Jeffrey believes that governments see the need for companies to raise innovation, perform more R&D, and file more patents to increase competitiveness and create more job opportunities.

The inspiration for PatSnap came to co-founder Jeffrey Tiong when he was interning at a medical device start-up as part of the NUS Overseas Colleges programme in Bio Valley, United States. Jeffrey was tasked to conduct technical and business intelligence on the technology that the start-up was working on, and despite being trained in biomedical engineering, he found the process cumbersome and difficult to understand. Hence, Jeffrey set out to create a simplified one-stop platform for technical intelligence search upon his graduation from the Faculty of Engineering in 2007.

He was fortunate to secure SG$55,000 in iJam funding from the Media Development Authority. With incubation support from NUS Enterprise, Jeffrey was able to kick-start his company. Within five years, the company developed the PatSnap Global Database and Analytics platform, which categorises patents through its in-house developed artificial intelligence and big data technologies, to help customers search for patents in a snap.
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PatSnap has been leveraging the opportunities to double its revenue each year since 2012. It currently has more than 8000 clients in over 40 countries, ranging from large corporations such as Lego, Ferrari and Starbucks to government and academic agencies such as NASA, MIT and the UK International Patent Office. To date, the team has over 700 employees worldwide and is growing fast. Jeffrey expects this growth to continue and is looking to expand the product line and geographical presence.