Daniel Ruskin was just 14 when he boldly emailed the head of operations at Coinbase asking for a job. A teenager with a knack for coding and a drive to build cool things, Ruskin started his engineering journey freelancing for Bitcoin on Reddit before landing a spot at one of the most well-known crypto exchanges.
“I ended up writing much of the early software that powered the Coinbase platform,” he says. While he didn’t write the very first lines of code, he helped scale the platform significantly during his four-year tenure — all before even graduating high school
Now 26, Ruskin is turning his sights toward a completely different challenge: fixing the slow, expensive, and often opaque patent application process. His latest venture, Inventex, is a Salt Lake City-based startup using artificial intelligence to transform how patents are discovered, drafted, and filed.
A Frustrated Inventor Turned Founder
After Coinbase, Ruskin pursued college and eventually law school, graduating in the top 10% of his class at NYU. Along the way, he founded a few startups, including one focused on election security — an experience that sparked his frustration with the outdated and complex patent filing process.
In December 2024, he launched Inventex to streamline that process using AI agents trained for each technical area, overseen by licensed patent attorneys. The goal? To help companies go from idea to patent-pending in days instead of months — and at a fraction of the cost.
Strong Start and Serious Backing
Inventex gained rapid traction. Just one month in, the company raised $2.4 million in a pre-seed round led by Conviction Capital, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, Cambrian Ventures, Boost, and others. The funds were raised on a $10 million valuation via SAFEs.
The platform takes in code, technical specs, and other invention materials, then searches for prior art, determines what’s patentable, and drafts filings for submission both in the U.S. and internationally.
Former Coinbase colleague Maksim Stepanenko, now founder of Operator, joined as an angel investor, praising Ruskin’s talent for navigating complex systems with precision and speed. “He’s one of the most quietly impressive people I’ve worked with,” Stepanenko said.
The Inventex Difference
Unlike traditional law firms that rely on billable hours, Inventex offers a monthly subscription model for building a patent portfolio. The team — currently made up of three full-time engineers and several contract attorneys — delivers invention discovery, drafting, filing, and prosecution as a seamless end-to-end service.
“Traditional firms can’t handle the scale or technical depth we can,” says Ruskin. He believes Inventex’s AI-led approach results in faster, higher-quality patents by customizing models to specific industries and technologies
Beyond Patents: A Platform for Complex Legal Workflows
Inventex’s model is already expanding. One of its tools is being used to automate complaints to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which could impact tens of thousands of recently laid-off federal employees.
The company also has around $250,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in the pipeline, with multiple startup and enterprise clients onboard. Notably, publicly traded Dirac is one of its early customers.
A Track Record of Building Unicorns
Before founding Inventex, Ruskin joined background check company Checkr in 2022 and helped launch Checkr Pay, a “startup within a startup” offering fintech services to gig workers. He built a neobank there in just a few months, hired a team, and contributed to scaling Checkr — a company valued at $4.6 billion.
Rex Salisbury, solo GP at Cambrian Ventures, calls Ruskin “the highest velocity engineer” he’s worked with, adding, “Daniel helped build two unicorns — Coinbase and Checkr — before graduating college.”
A Vision for the Future of Patent Law
Ruskin believes the patent industry is on the brink of a massive transformation. He sees a future where 90% of patent work will be strategy, not drafting — a reversal of how time and money are spent today. Inventex, he says, is leading that change.
The company has already grown 2x month over month since launch and is fielding more inbound interest than it can currently handle. Looking ahead, Ruskin is exploring partnerships with law firms, offering Inventex’s tools as white-labeled solutions to improve their own client services.
By making patent filings faster, smarter, and more accessible, Inventex is not just a legaltech startup — it’s reshaping the foundation of innovation itself.
