30 Under 30: Jessica Zemple, Intellectual Property Exchange International
At 30, Jessica Zemple has taken on a big challenge. Her job is to build the technology infrastructure for the trading of an entirely new asset class. Traditionally, stocks and options for technology corporations derive their price from the market valuation of the enterprise as a whole. Zemple and the Intellectual Property Exchange International (IPXI) are asking investors to shift their thinking from broad-based valuations to looking at the specific valuation of intellectual property portfolios.
Jessica explained that a study by Ned Davis Research indicated that in 1975, intangible assets (patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets) comprised 16.8 percent of the market capitalization of companies in the S&P 500. That number increased to almost 80 percent in 2005. “We went from manufacturing products to manufacturing ideas,” Zemple said. “We feel the economic inversion is the perfect opportunity to build a new marketplace and we have several products that will allow investors, speculators, and hedgers to gain access to a new asset class, developing precise exposures to underlying technologies along the way.”
I met Jessica at a Commodities Trading conference last month at the University Club. I was intrigued by her venture, the world’s first financial exchange focusing on trading derivates of intellectual property. My first thought however was that she seemed awfully young to be the Director of Technology.
Zemple got her start in a public relations role for the Minnesota Twins, a Major League baseball franchise. Her itch to travel directed her to the consulting company Accenture, where she got her first taste of technology. From there, Jessica went to a boutique consulting firm and then she ended up at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. After branching out on her own as a technology consultant, the IPXI opportunity presented itself and she could not pass up the opportunity of a lifetime.
IPXI is the brainchild of Ocean Tomo, an intellectual capital merchant bank that specializes in understanding and leveraging intellectual property assets. By trading products based on intellectual property (IP) in the new IPXI market, Ocean Tomo is creating a new asset class, arguably the largest untapped asset class in the world.
Jessica’s responsibility at the exchange is largely about providing a platform for the world’s investors to trade the IP derivatives created by IPXI. IPXI offers Tradable Technology Baskets (TTBs), which pull together patents for a specified technology giving investors a “pure play” or a spread opportunity between competing technologies, for example, HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. She believes education about intellectual property in general and the IPXI products specifically will be a key factor in building market acceptance for the new products.
As a new venture exchange, IPXI has innovative and superior role models in Chicago. Since one of the aspects of her job is to form partnerships, Jessica is looking forward to what those opportunities could bring. “Working at a start-up you have to be flexible,” she said. “You have to be resourceful and things need to get done.”
