This question was asked by someone who want to turn his ideas into a viable business venture, and below is one of the numerous answers from experts and experience business men round the world.  You can read the full question here Startups

Answered by Larry MacDonald

Larry MacDonald,

Please do not be offended by my answer; just consider it carefully.   It is based on 50 years watching and learning in marketing and new products.

You are on the path to disaster (unless you really value failure as a step toward success).  Your approach of starting with an idea is doomed to failure because nearly ALL ideas fail: 98%+ of patents fail to earn back even the cost of the patent.

Products must be sucked into the market, not pushed.  People must be enthusiastic enough to offer you money for your product (not your idea).

God made dogs’ feet well enough that they have worked perfectly for millions of years, so why would they need boots?  Well, not enough of them need boots and it would cost a lot of money to convince people they did.

Ideas don’t work.  Identifying real problems that people want to pay to solve and then developing valuable solutions at least 10 times as good as what exists is what works.

If you want to work in the pet field, look for a REAL pains that people have around pets and make a list of a hundred. Then pick the most attractive to pursue.

The pool you want to dive into is shallow and has big hidden rocks you will land on.  You don’t dive in without FIRST knowing how to swim and the safe route into and out of the pool..  You can’t learn in the air on the way down.  You need to do a massive amount of homework and learn everything about new products, patents, licensing, and manufacturing before you can succeed.

Without that knowledge you will be chum for the invention marketing services and every other blood sucking scumbag ripping off well-intentioned, but naive inventors.

Have you considered going to work at a pet product distribution company to see what is going on? You would learn even sweeping the floors.

You have no idea of the problems you have to overcome without studying, studying, and studying BEFORE you do anything else.

There are an infinite number of ways to fail and only a small number of ways to succeed.  You have to do so many things right.  How will you not stumble without knowledge?  And knowledge you get just asking questions here in so substitute for reading the books (including what I say).

Did you know that all the major universities have video courses online of their classes you can watch for free? Marketing, intellectual property, distribution, management…all free from the top schools in the world.

If you have the entrepreneurial spirit, that’s great.  I applaud your spirit.  Now get the foundational knowledge to succeed.  Ideas have zero value. Only execution can be protected or be sold.

This approach is based on what the few successful inventors have preached.  Please take it seriously.

This is Larry MacDonald’s opinion what’s yours 🙂

 

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