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Ask Slashdot: What Is the Best Way To Approach Big Companies With Your Product?
New submitter ily2013 writes: My family have invented a product that will prevent electrical related fires for homes and businesses. A patent has been filed and approved worldwide, which includes the United States. Now I would like to take this product, and ask Apple/Microsoft/Big vendors to see if they would be willing to integrate our product into their existing and future products, because we believe the product will truly change the way safety of electric/electrical devices are viewed. What is the best way to approach this? Should I start by cold-calling Apple/Microsoft/Big vendors? or send them a mail/email?
A patent has been filed and approved worldwide, which includes the United States
Post a link to the patent application or design docs since it is already protected under the patent approval process and I'll tell you why it's a really fucking dumb idea.
Insurers are the *last* people who want to see global risk diminish. Their business model is to figure out how much they'll have to pay out & mark that up by x%. The last thing they want is to have claims go down, since that would eventually cause the industry to reduce premiums, thus reducing the $ profit. Notice the % stays the same, but the $ go down.
Sometimes insurance companies will offer you ways to reduce risk, but that's either PR spin or they figure they can gain a short-term advantage over their competitors. In the long term, they love risk as long as the field is level for all the insurers.
Awww how cute. You think writing software is real engineering.
Fires from the products you mentioned are pretty rare compared to say space heaters, stoves, toaster ovens etc.
This!
You're just knocking on doors asking companies to expose themselves to lawsuits for the dubious reward of paying you to sit on your ass and do nothing while they dump buckets of money into turning your patent into a product. Not attractive.
If you want a big company to pay for your idea, start a business. Succeed with your idea. Then get your company bought out. You'll get money for effort. Y'know, money you deserve, for putting in the effort.
You either need to find an entrepreneur or be an entrepreneur. Seriously, the hard work is just getting started. You may have a technology, but you don't have a product, a market, a business model, or a customer. So start learning about how you build companies. There are plenty of online classes or books at the library. And forget about starting with big companies just because they are big, you need to find the companies that are hurting the most from the problem you are solving - electrical fires.