McStartup

This next question reminds me of the many foolish things I did when first starting out.  My friend Scott and I spent a number of hours working with a company called "The Invention Submission Corporation," because we had this great idea involving ceiling fans, potpourri, and pantyhose.  Luckily we cut those talks off before we wasted any real money, but we still blew a lot of time on it. 

Richard writes:

I have an idea, but don't know where to start. I have thought about submitting it to one of the invention sites. Is that a good idea?

In short, the answer is “no.”

It's not that companies like the Invention Submission Corporation are scams per se, but businesses like that capitalize on two very common misconceptions people have when starting a business. First, that a good idea is the key to business success. In reality, the idea behind the business probably represents maybe 5% of the elements that lead to a successful enterprise. Second, that they must seek patent protection as step one to establishing your business. Here again, this is not only wrong, but is a potentially damaging avenue to pursue.

New entrepreneurs are often grossly paranoid that everyone is out to steal their idea. Sure, someone may steal your idea, but so what? Like I said, the idea is such a small part of the equation that even *if* someone did outright steal it, then you can still beat them (or be beaten) on the remaining 95% of the work.

The real work in a business is establishing a scalable, repeatable, and manageable business model. This starts with identifying specifically what customers want, how badly they want it, and how many of those types of customers there are. The easiest way to do this is to begin talking to potential future customers about your idea as soon as you can articulate what this brilliant idea of yours is.

How do you do this? Easy. You pick up the phone, call someone that you think might be a customer if and when you had your product or service available, and say “Hi. My name is Jeff and I’m working on a new business startup. I have a product idea that I think might benefit you with _____, and I was hoping you might be willing to spend 10 minutes with me on the phone to talk about it and tell me what you think.”

So forget the patents, the non-disclosure agreements, and the like.  What you need to do is talk to as many people as you possibly can about your idea, not hide it as though you just unlocked the secrets to cold fusion in your hidden basement laboratory.

It’s as easy as that, and you need to have these conversations with a hundred different people before you’ll really begin to understand the market opportunity. With each call, you’ll learn more about the market, more about where the pain points are, and more about how you need to tweak this great idea you had to actually make it sellable to those customers.

The one thing I can guarantee you is this: What you thought was the perfect product wasn't quite it.

However, with a lot of conversations and discussion, you’ll figure out what the perfect product really is. Then you can start working on it, and then if appropriate, you can think about getting a patent. Patents are worthy of one or more posts in and of themselves, but let me simply say that there are many different ways to protect intellectual property, and a patent might not be what you actually need.

So – if you have a great idea, don’t waste your time calling the Invention Submission Corporation. Instead, start calling those people that might actually be future customers. You’ll identify the right product, hone the right pitch, and as a bonus, you’ll have a whole bunch of people interested in what you’re doing, so that when you do have a finished product, you’ve got all those people you call on immediately who are already warm to you and your ideas.