“When inventing a new product BEWARE of putting it on Kickstarter to raise money. It will end up on Alibaba being sold on Shopify sites by the time you raise $20k. Beating you to market by a year…Patent pending be damned.”
A patent is one thing, but distribution is EVERYTHING.
Having worked in the ‘entrepreneurial’ space, I have seen a lot of people who have really bought into this whole ‘all you need is a great idea’ trope.
It’s really not true. Indicators of successful business ventures are nearly always based on the management team in the start-up having strong industry experience and networks, relevant to their idea. Really, the ‘good’ idea is secondary at best.
Not to mention that legal rights are only as valuable as your ability to enforce them. Unless you can afford to pay lawyers to chase down all your copycat competition, the patent isn’t really worth much.
There is an endless line of intellectual property lawyers that are happy to take a chunk of money from these would-be entrepreneurs to file their patents for them, all the while patting them on the back about how great an idea it is.
Business is like a game of chess.
King is execution
Queen is marketing
Bishop is customer service
Rook is product
Knight is employees
Pawns are ideas.
Execution must be first priority, marketing is your most powerful tool, customer service, product, and employees are all important, and ideas are valuable, but can not accomplish much on their own.