Are you part of the problem?

By now we are all aware of the US Patent Office statistic of 98% - the patents which will not be able to generate sufficient income to repay their patent costs – but we still line up to patent even the craziest ideas - without any understanding of the long-term potential value.

Lots of inventors will drop $10,000 plus on a design and perhaps a prototype, just to show their friends what they came up with. How much of that is ego and how much is sound business sense?

As a commercialization consultant and IP coach, I am the last person to be contacted by inventors – usually, after they have spent all their resources and have all but burned the opportunity. Worse still, they may have impossible patent payment deadlines looming and are so desperate to raise the capital they become vulnerable to the Nigerian schemes out there (…..pay me $20,000 and I will get you “investment ready” and I promise I have investors who want what you have).

In every case, I can’t tell if your inventions are good or bad commercially in a 30-minute conversation. This is because the inventor has initially focused on patenting, design and prototyping before even the most remote or minor independent market validation. If you can’t show me the problem, from the words of the people with the problem, I can’t determine how readily they will want this idea to solve their problem.

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Let me share with you, just how big this problem is. In February I put out some facebook adverts to ask people where they were stuck with their projects. I ran a webinar on capitalraising which was well attended and ultimately more than half of the people that attended this webinar (and some even came back for the replay) booked in for a free, 30-minute strategy call.

In over 80% of these projects, the principal had committed their early resources on patents, design, tooling and corporate/legal structuring (and sometimes consultants) but had little funds left for what they really needed. To raise capital, you need to have marketing research, independent market validation and a genuine proof-of-concept.

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Sadly, without some modest capital, these projects will never get funding. The inventors cant or won’t commit the necessary resources to market validation or building a plan, leaving them to pay off useless patents or tooling up to produce something that no retailer would look at without independent proof of demand.

As frustrated as this makes me feel, I understand this is not the Inventors’ fault. They have taken the steps they though were necessary to protect their idea, not realizing that they could have PROTECTED THE IDEA FOR LESS THAN $1,000.

If just 10% of these projects have merit and each was a $20m idea (one was clearly a potential $500m trade-sale opportunity) then what sort of impact would this have on each Country’s respective GDP? What has the commercialization failure cost the families (and sometimes friends) of the inventor? What has this inappropriate spending done for the economic recovery of the inventor? The question frustrates me and the answers should frighten anybody…..

What I learned about why inventors are always broke is these 4 things:

1. In early days, they didn’t know what to do, so they though a patent was the best first move.

2. They committed their own savings to things which didn’t advance their project.

3. They don’t understand what investors what to see before they invest in innovation.

4. They want what I can offer them, but they can’t afford it by the time they get to me.

My advice is eerily similar for most of these inventors. Pull back on your spending on things that don’t commercialize and focus on what will take you to the next level. It’s easy if you know how, but most inventors don’t understand the priorities on their first time around.

What I have designed, is an affordable way for even the most broke inventor, to get access to expertise, so they can plan their commercialization pathway without committing money they don’t have.

I have set up a 6-module on-line course called the?????????????????? ??????????????????????. This is a private resource for inventors who are struggling and can’t get free from where they are stuck, because they can’t afford to get the help they need from $600/hr experts like me.

In this couching component, I am going to give inventors like you access to resources they need, to

(1) objectively assess what you have,

(2) get your projects protected cheaply,

(3) to help you structure and fund the commercialization process,

(4) to get one-on-one help and learn from the help others get, and

(5) To help you get past where you are stuck right now.

This help will be in the form of checklists, articles, discussions and most importantly, the ??????-????-???????????????? sessions, where you can put a relevant burning question to me and I will provide a live response for you in the group. The purpose is to share the learning so ultimately, you can go back through other ??-??-?? responses and learn from what others have asked and experienced. A reasonable-use policy will apply and I will ask anybody who abuses this service, to leave……

This is not a done-for-you service or an “I-charge-you-money-and-promise-you-investors” scheme. This is a sound sharing of experience and advice in a controlled platform for inventors who have almost lost everything they had and are looking to build their knowledge so they can fight their way back into commercialization.

I am offering my 30-years of guides, checklists, training programs and a myriad of workarounds - on paper and video – to help you get the help you need, when you need it. There are 2 key reasons this makes sense from my point of view. The first is that you can never afford my services as long as you are stuck where you are and secondly, I have commercialization services you will need, as soon as you successfully get your funding on board.

The people I want in this group are inventors, students, business-owners with intellectual property they want to commercialize and R&D managers who want to value and licence or trade-sale what they have in the future. It will be open to inventors and past clients who have completed their projects with me, who understand their next project could be just days away.

For further information on how the course works, log into my free webinar explainer at ??????.????????????????????????????????????????.??????/????????.