Native Trademark Battle
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A story about how Native's acquisition by P&G was almost derailed due to trademark issues.
"When Native was trying to sell our business, we hadn't secured our trademark. We had signed a letter of intent with P&G, but P&G told us we needed to buy our trademark - it was the only thing holding up the transaction.
We ended up purchasing the trademark from two people living in North Dakota on a Friday, and then the next week on Wednesday, we sold the business - just 5 days later. We paid more than 10x what Thrive paid for their domain name ($10-20k). We never bought native.com, but we had to get the trademark. It was either that or we'd have to change our name and restart the business under a different name, which wasn't going to happen.
When someone else owns your trademark, they have monopsony power - they have the only asset you need and you cannot go anywhere else for it."
Moiz Ali
Moiz Ali is the Founder of Native. Launched in 2015, Native is the fastest growing CPG company in the United States, and has over 1 million customers nationwide. The company was acquired by Procter & Gamble for $100 Million in November 2017, the first acquisition by P&G in nearly ten years. Prior to founding Native, Moiz was the Founder and CEO of Caskers, a flash sales site for spirits. Moiz graduated from Harvard Law School in 2009. In addition to his work at Native, today he is an active investor in over 100 startups, and a speaker on stages across the world.