So I got an idea for a product, what now?

[Jackster]

So I am sure this has been asked before but I am blind af so feel free to direct me.
But I will ask anyway.


I have had a need for my idea for a while and I quickly asked a small group of people about it and they all agreed it would be a good product to have.
It is not world changing or anything, just something for the indie film market that will help bring tools used in the professional market into the indie market without the high cost.

So I have the idea, got it all written down and some diagrams with the idea of the design for the product.

The thing is I am not a software or hardware developer.
So I would need to find someone who is both or a small team that could make it.
I know the basics but no way can I code or work with FPGAs or even design a PCB or housing.

I don't have the capital to just go make one or higher a load of people though.
This would have to be a Kickstarter project for it to work.


So what should I look to do?
I think it is a good idea. Would like to go further than just write it down and wait for someone else to make it.
Not looking to make any money out of it. Just want this sort of product and I know a few others want it too..

Thanks
Jack,

[Marinated]

If you're neither a hardware nor software expert, first of all you need an expert assessment of project viability. Even if it seems to you that it should be straightforward, there may be difficulties you aren't in a position to appreciate. Then again, there may not. To find out, you need to risk sharing the idea. You could post it here, or if it's more sensitive than that, you could take an individual into your confidence. Without an estimation of the resources the project will require, you can't move forward.

[Brumby]

Whatever you do, don't sit on it.  Get moving on it.

You can bet that if you've thought of an idea, there will be others that have - or are going to.

You should also do your homework in case someone already has.  Check patents and do some looking.  The last thing you want to do is go all out to find someone already is in a more advanced position that will impact your efforts.


Over the years, I've come up with a few ideas (that I thought were good ones) that I've built up for my own use - or use on a particular job - that have come to market some time later as a successful product.  Seems they were really good ideas - but I just wasn't in the 'Entrepreneurial' or 'Intellectual Property' mindset at the time.

[singapol]

I know the basics but no way can I code or work with FPGAs or even design a PCB or housing.

I'm a bit suspicious.. if you know what is an FPGA you have what it takes. Just buy a target fpga evaluation/development board suitable for the project from one of the fpga brands and start playing. It comes with software and example code.If you need help at least folks here see you are trying and will give you a hand. If you want to keep secret then don't post schematics or any diagram here.This is for your own good.

[singapol]

I know FPGA, I know programming, I know PCB design and I am a PhD -- I still think I need to learn more.
The fact is, to compete with similarly talented groups, you need your crew. Some excel at engineering, some excel at ideas, some excel at marketing.
Getting a proto is the first step, then the fun begins. You need to get funding, clear legal things, do marketing and so much more to start to break even.

So my recommendation is, go find some local entrepreneurs and recruit your crew. Maintaining a one man band is very hard and you will make much less money than what you deserve.

You have humility and it goes a long way. Also you have given OP valuable advice..taken a module in business? Still there are sharks out there.

[Mechatrommer]

oh we get this alot... why dont you just publish your idea here? this is exactly the place you are looking for. both hardware and software experts are here... "with no money intention".

[ChristopherN]

I would not underestimate the business side of things. You might find someone who will build a prototype and even some people that will invest some money.

You state that you don't want to earn money, thats a bad start for a company that wants to build products (at least in my eyes). Who will support the product after a while? Who will handle returns? What kind of warranty will you offer?

I think you should build the company in a way that it earns money, otherwise you will be stuck in this project for a long time with no return, even after the first enthusiasm is gone. Dave has published a blog post about pricing, you should read that: https://www.eevblog.com/2014/05/28/the-economics-of-selling-your-hardware-project/

As for the idea, I would just publish that here. There are many people around here with a good technical background, and many people that have build their own company.

[SL4P]

Read about filing a 'provisional' innovation patent.. (cheap)

It doesn't give you any protection against 'copying' beyond the initial 12-month period which lets you explore the potential and develop a business plan 'under cover', but it does stop anyone ever filing a patent on the same claims - as you have prior art on record.

The downside is that filing. means every other manufacturer in the world is exposed to your idea.  If you don't take the patent all the way $$$, then they will copy a good product idea, and some countries don't respect WIPO in any case.

Bottom line, find a rich partner to get it across the line as fast as you can.

[BravoV]

My grand dad told me, in order to make money, you have to spend "real resources" first, like money, time, energy, sweat, tear, gut etc .... and .... unfortunately just "an idea" alone is not enough.

[woodchips]

Just do it yourself.

You can spend money and time chasing around others to get it done, or the same amount of time and money doing it yourself. If it doesn't work out then you are a long way up the learning ladder for number 2 project.

I have been there and done it. It also takes far longer than you would imagine. Cost in cash terms isn't the killer, it is time, once spent it is gone never to return. My greatest lesson was to do things the simplest way possible, upgrading development software to the latest meant yet another learning curve to struggle up.

[CJay]

Whatever you do, don't sit on it.  Get moving on it.

You can bet that if you've thought of an idea, there will be others that have - or are going to.

Definitely, the OP really needs to get something moving if only some expert advice and research into the viability but that of course will mean disclosure and running the risk of giving the idea away, especially if it's not possible to take a lead role in development so there's a need for some kind of legal framework/agreements unless the idea/design is to be open sourced.

May not be a shining example but I had an gem of an idea a few years ago, a web portal where you could pick from food types, drill down to particular dishes by various characteristics, order and pay for delivery or collection from a local takeaway who offered those dishes.

I wrote it all down and spent a few hours exploring the idea as a thought exercise but never pursued it, it was toward the end of the the dialup 'net era so it would have been clunky and didn't feel like the 'right' time.

Last time I looked 'Just Eat' was valued and floated for £1.5Bn. They launched three years after I had the idea, when ADSL and Cable internet had gained traction in the UK.

Life lesson, take chances and pursue your ideas if you can, chances are I wouldn't have been successful but a chunk of that £1.5Bn would have been very useful.

[Corporate666]

I have had a need for my idea for a while and I quickly asked a small group of people about it and they all agreed it would be a good product to have.

Be careful about the opinions of others.  Friends and family will often tell you an idea is a really good idea... it's rare someone you knows you will tell you that your idea isn't good.  Trust people when they are giving you money for your product.

It is not world changing or anything, just something for the indie film market that will help bring tools used in the professional market into the indie market without the high cost.

Be careful.  Stuff that is expensive is often so because of a limited market and/or high costs to make.  Making expensive stuff for a low price is often very difficult and dangerous ground for the inexperienced.

I don't have the capital to just go make one or higher a load of people though.
This would have to be a Kickstarter project for it to work.

So what should I look to do?
I think it is a good idea. Would like to go further than just write it down and wait for someone else to make it.
Not looking to make any money out of it. Just want this sort of product and I know a few others want it too..

Some of the stuff you are saying raises big red flags.  Saying "I am not looking to make money off it, just want this product and others do too" in my experience always translates into wanting someone else to take the financial risk of developing the product and do the marketing/design.  If you really believe in the product and it's potential, you have to be ready to invest your own time and money into developing it.  If you don't want to take the risk and think forgoing reward will make it happen, then I don't think that's accurate - I think it will just ensure it will never come to be.

I also think you have to be really careful about going the Kickstarter route.  It's not just a means of getting money - it's basically people pre-ordering an item, so you have to have your plan really ironed out before you go that route.

Hope it helps.

[Jackster]

Hi everyone!

Sorry for not replying since opening the topic.
Been writing my dissertation and finishing off (still am as I write this) other modules so have had no real time to look into this topic.

Thanks for all the replies, I will quote and reply to as many as I can bellow.
This idea is something I really want to work on as I do this it is viable, just need to work out how to go from idea to feasibility atm.

The quote reply messed up as I posted this, I have gone through and added the reply number from the thread to each reply I made


Reply #1
Thank you. Ill try and see if I can find someone or a couple people who would be interested to help.
Hackerspace sounds like a good idea! Might have to go check out my local one.



Reply #2
That's my main problem atm. I guess I could just public post it. If I was to go forward with this project it is not hard to rip off it anyway so either way anyone else can make this...


Reply #3
Someone already tried to do this, but did it so cheap and nasty no one bought the idea or their product. Doubtful there are any patents on the idea as many do it already but just not in the lower end market which my idea sits in.


Reply #4
I know the basics from watching videos like EEVblog on FPGA technology but I lack programming knowledge.
I can do stuff like HTML and edit PHP but beyond that I really don't get it. I had 4 years of school and college trying to learn it but my brain don't work that well with that sort of thing :/

Reply #5
Thanks for the info. Not out there to make money, just a good product that I hope people find useful. Crew is definitely something I need, I know the real basics but I am no software or hardware engineering.


Reply #8
Oh I totally get that side of things, it is just personally I have no intention of making money off it.
I guess it would be good to do so, as it will help me buy stuff for my real job as a cinematographer but that is it.

 Reply #9
I will probably just share it here and see what response I get. People already made this but not to a quality that I would deem useful.


Reply #13
It's one of those things I guess. I had a great idea when I was a young teen and now it is everywhere. If I was only 20 years older at the time with connections to industry I am sure i'd be a millionaire now :p

Reply #14
I have only asked people in the industry on closed FaceBook groups as well as informally with people I have met on the job.
Many said it would be useful but I was asking the right people.

I know it is a tool that people want, but for many it is $8,000. People I know would spend upwards of $300-500 on something that does the same job but more basic.
This is the reason i'd rather not share the idea before looking into ways to protect it, but even then, there is no real protection so why bother.




So should I made a new thread on the idea explaining it fully or contact people or ask people to contact me about it?
I would like to investigate the idea over the holiday season to see if it is viable or not.

Thanks all again for your input.
Jack,

[AndyC_772]

This type of question comes up regularly, and unfortunately there's no answer to it that's likely to be along the lines of what you want to hear.

If you have an idea which is commercially viable, then that's great. Really, it is! But you need to actually be in a position to exploit it yourself, and by 'exploit' I mean develop the product, build it, test it, manufacture it and sell it to customers. You need to do all that work yourself, or more likely, to find people with the requisite skills to do so on your behalf.

There are any number of ways to hire people to make the product happen. You might draw up a business plan, get a bank loan, and use that to pay them at normal commercial rates for their time. Or, perhaps you can offer them a significant share holding in your company, but that only works if you're all willing to take the risk and have something to live on in the meantime.

If you go the latter route, do bear in mind that the engineers developing your product are the ones putting in the work hours, contributing the essential skills, and handing over the IP which they've developed for the company. They are the ones creating all the value, and will expect a commensurate share of the pie at the end.

There is no organisation out there which will buy your idea off you for good money, then do all the development work and bring a product to market on your behalf. Moreover, the corollary of this is that ideas alone are completely worthless, and it's well worth taking a while to absorb that fact and get comfortable with it, because it's one of the hardest things to really come to terms with.

[Electro Fan]

I think before drilling too much further into hardware, software, etc you might want to build a business plan.  The business plan can be a simple spreadsheet with assumptions and calculations to start and then become more detailed later, i.e., chop with an axe before measuring with a micrometer.

Here is a link to a prior post that discusses some of the process for building a business plan; hope something in here is helpful to your endeavor.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/oshw/development-of-boosterpacksshields-and-having-a-sustainable-side-business/msg298477/#msg298477

[BBBbbb]

My grand dad told me, in order to make money, you have to spend "real resources" first, like money, time, energy, sweat, tear, gut etc .... and .... unfortunately just "an idea" alone is not enough.

Definitely!!!

I often feel people are overestimating the value of an idea, and what's more we get carried away by some of the very wrong examples like Billy's MS or Zuckerberg's FB.
Billy had access to devices many could just dream about at the time (i.e. microcomputer in the late 60s - early 70s) and was working for close to a decade before bringing DOS to the world. His brilliance is not in the idea, but rather in a genius development of his company and products in the early times. Zuckerberg and his FB both come from Harvard, Ivy League university, giving him access to early starting funds. He wasn't the first in the social media business, but he had a nice idea (who knows how many similar ones were up and running at the time), great execution and great access to funds to keep the project running before going huge.

@CJay mentioned his food ordering idea dating to the dial up times, but to be honest I find this idea worthless unless you have tick enough wallet to burn through it for at least a year before starting to break even, although you might be the first in the market with this offer. Nowadays to bring such a big service to a profit you might be looking at quite a few years running without making a profit.

Like few already mentioned here, get yourself an elaborate business plan (and this will cost you a lot of time) and then head out to find some funds, and from your product description Kickstarter might be a good place to start. But even that way of finding funds has become complex, with companies specializing in helping you get your product pushed through the kickstarter successfully.


I'm not trying to be negative here towards dreamers with an idea, but rather to point out the work that awaits after the idea, that is very hard and IMHO much more important than the idea itself.