, which provides a great opportunity for our members to network with their peers. We are busy planning the 2018 event slated for May 10, 2018 in San Francisco. More details coming soon.

Lastly, to understand the needs of our community, we ask each new member what they would like LOT to do in the future to add value. The larger companies typically ask us to simply grow, which we have done.

LOT Network has grown 4x since LOT 2.0

But we also worry about the needs of our startups. Small companies that join LOT Network, particularly startups, consistently ask how they might get access to patents to protect their business and execute on their own IP strategy. We have several ideas under development, and we hope to have something more to announce soon – stay tuned.