I have a couple patentable ideas that would make a brokerage the brokerage of choice for a portion of the market, and probably everyone with much to manage would want to keep a backup account there. I'd like to sell it to them. But how to reach them? Is there an industry mag that they read, or a website (this one?)?
Lightspeed has a technology sister company that own Sterling trader Pro and Green trader, a PM/Risk platfrom. We own three software platforms and in the process of buying more. Email me. I can give you my opinion as to if any BD will be interested.
There is an industry rag called "Wall Street Letter" which could be a good starting point. It's a paid sub. Most are public companies and their execs and board would be in public filings. Most have a form of R&D departments. I've worked at three exchanges and two brokerage houses and most second tier execs are reachable. First tier senior execs are hard to get reach. A great place to start are SEC comment letters and those are public on the SEC site and searchable by firm. i would consider getting a good patent attorney first. If you can't afford one and you are expecting the firm to fund that you're going to hit a wall.
If the idea is patentable then you either: 1) get them to sign an agreement that they won't steal the idea BEFORE you tell it to them. This is going to be difficult. People who have ideas thrown at them and are in the innovation game don't want to sign agreements like that because you may have an idea that they were already aware of and them signing a document saying they're not going to do something before they know what that something is could be a PITA for them. 2) find someone to fund hiring a patent attorney to assist in patenting the idea 3) do the patent yourself 4) (if possible) implement the idea yourself and try to sell it At a previous job, I was the technical person behind a few tech patents (I'm listed as an inventor) -- I came up with the ideas, wrote out scope of the patent, the claims, diagrams, etc for the patent and worked with patent attorneys to get the patents filed (I don't think I failed to get any patented issued. imo most of the stuff shouldn't have been patentable, but that's a separate issue). While I've never done a patent without an attorney, in my opinion their contribution was pretty lacking and they were supposedly one of the top patent firms (I don't know if they actually are, but that's what my ceo claimed). While a lot of experts will tell you that you need an attorney, I simply don't feel they did much, and they cost a substantial amount of money, so if I wanted to patent something and didn't have funding for an attorney, I'd go it alone. Just make sure you fully understand the patent process and what items you need to have in a patent and how to present your idea in the patent. Of course you may find someone who has no intention of stealing your idea and they may willingly pay you for bringing it to them, but I'm not so optimistic. Good luck in whatever route you choose.
I agree with your view of attorneys. One time i caught an attorney using a cheap "office store" / "fill in the blank" software to do incorporation. He wanted to charge me something like $1000. I was going to do it myself but we were planning on putting a lot of money in it and I wanted to make sure it was done right. Same thing with patents. I've twice had patent attorneys try to steal an invention. Look up "room 212" and "patent office." They don't just screen for nsi, they flat out steal.