🕶️ A shoe startup just stopped Skechers

Good morning, founders 🕶️

Nobody hands you leverage in the meeting where you need it. A shoe company roughly 90 times smaller than Skechers just got some of its styles pulled from 18 EU states, using patents filed years before the fight. Sequence's co-founders reportedly kept enough of their company that a ~$200M exit looks like a jackpot. And Schwab and JPMorgan, who own the rails, are telling AI agents they can look but not touch. Leverage is the paperwork you did before anyone was watching.

So what are you filing, keeping or owning this quarter that you'll need in 2028?

In today's newsletter, we'll get into:

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The Hollywood version writes itself: a scrappy Utah shoe brand takes on a giant and wins. The real version is less cinematic and far more useful.

HandsFree Labs, the Salt Lake City company behind Kizik, reports $100 million in retail sales. Skechers reported about $9 billion in sales in 2024, roughly 90 times bigger. A panel of judges at the Unified Patent Court in Munich ruled that some Skechers step-in shoes infringe a HandsFree Labs patent. Skechers must stop making, distributing and selling those styles across the 18 EU states under the court's jurisdiction.

Mostly. The judges also narrowed the patent claim and excluded certain styles, so some Skechers step-ins stay on European shelves. Skechers hadn't commented as of Inc's report. And the fight isn't over. HandsFree filed a similar suit in a Texas federal court in July 2025, and that case is ongoing. Skechers, for its part, has filed at least five petitions at the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board challenging patents held by Fast IP, HandsFree's patent holding company.

Because a court doesn't weigh revenue. It weighs paper. Founder Mike Pratt's patented inventions came before the first pair of Kizik shoes went on sale in 2017. Skechers launched its HandsFree Slip-ins in 2022, and its executives later called step-ins a major growth area. The ruling hit the exact line the giant was bragging about.

HandsFree also licenses the technology to Nike and New Balance. That's IP doing two jobs at once: a fence and a toll booth.

If your edge is a mechanism, meaning hardware, a process or a physical design, file before you launch and get someone big to pay for a license. Patents you never license or defend are decoration.

Watch Texas next. The US case and Skechers' patent challenges will decide whether this was a European win or a global one.

🤝 What decides whether AI recommends your business. Inc laid out five layers AI tools weigh when they name brands: earned media, a consistent bio everywhere, fresh reviews and community chatter, a clear topic you own, and recent, well-structured information. If ChatGPT can't describe you in one line, it won't recommend you.

🥏 AG1 changed its name, not its product. Athletic Greens became AG1 in December 2021, dropping a word that capped its audience at the gym. Inc reports revenue went from roughly $160M in 2021 to about $600M by 2024. Your company name describes who you sell to, so make sure it isn't a ceiling.

📲 Google is linking your phone number to every account on your Android. Auto-verification is on by default and attaches your number to secondary, work and alt accounts signed in on the device. If you keep work and side-project identities separate, switch it off under Settings → Google → All Services, then remove the number from each account by hand.

🚀 a16z on AI agents that run for weeks, not minutes. David Haber argues that long-running agents can carry customers through journeys like insurance claims, mortgages and enterprise deals, where value leaks at every handoff. The pitch for founders: get paid for the revenue you recover, not just the costs you cut.