Being different is critical to being noticed.
Launching your invention during a recession can be good business. Prices across the board might be cheaper, including your suppliers' prices, due to lower overall demand. Lower demand also means that competition should be more relaxed. The trick to success is to focus on finding and solving pervasive problems with your invention. Problems are still problems despite whether the economy is burning hot or on ice.
Instructions
1. Research. Then, research some more. Prove to yourself and your team that your invention has the right stuff to succeed under the current economic environment. If you feel there is a need for your product, back it with market data. Look at other companies in your industry. Even if you believe you have no competitors, customers come from somewhere, which means you're taking business from someone. Find out definitively why your product is better or cheaper than theirs. Furthermore, find out what pervasive problems your invention satisfies. Use government databases such as the Census Bureau to validate your research.
2. Choose an appropriate business model. Ideas don't make money. Business models do. For example, a business model that sells as many widgets as possible may be less desirable than leasing your intellectual property if the selling model requires millions of dollars for manufacturing before you can even sell the first one.
3. Get your product past the proof of concept stage. Your potential buyers want to know that your product works as well as you promised it would. Create a small-scale demonstration unit if the price of building a full-scale unit is cost prohibitive. Create a digital video of your product working and provide it to potential customers and investors when requested.
4. Protect your invention. Decide whether you're going to use patents or trade secret tactics. For example, if you use trade secret tactics like Coca-Cola with its formula for classic Coca-Cola, then you must severely limit who has access to your proprietary information.
5. Reach out to select customers identified in the research stage. Investors generally feel more comfortable when they know there is huge demand for your product. Prove to your customers that using your product solves their problem. For instance, if your sell solar panels, focus on customers with large non-productive tracts of land who use large amounts of electricity. Pre-formalize relationships with these customers with nonbinding agreements like letters of interest or memorandums of understanding.
6. Raise capital. Use your own capital or capital from your personal network. You can also form strategic alliances with other supporting industries. For example, a company with an invention that creates natural diesel from biomass waste may be able to partner with diesel purchasers like a trucking company. In this case, the trucking company would provide a capital in exchange for a reduced price for diesel. Additionally, you can partner with angel and venture capital investors. Select investors that focus on your industry to create greater synergy.
7. Be persistent. It's likely you will receive several "no" answers before you get a "yes." Use each decline as a learning experience. Follow up with investors and potential buyers and find out what they didn't like. Use that data and compare it with yours. Adjust your plan as necessary.
