Are you ready for when the Chinese dollar store knock-offs appear?
they're already here
I come up with a lot of ideas myself. how did you go about making prototypes, funding said R&D, and gaining investors? because I really want to work for myself and get one of my ideas actually out to market.
Thanks
hey! Prototypes really depend on the type of product. If it's something like TubShroom, then you could make something yourself out of raw materials after you draw it out on paper. Once you test the different shapes and designs to see what works best, then you can hire a CAD designer (this costs money, of course) to bring your design to 3d life, so to speak. Then you could possibly get it 3d printed in a bunch of different places. That's what we did with TubShroom. The raw prototype with clay and plastics worked well and then the 3d printed prototype worked even better. That's when we locked down the design after some minor tweaks, worked on the intellectual property stuff, and then priced around with a couple of manufacturers. We had to save up ourselves and use our own money to do these initial phases of work. It's mostly time, though. Family and friends are usually a good place to start for investment after you have the prototype (or even before, possibly) and then whatever you raise might be enough to get you all the way through the Kickstarter "testing" phase. From there, you'll have a better idea of whether it's a winner or not. If it is, then often times investors or large companies will reach out to you or you could shop it around yourself. Again, google is your friend every step of the way. There's tons of stuff written about each and every step.
Don't rush anything or you're liable to make mistakes you'll later regret. Not everyone will make it in this field, but if you're passionate about your idea (and realistic!) then I say it's worth saving up for and trying, if you're able. I don't want to make it sound easy because it's challenging for sure. If you find the love in it, though, that should be enough motivation to keep you going, especially if you accept the fact that you can't really fail because, at worst, you'll come away with valuable experience and you won't be left asking yourself "what if?".
Your invention seems very useful and awesome. Congrats. On a side note, what did you get your higher education degrees in?
Business Management, International Business. Worked a bunch. Then Law School at age 28. I'm 35 now. I wouldn't have been able to do this 10, 5, or even 3 years ago. Needed every ounce of that life experience.
i have a piece i would like to get kickstarted. any ideas? did you do this strictly word of mouth or did you look for investors locally?
Kickstarter is a great way to "test" the market and get validity to your product that it's worth investing in. However, Kickstarter takes a lot of work before launch and after launch because there's lots of media/copy to get ready and also after launch there's the efforts to spread the word.Lots of hustle is required and there's no guarantee of success but if you believe in your idea, it's is a worthwhile endeavor to go through to see if the market will believe in it. And most successful kickstarter campaigns have the help of PR firms who take a percentage of the proceeds. That's OK... as long as your margins allow for it. Actually, it's a must and you should build it into your pricing on Kickstarter.
The PR firms work in tandem with your own hustle to get the word out to the press, bloggers, etc. and they combine that with paid click advertising (mainly on facebook) to drive traffic to your KS listing. If your kickstarter listing converts traffic to pledges at a good rate, then they can keep doing it and it has a snow ball effect. That's really what will tell you whether your product is a winner or not. If, after all those efforts, the KS isn't a real success, then it's probably best to move on to something else. If it takes off, however, then at that point you can decide whether to bring on more investors and you can approach family (like I did) or investment firms and you have the successful proof of kickstarter as all you'll need to get some investment, in most cases.
3. Throw Gaf a raffle or something.
going to randomly pick two posters to send free units to as long as they sign an agreement to shill for me
Congrats, OP! Great to see someone that done made it.
Out of curiosity (and don't answer this if you don't want to), how old are you? I'm doing pretty darn generally paying the bills and saving for college and retirement and all that fun stuff in life, but in my mid-30's, I'm starting to look for more, if you know what I mean.
How long, would you say, was your journey into entrepreneur territory? What, if anything, did you commit to and stick with giving up in order to make the change?
Congrats again!
Thanks! 35. I was fortunate enough to have a safety net if this didn't work out. I realize most people don't and many others aren't willing to risk the level they've reached to try something new. It's not easy. Thankfully, in cases like this, you can sacrifice your nights and weekends a bit to get through the initial phases to see if you got something worthwhile or not. For more complicated inventions... it's harder to do it on a shoestring budget... you'd have to shop it out to investors or licensees.
Congrats on your success!
Have you considered something that could go over nontraditional drains? Product looks nice but a lot of newer homes have nontraditional drains.
Thanks! Yes, but there's other products that do pretty well covering the non-traditional market. Gotta stick to our core competencies for now!
If you can't think of things to do w/ the money, don't forget philanthropy -- had a step uncle who did meals on wheels every week and left multiple million dollar donations for nonprofits upon his passing.
That's a wise man. I don't know why people hoard to be honest... you can't take any of it with you.
OP Congrats on making a product that actually works/Affordable, would be cool if you can one day make a thread on how to make a product. People have ideas but have no clue on how to do anything else
I'll try to get permission from the mods before my next kickstarter. I'd like that. This place is full of great minds & great people to coordinate with.
@op Thanks for the answers!
How did you manage to get 4 mil views on the facebook video? And can I have a link?
Link. Odditymall has 100k followers. They posted a demo video and it resonated with their audience so much (better than anything else in their history) that people just kept sharing it. That monday morning I woke up and we had literally hundreds of orders coming in daily. It was insane and fun at the same time.
OP I am a bald man who saves his head in the shower, and I know all that hair from my head, even though very short, is building up in my drain probably.
So will these even catch very short "beard / head hairs?"
Thanks! Yes, it will work as long as you have a tub drain (not a stand up shower stall drain which is a bigger-sized drain). You have to clean it out after every use, though.
Missed opportunity to make the top look like the GAF logo, you were halfway there, just needed the gray
If anyone has the l33t gif skills to make it a reality, that would be cool!
I was on teamxbox pre-merge. Good days.
That UNC guy was a character. Interesting though.
TeamXbox reunion! Dad, Dopeyfish, all representing =)
