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Bootstrapping a New Technology?
djk1024 writes "I've just filed for a patent on a new approach to motion capture that is simple, cheap, easy, accurate, and portable. It's RF-based, accurate to 1 mm, and simple enough that a sophisticated hobbyist could build one in a couple weekends from plans and standard electronics. So now what? I quit my job and have been working on this full-time for the past couple of years; now I'm out of money so can't continue development on my own. I'm also not an electrical or RF guy so I can't carry out my own independent development on the electronics. I'm quite frustrated at this point. I've been in the software development field for over 30 years and have gone through a large number of startups, but always just as the head techie, and always as part of a team. This doing it alone sucks. I would love some advice on how best to go forward."
The buyer may offer you a job, which seems to be what you want.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
http://www.score.org/index.html
Seriously, get some help. Asking "techies" is, as you probably are quickly finding out, the absolute wrong way to get good business advice.
Put Linux on it, fire up emacs and send a letter to Microsoft telling them to screw themselves.
Yep, that ought to do it.
Show me your blueprints and I'll tell you
If you hadn't patented it, that is. Instead, if a hobbyist tried to do that, you could sue him.
Thanks.
1. Get a job (solve cash flow situation first)
2. Preferably somewhere with people you can recruit into your endeavor
3. Recruit people to help you from your job or from anywhere you can find them (meetup?)
4. Find investors if money is needed, or do it organically with money from your own job
5. Finish the prototype/proof of concept
6. Shop around to interested buyers
7. Profit?
Most importantly you need more eyes on what you're doing for the sanity check. People in the business which you will be selling or licensing this to.
Would you mind just open sourcing this? I've been wanting something like this for a really long time to do an open source movie.
Right now, artists from a lot of different domains can participate in open-source culture. There's open source music, open source art, open source writing, etc. The one 'media' where creators cannot participate in open source is movement -- dance, martial art, acting, miming, etc -- because there's no cheap way to digitize their work. If you open sourced your work you would change things forever. You would be like the guy who invented the computer or the printing press. I know the American dream is to invent something in your basement and become a millionaire, and I'd like that for you, but maybe things are changing in this day and age.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
"RF-based, accurate to 1mm" .... "I'm not an electrical or RF guy"
So if you don't know the radio technology, how can you know that it is accurate to 1mm and be able to adequately describe the patent for the application?
I always thought this was insightful, but never could test that belief: Top Ten Geek Business Myths:
Myth #1: A brilliant idea will make you rich.
Myth #2: If you build it they will come.
Myth #3: Someone will steal your idea if you don't protect it.
Myth #4: What you think matters.
Myth #5: Financial models are bogus.
Myth #6: What you know matters more than who you know.
Myth #7: A Ph.D. means something.
Myth #8: I need $5 million to start my business
Myth #9: The idea is the most important part of my business plan.
Myth #10: Having no competition is a good thing.
The actual blog has much more in-depth explanations of the myths. And, it has a special Bonus Myth!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Good, honest help is a little more challenging. SCORE might be ok, but you need someone with some knowledge of technology. If you are in Silicon Valley, I can recommend people that can provide advice, contacts, possibly money. If you are not there, indicate where you are and perhaps friends of friends can help.
more cowbell
Read "The Art of the Start", and look at www.svase.org.
How did you manage to invent this if you're not an electrical or RF guy?
Great idea.
With RF, you also eliminate issues with hiding the normal lights/reflectors with clothing/costumes, etc. As I understand at the moment, motion capture is done with an actor in a leotard to avoid these problems. With RF, you open up new possibilities of filming a real actor in real costume, and being able to motion detect them in real time. I'm not quite sure what you'd do with it, but that's why I'm an engineer and not a "creative" type.
Frankly, you need help. You're not going to successfully develop a product from this on your own. Give up on the "lone wolf" approach - you're not gonna make it.
Find a VC who understands the motion picture industry, and has contacts there. Sell out, keeping whatever percentage you can. Let the VC help you find the managers and developers necessary to take this to the next level - either as a standalone product or a technology for sale.
Alternatively, take what you have to ILM or Pixar or Disney or whoever. You'll have to find someone who knows someone who knows someone to do this; once again, a VC could help you with that.
JMHO.
And the worms ate into his brain.
Techies starting companies tend to only focus on the technology as a game changer, without capturing the essence of being an entrepreneur. It sounds trite, but you really have to remember all you are trying to do is sell something to someone that really needs it. So have said that: 1) You've got to know who you are selling to and what you are selling 2) There must be an innovation at the core (you seem to have this) 3) You have to be able to mind everything else, which is why you need at least one trusted partner, and no, that doesn't mean a friend or work colleague - often a huge mistake of choices. Read a lot of what Union Square Ventures have to say: http://unionsquareventures.com/ Now, with the tiny slice of information you've offered, you may have customers in a wide variety of industries, not just entertainment. What about Health Care? How about Sports (teaching golf swings for example). By working up a sales plan (not a technology plan) several times over (there are many processes for doing this, you'll find out) you will get a much better idea of who will really pay as customers to help fund your venture. Customer money is very good money for a start up.
Sounds like you need a business partner. I would suggest that you (a) first get a job so that you don't feel like you are strained and that this project is draining the life out of you and (b) need to find someone who is more "business focused" so that they can complement your strengths. No reason that you have to do everything alone. You bring certain strengths to the table and so will someone else. Find someone who is passionate about your idea, share some equity with them, and this can continue as a great project on the weekends until you start making money at it and can afford to have it support you while you work on it full time.
Make a strategic decision to put yourself in a stronger position to succeed. Then working on it won't feel as burdensome and you will have more fun and energy to put back into the project.
Good luck!
I would recommend reading a book that I am currently trying to finish myself:
The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship by Bygrave and Zacharakis
Some advise to provide:
1. You'll need to get funding. If not Angel investors, then find a way to get cash (part-time job?)
2. In order to get funding, you WILL need a business plan. There are tons of books and resources that can help you draft a great concise business plan to help convince the Angels or VC to invest in your invention.
Also, the business plan will help you plan out if the product will be profitable and also plans for growth.
Because you seem to articulate that you are "up against a brick wall", unsure what to do next, I would advise you to invest your time now into writing this plan.
Best of luck to you, pal!
bullcrap!
If the idea was that good: /. for help
1. you certainly wouldn't be asking
2. You wouldn't cry about being neither an electrical nor an RF guy (HTF did you develop it?)
3. cry about doing it alone. Sounds like you really ain't done nothin' yet!
Read "The Art of the Start". Check out SVASE (google them). If it's really a good idea, you will be able to get help.
It should be still available. And assuming poster is from the US, plentiful available. If the invention is really innovative, useful and simple, then it sounds like a no-brainer to me to commercialise it. And that's where the VC firms come in play: they have the capital and expertise to build an actual business around your invention. They will also be able to help you with patent applications and the like.
I wouldn't be too afraid to disclose the idea to them: just don't tell all the details. Just the basics. VC people are businessmen, not techies in general, so they won't understand the technical finesses anyway.
The fact that you spent years of your own time and money on it is quite impressive, though I would also call it naive. It is too long. It does show your commitment but you should have gotten a prototype of the invention working long time ago (otherwise you're doing something wrong from the start), and that is the time when you will want to go out to attract the capital you need to actual hire some specialists to further develop your invention.
As someone who is doing it alone, patent costs can be quite significant. Not only for the filing fee but for the annual "maintenance fee".
Failing to maintain your patent means it will lapse and becomes public domain.
Use your job to fund your private efforts. This is what I do. Now, you've filed your patent but you'll probably wait up to 7 years to see it granted. Several friends of mine have filed over 30 last year. They still work their day jobs. Make sure you are ok and funded to be able to work towards what you want. I don't understand why you quit your job when this was your money source. Everything takes longer and costs more than you plan it will. Plan accordingly and then realize your plan is not enough.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
goto www.groklaw.net
on the right is an article
# Open Invention Network's Distinguished Inventors Patent Acquisition Program
link:
http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/press_release08_03_09.php
The patent filing should be public knowledge. Where's the patent #...? You should at least let the /. crowd examine your patent... Unless, of course, you're afraid of it being ripped to shreds...
You've spent two years on this, and only now getting into the patent? You should be prepared for disappointment. The odds are very high that someone has already patented your exact idea, especially if it's something that you could figure out with no prior RF electronics experience. It's difficult to let go of something that you've put your heart into for so long, but you need to be prepared to do that if you run into problems. Otherwise it could drag you even further down.
So, the idea is "simple enough that a sophisticated hobbyist could build one in a couple weekends from plans and standard electronics" and yet you are "not an electrical or RF guy so I can't carry out my own independent development on the electronics".
This does not jive. If it is quite so simple, being a "software guy" is not much of an impediment. You should be able to learn as much as a "sophisticated hobbyist", in particular in 2 years - that electronics stuff isn't all that hard, in particular at hobby level.
Either your idea is not quite so simple, or there are problems with it that prevent it from being actually implemented. Either way - if you can't do it - no one else will do it for you, unless you pay them.
You may be surprised by the number of Radio Amateurs (a.k.a.: "Hams"),
who were or - in some cities - are Electronics Engineers.
You might find someone between jobs or just interested in your project.
PS Didn't you have to have a -working- model to demonstrate to the
Patent Office, ie, before a patent could be issued on your invention?
So, from what you say, you need two things: more money and someone who has RF knowledge.
Money
* Day-job: get one and work on your project on your free time (or wait until you have saved enough money, and work on your project full time)
* Rich guys: Investors, VCs, a patent-buyer.
And about the RF knowledge
* A partner: you both will work for free and you will share the future benefits
* A hired RF guy: you pay him, and you get all the future benefits.
* If you opt by the rich guys, they may help you under their own terms.
But also remember that you already have a very valuable thing: you have been in several startups, so you have experienced that there is a boring part -paying bills, marketing,...- that has to be done, and more important, you also know the people behind that startups, who will be able to help you and provide with you good advice (much better than mine) and contacts.
In fact, forget this comment and call them.
HermesPod: Free Podcast Download Manager for Windows
You need help for the business side or else someone is going to rip off your idea, make minor changes patent that and commercialize it right out from under you. Since you don't have any staff your the best option might be licensing to someone, but you'll need help to find the right someone. If you don't license you'll need way more people and a VC or other funding source to get it off the ground at any volume. The more revolutionary the product the more you need money to defend it.
SCORE would be a reasonable place to go. Stay well away from 'invention companies' or at least any that demand up front fees. By filing the patent you've started the clock so you are going to have to move fast. Expect to have two jobs for a while until funding comes through - one job makes money to pay the rent and the other is searching for the right way to harvest this technology.
The other option might be a partner - IF you know anyone you can trust from your other startups who can deliver the right expertise.
A quick technical question, could this provide position monitoring for indoor robots or rovers? There's not much in the market, what is there tends to be hacked together and/or expensive.
So you've got a "great idea" about how to do this but you're "not an RF guy". $50 says your "great idea" is one of the following:
Note that even trying to find your application turns up a number of older apps (2007 and 2004) that seem to have the same idea.
Watch dragons den. 1. You need to build a working prototype if you can't build one you are a dreamer , not an inventor. 2.Get patented (get a lawyer) 3. Establish a small test market. 4. Sell/Expand
Start learning and planning, even if rough on "the money". Call SCORE from the phone book. They have an inexpensive CD on preparing a business plan. Taylor it to your field.
Start talking to people. People in tech companies, VCs, management groups, banks, attorneys who handle mergers and aquisitions, professional groups that meet on tech subjects. Find people who are interested, knowledgable and willing to offer advice or a reference to another person or company. A month of serious contacts will turn up amazing people, and links to other people.
The numbers part of any plan are where investors and managers are most interested to judge whether a "product" can return income to pay for their involvement. VC's generally know that they have to fund 6-10 companies to get one that returns enough to pay for the other 5-9 that don't make it. In spite of their years in the "business" they will likely admit they can predict which of the 10 will be a big deal, and thus they can't really tell if yours will be "BIG" or "not".
It takes a lot of connections. Move on them with data, diagrams, and an analysis of the existing products both commercial and freeware.
If I had something like this, I would call up Paul Graham at Y Combinator... This is the sort of thing he (angel) invests in.
Disclaimer: I don't have a business relationship with those guys. I just find his articles really insightful and interesting. You might too. Start with this one The 18 mistakes that kill startups ... Being a "Single Founder", like yourself, is his first point.
Good luck! I hope you find a lot of success in this
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
I am of the opinion that it will take a second person. Often there seems to many companies where the sum of the pieces are
greater than the pieces alone.
If we look at SUN, Microsoft, Google and Apple. There seems two founders. One person to for the "money" side and one person to do tech work. I don't think it is possible to stay focused on both of these issues at the same time.
Apple had both Jobs and Wozniak.
Microsoft had Paul Allen and Bill Gates.
Sun had Bill Joy and Scott McNealy.
Google had Brin and Page.
You are attempting to develop a product, and therefore a business to sell the product. That's really the only thing that is important.
It doesn't matter whether that product is a piece of gear, a software program, a movie, a book, a web site, etc, the basic considerations are the same.
You need resources to develop the product. In the case of a physical good, you need raw materials to built test units with, you need people to build the units, you need electricity to power the units, you need time to build the units, and you may need additional people to assist you to meet realistic timeframes.
Once you've built them, you need even more resources to be able to build a business selling them.
There are many ways to obtain the resources you need...
And you asked Slashdot for advice?
. . .
I'm surprised no one's just flat-out said "Fuck off, traitor."
Wait a second, are you saying that you quit your day job to work on this for two years, without any plan as to how you're going to make money out of this, and only now that you're out of money you're worrying about this?
Might be obvious, but all that matters is that you find a new techie job right now. THEN look for someone to buy/pick up what you've done (and good luck with that).
You just got troll'd!
An incubator company is setup to deal with your situation. I am currently working at one. Please contact me and I will put you in contact with the president of our company.
License the patent out and reap the rewards, while OTHER PEOPLE have the headache of builing, manufacturing, selling, marketing, etc.
Seriously, most people don't realize this, but building a company around one idea is fraught with so many pitfalls, your great tech could end up never seeing the light of day due to other failures, like being bad at running a company, not knowing how to keep manufacturing costs down, not negotiating with the right manufacturer, having supply and inventory problems, having to hire all these people to do the mundane stuff, etc, etc, etc.
LICENSE IT. Smaller piece of the pie, but no pain!
Since you are a software engineer, I'm guessing you don't have deep contacts into the movie or games industries, the biggest potential users of this technology. The reason I bring it up is that unless you understand your customer really well, even if your technology is pretty good you will have slim chances of giving your customers a full solution they can use. If you know someone who knows mocap inside and out, and can interest them, then perhaps you can persuade them to be a partner.
If you're a relative outsider, I think your goal should be to sell your company (and technology/patents) to an established company in the industry. If the technology is good and you have a well-written patent, this could be fairly lucrative. I'm guessing that's what a company like Sixense is trying to do.
Now, if your goal is to sell your technology so that someone else can bring it to market, the key is to have a very compelling technology demonstration of what it can do. Millimeter precision in motion capture is something that magnetic sensors can achieve today, for example the systems from Polhemus. How are you better? Do you track over a larger volume, or with smaller markers? Or do you feel you can achieve a cost that's lower than anybody else, thereby opening up new markets? The technical characteristics will determine: (a) how distinctive your technology is, relative to others that exist, and (b) which companies could make the best use of your technology. Others have pointed it out, but I'll reiterate: Nothing sells technology like a good working prototype. If you don't have this and have already filed a patent, you are taking a big chance that your claims are written correctly.
You've 30 years experience, been in several start-ups, and remain clueless about what's next. So you are clearly not the one to drive a new company. Make a "short list" of people you know who were principals of the previous start-ups - people you respect for their business knowledge and accomplishments. Ask them for advice. Do have a working prototype of the invention? Have you done a patent search to see if your invention is novel? If I were you, while I was doing this, I would get a day job, unrelated to your invention, and spend my spare time writing some software (your field) to go with your prototype.
An old professor of mine used to say that an AA/AS was probably the wisest degree to go for. In his opinion, a BA/BS just meant that you'd learned to jump through hoops, a MA/MS meant that you'd learned to like jumping through hoops and a PhD meant that you got to hold the hoops for other people to jump through.
This ain't rocket surgery.
BTW, feel free to contact me, if need be under NDA: RF expertise; teach new technology ventures; entrepreneur myself. If you can outperform inertial sensing, I'll buy it for my app as well. But above all, you need an Angel with relevant expertise.
...so you can't do your own RF development work...
So how do you know this even works? And you have already filed for a patent. No wonder you use to work for Microsoft.... you are really going about this arse about face!
Understand the market (who will buy it, what are you competing with, how much money will it save them, what are the laws)
Make it.
Make it testable.
Make it work.
Make it manufacturable.
Take out unit cost.
Start producing it....
Start marketing it, and if you have time patent it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hi,
I've done a bit like you and still in this. I think its important to know what you want, cause there is a lot of advices coming from everywhere, at least thats what hapened to me, everybody think they know how it should be done, and most of them havent actually done anything worth. By reading your post i conclude that you are at least 20 years older than me and you surely know a lot more than me about life, and probably more stressed to get money too. However on my part i soon discovered that society is well built to avoid self made man, especially when your skills are at software and not at busyness, marketing or lies. What is expected from you is to submit your concept to some giant who will look mildly interrested in order to give you the least possible for your work, this is the worst case, theres still good guys with money ready to help out there. Do you want to sell your things and go straight to the beach with the chicks or are you proud of your work and want to devellope it no matter the ambush to come, and own whats yours? I decided to refuse private money, cause i intend to own what i do, and im ready to be poor for a while. On the other side there was help from the public money, but as what i do involve software, electronics, mechanic and chemistry, i really haven't the time to go throught the papers and planning to convince peoples that dont understand a thing about what i do, my time is more precious than the small amount of money i can get there. I also keep away from those marketing freaks who just want to blow up the balloon as fast as possible.
Getting a job is not a bad idea, but beleive me, if you get a full time job your project will advance very slowly, if not backward, specially if you must dwelve into rf stuff. Of course lowering your life expense is part of this and only you know what you are ready to sacrifice and you are probably already there.
So here's my advices:
-read all the advice you can get, paying for professional advices may not be a bad idea.
-get a part time job so you dont die of hunger on your keyboard.
- go spend a week in nature among the trees, bees and suchies(something inexpensive). (me its flowing water i need) anyway relaxe and let some blood flow in every parts of your body and dont think much about a solution, just try to find what you really want for you.
-go back to your home (if you still have one) and google for electronics projects, today's electronic is not that hard to handle, there is surely an embeded rf mcu that can do what you want quickly (along with a bit of help from others to get you on tracks).
after that you should be able to decide which way to take, but have faith in yourself, if your a coder for so many years there isnt to much you need to learn to build a proto board and am sure there are some peoples ready to help you, as i am.
for what pertain to the patent, im of no help here, these patents piss me off and i hope for change in our society regarding these matters. yeah yeah some will want to put my foot back on earth with legality issues bla bla, im sorry but am waiting cheaters with a riddle of steel.
And dont let people take you down, going where no one has gone before is what pioneers do.
Good luck man!
There is a disconnect between the business world and tech. If you want to make money, you need to bridge the gap. I would recommend (gasp) going back to school. Take some entrepreneurial classes at a nearby college. Network with the professors and students, many of whom have been through the process or intend to. Learn about the VC process and realize that in order to make money, you are going to lose control at some point. Your problem here is primarily a business one and slashdot might not be the best forum for an answer.
You quit your day job.
You have an idea and got a patent but are trying to RnD it yourself.
You ran out of funds because you have no venture capitialist backing you.
You are at the blunt end of failure and you want help from slashdot.
This sounds like an episode from DragonsDen on the BBC.
I gave up on reading all the comments. A lot of cynics, and a lot of people knocking the guy. Yet it is people like this who have historically driven so much innovation. So he's focused on product, and not on all the structure around it, which may or may not be his downfall. Is this such a bad thing? It is not a product driven by marketing, but by engineering, and these types of product are becoming harder and harder to come by. To the AC who said "You are at the blunt end of failure and you want help from slashdot." - having a functioning example is far from the blunt end, which is populated by those who can't quite make their products work. Sure, the guy has limited business nous, but at least he knows enough to know he needs help to go further. If one was to take the majority of comments here on slashdot seriously, almost everyone has startling intellect and experience in all fields pertaining to the world.
The Mothership
This is late in the thread, this post will probably not be modded up. I hope you read it nonetheless.
You need PARTNERS! There are four planks to a well-run business, and they are: 1) Technical, 2) Operations/support, 3) Legal, 4) Finance.
You need to 1) Produce the product, 2) Support the product and the staff who do 3) CYA, 4) Count the money made.
It really is as simple as that. Since you provide #1, you either need to provide 2, 3, and 4 yourself, or find others who can provide them. I was in a position like you some 8 years ago. I had some interesting technology for application development that I thought was useful. I tried to go it alone for a year or two, and had only limited success.
But then I took a community business training class called "V3", run through my local college, that taught me the basics of running a startup business. They actually had a worksheet that you could use to evaluate the likelihood of success of your business. It was hard to swallow to realize that my odds of success were somewhere around 8%.
So I realized that I needed partners. And partners I found. Good partners, that, between the 4 partners, actually covered all four bases very nicely. And it's been a very well balanced company - not a single down quarter in 6+ years, and 40% to 70% annual growth.
We chose to grow organically rather than go the sudden rush/VC route, and we've done well with it.
Find partners who are decent, who you can trust, who are motivated and professional. If you do, you'll never regret it.
I wish you the best of luck.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I do hope that I'm one of a million posters saying that copyleft is right and copyright is wrong. The patent and copyright systems are unethical and therefore counterproductive. Want your product produced immediately? Open it to the public. Want to be the foremost expert on a product you've designed? Open it to the public!
Good luck.
You have a few options to do this. If you use radio waves that happen to bounce back, in that extremely unlikely case I hate to break it to you but radar has been around for 70 years. If you use RFID tags to track motion, that has been done before as well on several ways (signal strength, timing, etc...). If you use small that sends out radio pulses, has been done before as well. Oh yeah, fun addition. Look out what frequency you use, cell phone operators already have usage rights on just about every frequency out there. And they love to sue people for disturbing their network (even if they don't use that frequency all that much).
MoCap is a big deal in L.A. Where do you live? The RF approach sounds fishy to me - from off-the-shelf parts? Why haven't you already thought of collaborating with a prof at a school with programs in CGI and EE? One good youtube video would be enough to prove your point. There's something big missing in your story, like, it is hard to believe.
The technology you describe sounds like it could be eventually made into an inexpensive body-based controller much like the Wii, but more immersive.
Imagine the user putting on a shirt and gloves, and velcroing RF'ed straps to one's shoes/ankles. Then when you go to play your FPS or fantasy role-playing game (or many other game-types), you're getting in shape, and also can limit your game playing naturally to an hour or so, instead of playing all night eating cheetos on the couch, and getting RSD on your wrist and thumbs.
Go watch "dragons den" or "shark tank"
So, you can see how it is done.
Go, find a big company that can use your technology,
get a initial order.
Then go to a angel investor and get the money to set up production and get the patent.
"I quit my job and have been working on this full-time for the past couple of years; now I'm out of money so can't continue development on my own"
This covers it all, also, OOT, is a sample of the top of "famous last words".
2 years of no sales = "your marketing guy sucks" or "your product sucks"
In either case, find full-time job, and, unless "your product sucks", continue development on your own, find a new marketing guy, and get sales.
Protecting IP is good, but I seriously doubt you have any patentable tech.
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5527 might buy you some time, and allow you to hire a "partner".
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
I hear that's a good place.
http://www.kickstarter.com/
The submitter asked for advice. The advice given by the OP is to sell the patent, which implies finding a buyer.
I mean, seriously... it's not that hard to understand. If I suggest to you "Hey dude... sell your car" would you respond with "Sell it? Did I say there was a buyer? How am I going to sell my car if I don't already have a buyer lined up? After all, it's completely impossible to desire to sell something first, then to take the steps necessary to market a given product or service out there, from which a buyer might self-identify. I mean, you can't just put an advertisement in an online service such as Craigslist offering to sell your product when you don't have any buyers!"
1. ????
2. ????
3. ????
4. PROFIT!
"Intellectual Property and Open Source" It goes over the different licenses and how to open source with profit. http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517960/
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
The technology you describe sounds like it could be eventually made into an inexpensive body-based game-console controller much like the Wii, but more immersive.
Imagine the user putting on a shirt and gloves, and velcroing RF'ed straps to one's shoes/ankles. Then when you go to play your FPS or fantasy role-playing game (or many other game-types), you're getting in shape, and also can limit your game playing naturally to an hour or so, instead of playing all night eating cheetos on the couch, and getting RSD on your wrist and thumbs.
You realize that a patent is NOTHING. As an unemployed individual, your patent can be freely infringed regardless of its merit.
And I doubt it has much.
Do you KNOW WHAT A PATENT IS?
Its a right to sue. It doesnt protect you fool. Its a right to sue. How much money do you have to sue
your potential infringers or even know if there are any.
I am so sick of grade school American adults who think they know ANYTHING about ANYTHING.
You are such a fool you deserve to be impoverished for your incredibly stupid expectations of patent law.
US, country of morons who file patents as if that will compensate for their IQ which is less than the octane rating in a gallon of gas.
You've been working on this for *years* without any concept of gaining critical mass within that time? WTF? ... Doesn't sound like you're a businessman. Sitting in your basement building a new technology get's you nowhere - other than 'Broke County' - if you don't have a plan or a crew to help you launch it. ... whatever ...
There is one thing you should keep in mind when building a new mocap system: MoCap is one part, the other part is its software. No matter how cheap the MoCap setup, if the software is too expensive and/or to unwieldy to integrate you won't open new markets.
See to it that your system becomes a standard on its own and is fully integrated into Blender. You have the advantage of having a leading figurehead FOSS project that intersects with your field on which you hop on to the bandwagon. Blender is gaining critical mass as we speak and it's very likely to become an industry standard as soon as they get renderman integrated. Which can't be that long anymore.
Go ask Ton Roosendaal (Blender Project Lead) about his plans on this and have a few from the coreteam look at your MoCap system. You'll be able to use the new input and contacts to get some real world experience and feedback with your system. They've just started working on the next Open Movie, Durian. If your tech is that good, maybe they can allready use it and gather some field data for you, no? On top of that, going the FOSS way isn't the worst thing to do, since you're in the hardware business.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I do contract work for a company that does what you need. They are based in Sydney, Australia; but work internationally. They handle ideas to production, and provide a business structure for R&D development. Tell them Chris Alfred referred you. To contact me use catuff1@gmail.com Web site: http://www.capitaltechnic.com/index.htm Contact: http://www.capitaltechnic.com/toppage1.htm
Dennis,
If you would provide an email address, or another way to get in touch with you -- outside this public forum -- I can give you pointers on how to go about this. I have a lot of experience in this area. You are in a unique position in that you have an idea that you believe works -- based on prototypes -- but you lack a business case and at the moment a complete product. What you need to do is basically show people that this is not just an idea and that it is feasible to move forward with this. I understand that you've built a prototype and have a patent but that it is still not engineering proven -- which makes it risky.
There are ways of further developing this, and marketing it to other companies as IP or as a dev kit with licensing/integration option.
You have to dot the i's and cross the tee's before someone will look at it as a viable technology. Doing so may not be as difficult as it seems depending on what you've done so far. To use a familiar analogy: think of it as having built an engine but only having a command line front-end, wrapping a GUI around it may not be technically difficult but it has to be done correctly from a UI perspective for your first demo to wow the user.
You are in a very good position since you've applied for a patent. That makes it easier to talk to other people. I'd also like to remind you to always get an NDA before talking in detail to anyone.
As I said, I'd like to get in touch with you to discuss this further or at least take up an hour or two of your time in exchange for $0.02 of advice.
-Arvin
Get a job. Get a second job, if necessary.
Work 80 hours a week, and work on this thing in your spare time.
If you're not making money, it's an expensive hobby.
Is this you.
http://tinyurl.com/nh2hrh
Hauck; Dennis J
Patent no. 20070206832
wait, wouldn't that therefore mean that software patents are like open sourcing your code and only allowing one person to sell it??? Somehow I don't think it works that openly.
Stupidity is its own reward.
And this is exactly why I don't thing software patents make any sense.
Part of the problem is that it does not cover an implementation (i.e. a solution to a problem, e.g. a paper clip is an implementation of a solution to keep two pieces of paper temporarily together without damaging them, but there are other ways to do so). Software patents cover only the idea (in this case "we can hold two pieces of paper together without damaging them"). A paperclip is not copyrightable on the other hand. Everyone could copy the paperclip but only sell it freely after the patent on this invention expired. That is a long time ago so now everyone can make paperclips.
Patents are supposed to cover solutions, not problems. An algorithm may be such a solution (e.g. an algorithm to compress audio with relative little loss: the mp3 compression), but then that is a mathematical algorithm and as such not patentable (at least under the original patent agreements - at least in the US it is patentable). This I would seriously call a matter of debate whether such an algorithm should be patentable, as it comes quite close to a technical device. The actual implementation of such a compression algorithm would fall under copyright again. So in the US, mp3 compression is patented, and on top of that implementations are copyrighted. So to use an implementation one would have to get a patent license and a copyright license (and possibly pay for that). Without the patent it would be OK to figure out how the software works (reverse engineering, another thing that was explicitly allowed and even encouraged under the original patent agreements), and then create a separate implementation by yourself. Then you create a new implementation, you have the copyright, but you may have to pay patents still nowadays in the US.
Patents, also software patents, do not contain complete source code as far as I know. These patent an idea (the "single click sales" patent to name an infamous one), just an idea, not an implementation of the idea. Even when a software patent expires there will not be any source code that suddenly appears in the public domain as code falls under copyright.
When open sourcing your software it still falls under copyright. Even if MS would open source Windows and publish the source code, that would not necessarily mean you can copy it and give it to someone else. They can tell you what you can do with it and what not. MS still has the copyright. The Linux kernel is open source and also copyrighted: by many different people, all covered by the GPL allowing copying and redistribution under certain conditions.
Of course it jives.
The "simple motion capture idea" involving "RF", you see, is to send out blasts of microwave energy. A simple stereo microphone then listens for footfalls as the participant screams and tries to get away, using the relative footfall volume and a basic anatomy model** to calculate movement vectors. Ideally, screams would also be used for positioning the head in the model, but in trials, it turned out that horrified onlookers unfortunately introduced random anomalous screams.
Anyway, it definitely does jive. In fact, it produces a great many dance moves.
** Human anatomy in v0.1, but soon to include dogs, cats, etc.
So you don't have the money to do it alone and it sounds like you don't even particularly like the idea of going it alone any more. So apply for some venture capital. If the idea is viable you'll probably get some (especially if the capital investment needed is low, which as you've said it's simple it probably is) and if it isn't (from a business point of view - it may simply not be a viable way to profit...) you won't. Sure, the venture capitalist will then pwn part of your business but if it's good enough there should be enough left for you.
I am looking for somebody with your skills to work in my company. If you work with us we will help you to move forward with your project.
Without some business savvy, you might want to team up with a business person at this point.
As crappy as it probably sounds to have someone who's spent four (BA), maybe six (MBA) years getting some degree at a school suddenly try to take a good fraction of what could potentially be your profits, teaming up with a good businessperson might offer you the best chance of actually getting somewhere with this.
For example, one avenue you could explore is possibly leasing this as a stand-alone technology to various organizations (depending on its level of development, as well as with a lot of restrictions on its usage), to receive funding for you to develop it further on your own (hence the restrictions on the lease). Another possibility is to start going for angel investors.
One thing is that it sounds like your idea is "really revolutionary", yet at the same time you really want to go at it alone. Some big ideas just can't take off without a lot of funds (venture capital), and a lot of support (the management team VC's will most likely put into place). All of these avenues and ideas, a competent MBA in Entrepreneurship should be able to help you sort through (just don't get an accountant or finance guy, lol).
Ming
An angel investor, that is! ("venture capitalist" for the uninitiated....)
It may be a bit more competitive now, due to the struggling economy, but for a long time, there have been groups and individuals out there just looking for innovative ideas to invest in. (Kind of similar to ABC's recent "Shark Tank" show, but without all the reality TV nonsense...)
You can find several of these investors on the internet via a web search. Most of them have actual business websites. (And not just some ad posted on craigslist...)
Just be sure to check references before making any deals to ensure their legitimacy.
8==8 Bones 8==8
buzz killington, but lawyer up.
if its a motion capture technology, the big 3 game systems own it outright (or think they do)
and if its a "vision" system or identified as such, be prepared to go toe to toe with robotics firms and companies like motoman, fanuc, and even Intermec.
Good people go to bed earlier.
in the title
I'd be interested to know what you've got, it sounds like you might have a slick implementation of a very well established method of RF ranging based on carrier phase. I'd consider myself an expert in location tech having enginered solutions and founded companies based on multiple technologies; RF(Ultra wide band, RSSI, Time of flight), Optical(Triangulation based, TOF using depth cameras), Structured Light and inertial based. All have their trade offs and I'm pretty convinced the silver bullet is a myth. That being said I would love to be proved wrong!
Even if you don't have a magical new fundamental tech you may still have a viable business, I would concentrace on building and selling the simplest possible proof of concept. You will find walking into a VC's office having made one sale a very different experience!
Best of luck
You have problems. If you're not a RF expert, how did you figure out what frequencies you can transmit on, and at what power levels?
By accuracy to 1mm I assume you mean that's the best relative motion you can detect-- you'd need really short microwave frequencies to detect that much absolute motion.
How do you know this hasn't been patented like 50 years ago? There are only so many ways to emit continuous or pulsed RF and measure distance-- you're either going
to measure intensity or phase or both, at one ot two or three sites, and those concepts were likely patented around 1930.
Start a consulting business removing viruses from folks' Windows boxes. That's what I did after I quit my job and pissed away my life's savings on an idea that only I thought was a good idea.
I presented your description - Simple, cheap, RF-based motion capture that is portable and accurate to 1 mm - to 6 very experienced engineers. Then I asked them what applications might fit this type of device. It was quickly obvious that each of them had a vastly different interpetation of what the device did.
Based on that, I'm pretty sure that many readers are imagining applications that are totally unrelated to the actual device.
After several years of working on this "thing", I would think that you could describe it more clearly. I would also think that you might have a few "silver bullet" applications in mind.
My advice - find a partner that knows how to communicate.
You've applied for a patent? Shame on you, you're no better than those money-grubbing corpra$hunS!!!!
You should make your money from doing speaking tours, or putting a different girl's name on the device.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It sounds like you are in a sticky situation but maybe all is not yet lost..
Firstly, as a technologist, you are focused on the technology, and it sounds like you've pretty much ignored everything else. For a tech-based business, the tech is necessary, but it's not sufficient. Most tech startups die because they don't pay attention the the things that are out of their sphere of experience, but which are critical to success. It's the WHOLE package that matters, not individual parts. It's impossible to stress this enough.
Start by buying a copy of the Beermat Entrepreneur: it's a quick read - it's not the only book of it's kind, but it hits all the important points I think you need. A key idea is that there are cornerstones to businesses. You only appear to have one cornerstone - a technology person. You need to find people to fill the other cornerstones. Go to all the local networking groups you can find. Go to conferences - look for things that are outside your comfort zone. For instance, you won't find people interested in sales at a tech meeting. Phone up all the people you've worked with, who you thought were great. Chat. Drink wine. It's not going to be quick. You need to persuade these people that if you can find funding that they'll quit their jobs and come to work with you. In return they get about 20% or the business. If you can't persuade the other cornerstones of your idea, it's a non-starter. Go find a job.
If you can persuade these people, then because you don't have any money, you and your team need to persuade either a company to buy your technology as a product/service, or persuade a business angel to fund you.
Wrt the former, you need to list all the strengths and weaknesses of your tech, and find a niche that only your tech can fulfill, where someone with lots of cash is desperate for a solution. It's the job of your marketing person to think about this. Sometimes it helps to have external consultancy because it's likely that it will not be in a niche you know exists. You'll need to validate by talking to people who are potential customers in the niche, to make sure you are targeting the right area. It's the job of your sales person to find companies that match the profile of your nice. Together you need to persuade them to buy early prototypes or a development project. Finally you will have some cash coming in. You need to use as much as you can possibly afford, to grow the business - find the next customer and deliver tech. Repeat until some time later, when you my be able to sell the company.
Or if you think funding is the best way forward, you need to build a portfolio of evidence as to why your technology is ten times better than the competing technology, and you need to show that people are desperate to buy your products, but that you need capital and the angel experience. Much of what I wrote in the previous para applies - you'll need to produce lots of convincing documentation backed by research. There's lots of advice out there about finding an angel. Don't just say yes to the first person to offer you cash: it's better to kill the idea than experience years of pain, andl then have to kill the business. Find someone you like and trust who has good experience that can be applied to your business. Again, this is unlikey to be a quick process.
Even if you don't have an angel, a mentor would be an invaluable asset, and although you probably won't have to produce documentation to the same degree, hunting for the right person is a similar process.
Given that you are out of money, unless you are able to produce an absolute kick-ass demo immediately, and can use this to persuade people, I would stop working on developing the technology, and either switch all my efforts to the other more critical tasks, or stop working on it altogether, and start looking for a job so that you can use the income from the job to fund finding the right people to have a future with.
Lastly, you are much more likely to die from lack of people knowing about your technology tha
If you had open-sourced it from the start without quitting your job, now you would have a community-improved product which you could sell to make money (open design is a good selling point, if you ask). By being all proprietary, now you don't have any money, probably will sell your idea to some big-rich company that will make zillions with it.
Talk to Bunny:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/
Bunny is the guy who did the incredible XBox reverse engineering way back when. Since then, he's gone on to work for the Chumby guys. He loves open source, is brilliant, has huge experience getting hardware built, and is a pretty cool guy.
Take a look at his blog and read about his experience in China, lining up manufacturers for the Chumby. Also, his discussion of the Shenzhen hardware/software wizards is mind-bending....
You people should encourage entrepreneurship. Not only he had a great idea, he has actually made it real and had the balls to quit his job in pursue of his dream. Way much more that many of the rest here has ever done with their lives.
You have to relax and take a step back. Get yourself out of the day-to-day in order to reevaluate your position.
I would recommend you this book:
Little Black Book of Entrepreneurship
BTW I'm not affiliated or anything. It's just is the best book about the matter I've ever read.
Go to http://www.tinaja.com/ and read all of Don's books about patents, making money on electronics and especially the Incredible Secret Money Machine. Great electrical Advice, great business advice. You might also send him an email or a phone call. Don does consulting and he may be able to help you find a buyer or angel investor or help publicize your idea so that one will find you.
If all else fails Dons books on electronics may help you overcome the problems with the RF portion of the design. Atthe very worst you'll go read about the Tinaja Quest and have a good laugh.
Link
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
and continue it in the body
Q: what's even more annoying than top-posters?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've found that it's nearly impossible to go it alone like this. Almost all success stories I've heard are in pairs. If the guy that did your prototyping is not interested in partnership, you may be SOL.
On a related note, people ask me to build their technology for them all the time, but they never provide incentive. It's always 75% to the dreamer and 25% to the worker.
I would talk to a local (ideally publicly-funded) technology incubator or small business development center. These organizations have a vested interest in seeing you take your concept to the next level, assuming that the business plan is sound. We work with TechColumbus (our local incubator) quite frequently as sources for development work. They will be the best source for lining up additional funding, talent and anything else you need.
KappaStone
What is this motion capture stuff you mentioned? Is this a 3-D motion capture system? like the kind they use with 3-D skeletal animation in movies? I'm curious as to how you managed 1mm of resolution with standard RF frequencies. A tech guy I know said that Doppler techniques couldn't achieve that kind of resolution with standard frequency bands. On a related note, you mentioned that it could be put together by a skilled hobbyist; does that imply you HAVE instructions for the public? Since you've patented it I guess it would be safe to release these to instructibles or something, but I'm not really sure how all that works. Anyway, I'd love to see the design if it is a 3-D motion capture system, I find that stuff fascinating. I would think if you made a really good AND cheap one you should just move out to hollywood and get to know some special effects guys. The people they work for have government-sized budgets nowadays. Watch the special features on Beowulf, that crap was NOT CHEAP. Best of luck to you!
your message body means something totally different as a stand alone sentence!
Gawd, I REALLY hate when people think that the "Subject" of a post == the first few words of the first sentence.
Many people here have discussed around patenting.
I don't know whether you have a patent or not (I feel you should) but even if you filed, do perform an anteriority research, ie check your idea doesn't just exist already somewhere, be it in the form of another patent or in a published paper.
Only when you have done this will you know if your idea is worth continueing. If there is an anteriority, your filing isn't worth a cent. Have the search done by serious guys, it's not this costly.
I did file various patents with various employers and alone, and believe me, when one year later the anteriority search result comes and you discover they managed to track an obscure, preferently russian or japanese text that just describes 99% of your story, it's fine to know you have another activity to continue on...
In a word: don't bet your whole future on a single new idea without an anteriority check. Not just a patent.
Herve S.
> "I've just filed for a patent on a new approach to motion capture that is simple,
> cheap, easy, accurate, and portable. It's RF-based, accurate to 1 mm
Can you...alter the mm's in certain areas?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Watch a few episodes of Shark's Tank or Dragon's Den, then you will know what to do.
TO put it simply - go to a VC. License your patent for say 10%. Sit back and collect your cheques while in the beach in Maui - let the VC worry about the infrastructure / marketing / other BS.
I ask for a several reasons because I had a similar idea in the past.
:)
What range does it work over? Tradition MoCap has a pretty good range/accuracy. How well does your 1mm accuracy stand up over say a 15m distance?
Do you have it working with say, 30 RFIDs and maintain an accuracy of 1mm ?
One of the nice things is that it doesn't have to be line of sight, how well does it work with waves travelling through clothing or other objects etc. ?
Are you operating in 1 frequency range? How do you deal with noise?
What sort of resolution can you detectors operate at?
I basically concluded to get it working reliably. Effectively at high resolution (I move my hand real fast, how many samples was that?) and accurately (using several frequencies) would cost quite a bit, be complex to write the software for and be a real pain to deploy. Several of these issues can be fixed by using active RFIDs but again pushes the cost up. But either way, good luck with it
So you've basically designed a (probably much higher freq) radio direction finder...
Engineering Entrepreneurship: Steering Start-ups to Steady-State by Wynand Coetzer
ISBN: 978-0-620-44115-5
Don't know where you'll be able to buy the book, perhaps mail the author at wcoetzer@adept.co.za
www.thebigidea.co.za/documents/Wynand_Coetzer.pdf
No, they're at best as annoying as top-posters. Nobody's *more* annoying than top-posters... Unfortunately, top-posting has even started happening on web forums too.
Find the universities that teach Enterprenuership courses. Talk to students and faculty to find out how good a given professor is and talk to him. If he good, take him as a consultant and
he might know some law professors on inventions etc., and find students to work with you and find solutions.
too!
I have been working on a Startup for five years there are a few things that I might do differently next time. Develop an Organization â" donâ(TM)t just let this happen to you. Donâ(TM)t be intimidated by the processes these are people that are going to help you make your product work in the market. Think what kind of firm you want to have. If you donâ(TM)t want a company, sell your tech to interested parties. The steps below still apply.
Write a 10 page business plan yourself.
Write a 1 page summary yourself.
Donâ(TM)t hire friends or colleges: Place an add and interview people that are interested in your venture. Choose the people you think are smarter than you are. In time you will find they are not, but people appear this way in interviews.
Hire on tech guys business dev staff is a waste until you have a product.
Develop a business development staff as a portion of a board â" again do interviews.
Have a trail period then give them stock dispensed over time: 5-10% per year over three years for key people. This allows you to work with people and if it does not work over the long term they do not walk away with 30% of your shares.
Once you have a few more people working on your project and a board of directors (advisors) then you can talk to Angels or parties interested in buying your tech.
Thatâ(TM)s the basics â" Good Luck.
No, they're at best as annoying as top-posters. Nobody's *more* annoying than top-posters... Unfortunately, top-posting has even started happening on web forums too.
Gee! I better stop doing that in most of my emails, done in the interests of the conservation of scarce electrons. Bah! Typical US extravagance.
For a short term solution, I can help you get funding that will probably take you through the next 12 to 18 months if that will help.
For a long term solution, you need to start making contacts with hardware makers and license it out. Unless you know how to run a business, you don't want to run the business. Let someone else run the business and send you a check. One key is to retain a good contract lawyer to look over your contract. A lot of companies will screw you six ways from Sunday if you let them and you can bet that they have lawyers writing their contracts for them. The better companies will fix any contract "problems" your lawyer finds.
Also, watch ABC's Shark Tank (on Sundays or on the ABC site). Watch the show to learn what the investors are looking for and why they offer the deals they offer. One of the lessons you learn each week is: do you want to make $1M or do you want to run your company into the ground. When they ask for 51% of the company they aren't being greedy (well, except for the bald guy in the center). They know that they know how to run the business in a way that will make money and that the business owner does not.
Jeff Miller
http://www.assistsolar.com
http://businesscredittips.weebly.com
Interesting, I never really 'got' the software system before.
Frankly I think my system might be a theoretical improvement. What is we could not copyright code? All that we could do was patent it. And the software patents were different, more like the patenting of physical mechanisms and the original intention of patents whereby innovation and sharing of knowledge was encouraged rather than discouraged.
On the other hand that would put the GPL and other copyrights we like in jeopardy.
Stupidity is its own reward.
for you.
I can see the fnords!
There are people who have never had a good idea in their lives, but love paperwork, chasing financing, licensing, marketing, filing reports with the various governments... find one (with some track record of success, please), even marry one (I did), but do not under any pressure try to do it yourself. You will not only be bad at it, you will hate, despise, abhor, it.
You have an idea and a patent, get a business person to take it from here. The lowest hassle path is licensing, let someone else figure out how to use, make, and market you gadget. And often surprise, someone else will find a use you never dreamed of, and pay you money with little effort on your part.
The secret of life seems to be to find a way to make enough money to be comfortable while doing something fun. And unless your idea of fun is constant non-creative wading through the swamps of paperwork and regulations business has become, let someone else do the nasty part. And by licensing you get a very high $/pain ratio. You also have time to work on the next big idea, instead of going to meeting.
You need to go on "The Lions Den"! ("its a show on BBC look it up, yes there are other channels besides Sci-Fi) you'll be right after the guy with the little floaty thing that helps toddlers learn to use the toilet!