need advice on how to create a product

[jamesgatz]

Hey, I just had a really sick idea for a product. The problem is that it is really complicated lets say on the level of a printer. How can I make such a product reality? I do not have any knowledge about the technical aspects of it I just think the thing it would do would be sick. Looking for help from people who where in the same situation.

 

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[fastlane_dad]

Hey, I just had a really sick idea for a product. The problem is that it is really complicated lets say on the level of a printer. How can I make such a product reality? I do not have any knowledge about the technical aspects of it I just think the thing it would do would be sick. Looking for help from people who where in the same situation.

What you are describing sounds like a VERY intense labor of not only time but MONEY. Do you have excessive amounts of both to commit to this cause?

Why are you even developing this in the first place? 'The thing it would do would be sick' is not a reason to pursue something.

If you are MORE serious about this then a passing whim - you need to start thinking more seriously and even look into investors that can help you achieve this. But you got a LOT more thinking and planning to do before that can be achieved.

Good Luck and let us know which way your ideas grow.

 

[jamesgatz]

What you are describing sounds like a VERY intense labor of not only time but MONEY. Do you have excessive amounts of both to commit to this cause?

Why are you even developing this in the first place? 'The thing it would do would be sick' is not a reason to pursue something.

If you are MORE serious about this then a passing whim - you need to start thinking more seriously and even look into investors that can help you achieve this. But you got a LOT more thinking and planning to do before that can be achieved.

Good Luck and let us know which way your ideas grow.

Thank you. „The thing it would do would be sick“ is of course a really simple way to describe the motive but I truly believe if the marketing would be good and people would try the product it would revolutionize a huge problem of the average household. It would be an insanely useful product. The problem is I don‘t know if it is even possible to create it, what person has the specific knowledge to create such a thing and where to start. I couldn‘t even make a photoshop of how it should look since I don‘t know how big such a thing should be how it would look etc. etc. Well the whole thing feels like a huge wall in my brain rn. I think I will need to start do one thing at a time to build a ladder step by step. Really appreciative of how helpful and supportive this forum is though.

 

[Subsonic]

Thank you. „The thing it would do would be sick“ is of course a really simple way to describe the motive but I truly believe if the marketing would be good and people would try the product it would revolutionize a huge problem of the average household. It would be an insanely useful product. The problem is I don‘t know if it is even possible to create it, what person has the specific knowledge to create such a thing and where to start. I couldn‘t even make a photoshop of how it should look since I don‘t know how big such a thing should be how it would look etc. etc. Well the whole thing feels like a huge wall in my brain rn. I think I will need to start do one thing at a time to build a ladder step by step. Really appreciative of how helpful and supportive this forum is though.

I can draw the comparison to songwriting (since I am really good at that).
There I went and re-recorded a solo section from a song I liked from scratch (with all the backing tracks and whatnot). This taught me a lot about the process and solo. The next step was to analyze on a technical and theoretical level why it sounds good.


You could go and disassemble a machine (roughly)similar to what you plan to make and then reassemble it. That should give you a better understanding of everything.

Another thing to do is make the problem so specific that you can find a solution. Currently your problem is that you don't know how to create a super new machine.
A more detailed problem could be "Gee I don't know how to create a laser that can Gather data from a simple source".

 

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[David4431]

There's a huge chasm between just developing a product and running a business selling that product. It's even more difficult for you because it doesn't seem like you have any idea of how to develop it or if there's even any market demand for it.

In my opinion, you have roughly 2 options: (1) you bring it to market yourself... and spend years to develop all the necessary skills, assets, contacts, product/market insights, etc. or (2) you find an experienced partner of some sort and work out a deal with them to bring your idea to market. The experienced partner is likely to be a company producing products in the same niche as whatever the product you want to develop is in. You'll have to network and develop industry contacts to try and get a meeting with a decision maker that you can pitch your product idea to.

It's a long road either way but if you think your product idea is great then go for it! You should check out the story of James Dyson and how he developed the Dyson vacuum cleaner and built the Dyson company to what it is today. Good luck!

 

[J_007]

Hey, I just had a really sick idea for a product. The problem is that it is really complicated lets say on the level of a printer. How can I make such a product reality? I do not have any knowledge about the technical aspects of it I just think the thing it would do would be sick. Looking for help from people who where in the same situation.

is the product a machine? Can you describe more about the functions it needs to fullfill?

 

[Shono]

Hey, I just had a really sick idea for a product. The problem is that it is really complicated lets say on the level of a printer. How can I make such a product reality? I do not have any knowledge about the technical aspects of it I just think the thing it would do would be sick. Looking for help from people who where in the same situation.

hey james amigo, what is the product? DM me and i will see if i can help

 

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[jamesgatz]

is the product a machine? Can you describe more about the functions it needs to fullfill?

Well what I basically had in mind was following: Today I could finally get myself to organize all the important documents I have laying around. Documents for taxes, health, finances etc. Things you will definitely need at some point. I sorted them and put them into folders. It took hours and it was frustrating. And if I will ever need again which I probably will, it will still take me some time to find one specific sheet of paper again. This is not only a problem I suffer from but a millions of other people suffer from as well. So I thought to myself what if there was a way to make this process easier and also solve the problem of finding the documents again. My solution would be a box. The box has a slit where you can put in a sheet of paper. The box then sucks this document inside and a pop up on the connected app would ask you to give a name to this sheet of paper. You can give it a name and organize it further by per example putting it into a specific folder on your phone. The box then stores the piece of paper. Now if you ever need this document again you can just go to the app, choose the document and the box will instantly give it out to you. If you forgot where you stored it you can search for the name or if you know when you stored it you can search it by filters. This would save a lot of space since you eliminate the need of folders, you wouldn't loose any documents and storing them and searching them would be done in a matter of seconds. But as you can imagine it would be hard to create a box which can store paper on little space, but still manage to remember where a specific sheet is and manage to somehow only "grab" this sheet. I would call this box the "DocuMind". But yeah as you probably realized by now this box would be quite hard and costy to create.

 

[jamesgatz]

hey james amigo, what is the product? DM me and i will see if i can help

answered it in a answer down below. Dk if it is even possible. If you have any ressources or knowledge in this field lmk

 

[J_007]

Well what I basically had in mind was following: Today I could finally get myself to organize all the important documents I have laying around. Documents for taxes, health, finances etc. Things you will definitely need at some point. I sorted them and put them into folders. It took hours and it was frustrating. And if I will ever need again which I probably will, it will still take me some time to find one specific sheet of paper again. This is not only a problem I suffer from but a millions of other people suffer from as well. So I thought to myself what if there was a way to make this process easier and also solve the problem of finding the documents again. My solution would be a box. The box has a slit where you can put in a sheet of paper. The box then sucks this document inside and a pop up on the connected app would ask you to give a name to this sheet of paper. You can give it a name and organize it further by per example putting it into a specific folder on your phone. The box then stores the piece of paper. Now if you ever need this document again you can just go to the app, choose the document and the box will instantly give it out to you. If you forgot where you stored it you can search for the name or if you know when you stored it you can search it by filters. This would save a lot of space since you eliminate the need of folders, you wouldn't loose any documents and storing them and searching them would be done in a matter of seconds. But as you can imagine it would be hard to create a box which can store paper on little space, but still manage to remember where a specific sheet is and manage to somehow only "grab" this sheet. I would call this box the "DocuMind". But yeah as you probably realized by now this box would be quite hard and costy to create.

There are some solutions to digitize paper documents. An example is Adobescanner. Simple Ways to Digitize Paper Documents

yet, I couldn't find solutions where the document is also stored physically in a box and retrievable by an app.

I did find this though. Automated File Storage and Document Management | Kardex
Look at the Kardex Megamat 115/120.

Maybe they know more about the kind of solution you're looking for.

Hopefully you can do something with this.

 

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[Xeon]

Well what I basically had in mind was following: Today I could finally get myself to organize all the important documents I have laying around. Documents for taxes, health, finances etc. Things you will definitely need at some point. I sorted them and put them into folders. It took hours and it was frustrating. And if I will ever need again which I probably will, it will still take me some time to find one specific sheet of paper again. This is not only a problem I suffer from but a millions of other people suffer from as well. So I thought to myself what if there was a way to make this process easier and also solve the problem of finding the documents again. My solution would be a box. The box has a slit where you can put in a sheet of paper. The box then sucks this document inside and a pop up on the connected app would ask you to give a name to this sheet of paper. You can give it a name and organize it further by per example putting it into a specific folder on your phone. The box then stores the piece of paper. Now if you ever need this document again you can just go to the app, choose the document and the box will instantly give it out to you. If you forgot where you stored it you can search for the name or if you know when you stored it you can search it by filters. This would save a lot of space since you eliminate the need of folders, you wouldn't loose any documents and storing them and searching them would be done in a matter of seconds. But as you can imagine it would be hard to create a box which can store paper on little space, but still manage to remember where a specific sheet is and manage to somehow only "grab" this sheet. I would call this box the "DocuMind". But yeah as you probably realized by now this box would be quite hard and costy to create.

1) Not only would it be costly to create, but even assuming you got this made somehow, the retail price is going to be unaffordable for most but the richest. Who would the target audience be? Offices and government services? If so, the box would need to be extremely gigantic (probably around the size of giant data centers) to host all that documents. As for individual use, I doubt most people have that much documents they need to store and organize in a machine like this.

2) Technicality wise, how much papers can the box store before it runs out of space?

3) It's a hassle to go through so many loops to achieve what can be done with filing organizers/systems which is far cheaper and more convenient, and there's no need for learning curve.

4) Across the world, paper use is on a gradual decline if I'm not wrong. Documents are getting digitized. By the time you finish manufacturing this product, this would be even more obvious especially with the upcoming younger generation. By then, who do you sell this box to?

5) If the box breaks down or doesn't work, who will be servicing it? Will you hire a team of trained staff? What about international customers?

6) To create such a thing, your best path is probably to go to university to get a degree in mechatronics or similar subjects, then find investors after you're out, and with all the time spent, it would lead to the issue in 4).

 

[jamesgatz]

1) Not only would it be costly to create, but even assuming you got this made somehow, the retail price is going to be unaffordable for most but the richest. Who would the target audience be? Offices and government services? If so, the box would need to be extremely gigantic (probably around the size of giant data centers) to host all that documents. As for individual use, I doubt most people have that much documents they need to store and organize in a machine like this.

2) Technicality wise, how much papers can the box store before it runs out of space?

3) It's a hassle to go through so many loops to achieve what can be done with filing organizers/systems which is far cheaper and more convenient, and there's no need for learning curve.

4) Across the world, paper use is on a gradual decline if I'm not wrong. Documents are getting digitized. By the time you finish manufacturing this product, this would be even more obvious especially with the upcoming younger generation. By then, who do you sell this box to?

5) If the box breaks down or doesn't work, who will be servicing it? Will you hire a team of trained staff? What about international customers?

6) To create such a thing, your best path is probably to go to university to get a degree in mechatronics or similar subjects, then find investors after you're out, and with all the time spent, it would lead to the issue in 4).

I guess thats true the product would probably cost a lot in retail, and thanks to The Office I learned that the paper industry is a dying industry

 

[techvx]

4) Across the world, paper use is on a gradual decline if I'm not wrong. Documents are getting digitized. By the time you finish manufacturing this product, this would be even more obvious especially with the upcoming younger generation. By then, who do you sell this box to?

That would be my own main concern as well.

Before troubling yourself with the "how" and the exact mechanics of manufacturing a product of this kind, you're better off starting with a series of "what"s to cover the bases. Namely:

- what's the TAM / total addressable market? How many people (1) feel just as frustrated and horrified by the overall document filing and retrieval process, (2) see the point in buying a solution of your kind, and (3) are financially qualified to opt in for that purchase?

- what will most likely happen to that market going forward, in 5, 10, 25 years from now?

- what is your ICP / ideal customer profile?

- what are the skills, expertise, and industry knowledge required to develop a prototype?

- what are the existing alternatives to your offering available, and what would it take to beat your competition at their own game?

- what would the shortest path to your first 1, 10, 100, 1000+ customers would look like?

- what sort of maintenance, support, technical assistance, and parts replacement service would have to be included as a part of your overall business model for people to trust and rely on you long-term?

- what kind of variables and changes in the overall industry would bankrupt you in the blink of an eye? (hint: ubiquitous digitalization, as mentioned by Xeon, most definitely would)

- what's your defensibility strategy?

- what's your go-to-market approach?

- what's your exit strategy?

- what's the chance of you still being committed to the pursuit of it all, if it turns out that to bring your "sick" idea to life would mean investing 100 times as much effort as you wish it took?

Reality check: there are no "sick" products. The language of business is spoken in nouns and numbers. Ex: 1'000'000 people in the US are wasting 1000 hours a year on organizing, sorting, and finding the right docs in their random piles. That's a 1000 hours * $33 (average hourly earnings) = $33k lost per year on activity that is purely bureaucratic and does nothing for the business' bottom line.

Your product can reduce the number of those hours by 25/50/90%, saving people $8.25k / $16.5k / $29.7k respectively. More time spent innovating, creating, selling. Less meaningless paperwork rut, seeping life force out of people.

Sell your box for $1k to the 1m people, get $1b in revenue over the lifespan of your operations.

If you have no sense of your numbers, you have no sense of your business - and with only a hunch of a "sick" idea you'll just end up wasting a bunch of time and effort on a concept that might be doomed from the very beginning.

 

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[jamesgatz]

That would be my own main concern as well.

Before troubling yourself with the "how" and the exact mechanics of manufacturing a product of this kind, you're better off starting with a series of "what"s to cover the bases. Namely:

- what's the TAM / total addressable market? How many people (1) feel just as frustrated and horrified by the overall document filing and retrieval process, (2) see the point in buying a solution of your kind, and (3) are financially qualified to opt in for that purchase?

- what will most likely happen to that market going forward, in 5, 10, 25 years from now?

- what is your ICP / ideal customer profile?

- what are the skills, expertise, and industry knowledge required to develop a prototype?

- what are the existing alternatives to your offering available, and what would it take to beat your competition at their own game?

- what would the shortest path to your first 1, 10, 100, 1000+ customers would look like?

- what sort of maintenance, support, technical assistance, and parts replacement service would have to be included as a part of your overall business model for people to trust and rely on you long-term?

- what kind of variables and changes in the overall industry would bankrupt you in the blink of an eye? (hint: ubiquitous digitalization, as mentioned by Xeon, most definitely would)

- what's your defensibility strategy?

- what's your go-to-market approach?

- what's your exit strategy?

- what's the chance of you still being committed to the pursuit of it all, if it turns out that to bring your "sick" idea to life would mean investing 100 times as much effort as you wish it took?

Reality check: there are no "sick" products. The language of business is spoken in nouns and numbers. Ex: 1'000'000 people in the US are wasting 1000 hours a year on organizing, sorting, and finding the right docs in their random piles. That's a 1000 hours * $33 (average hourly earnings) = $33k lost per year on activity that is purely bureaucratic and does nothing for the business' bottom line.

Your product can reduce the number of those hours by 25/50/90%, saving people $8.25k / $16.5k / $29.7k respectively. More time spent innovating, creating, selling. Less meaningless paperwork rut, seeping life force out of people.

Sell your box for $1k to the 1m people, get $1b in revenue over the lifespan of your operations.

If you have no sense of your numbers, you have no sense of your business - and with only a hunch of a "sick" idea you'll just end up wasting a bunch of time and effort on a concept that might be doomed from the very beginning.

it amazes me how helpful people are on this forum. Yes you are right. I think it is a big problem which concerns the average household, but I probably went with the wrong solution. i think the better solution would be a kind of printer which scans the document, and then shredds it. It then gets to the app you can store it in the app and all of the above. then when you need it you can simply print it with one click or if you don't need it printed you have all the documents stored online where you can look at them. But some documents can't be shredded so again the solution wouldn't fulfill all the needs. I think this was a bigger problem 20 years ago, so probably I am just trying to find a solution for a problem that is dying anyways.

 

[Xeon]

That would be my own main concern as well.

Before troubling yourself with the "how" and the exact mechanics of manufacturing a product of this kind, you're better off starting with a series of "what"s to cover the bases. Namely:

- what's the TAM / total addressable market? How many people (1) feel just as frustrated and horrified by the overall document filing and retrieval process, (2) see the point in buying a solution of your kind, and (3) are financially qualified to opt in for that purchase?

- what will most likely happen to that market going forward, in 5, 10, 25 years from now?

- what is your ICP / ideal customer profile?

- what are the skills, expertise, and industry knowledge required to develop a prototype?

- what are the existing alternatives to your offering available, and what would it take to beat your competition at their own game?

- what would the shortest path to your first 1, 10, 100, 1000+ customers would look like?

- what sort of maintenance, support, technical assistance, and parts replacement service would have to be included as a part of your overall business model for people to trust and rely on you long-term?

- what kind of variables and changes in the overall industry would bankrupt you in the blink of an eye? (hint: ubiquitous digitalization, as mentioned by Xeon, most definitely would)

- what's your defensibility strategy?

- what's your go-to-market approach?

- what's your exit strategy?

- what's the chance of you still being committed to the pursuit of it all, if it turns out that to bring your "sick" idea to life would mean investing 100 times as much effort as you wish it took?

Reality check: there are no "sick" products. The language of business is spoken in nouns and numbers. Ex: 1'000'000 people in the US are wasting 1000 hours a year on organizing, sorting, and finding the right docs in their random piles. That's a 1000 hours * $33 (average hourly earnings) = $33k lost per year on activity that is purely bureaucratic and does nothing for the business' bottom line.

Your product can reduce the number of those hours by 25/50/90%, saving people $8.25k / $16.5k / $29.7k respectively. More time spent innovating, creating, selling. Less meaningless paperwork rut, seeping life force out of people.

Sell your box for $1k to the 1m people, get $1b in revenue over the lifespan of your operations.

If you have no sense of your numbers, you have no sense of your business - and with only a hunch of a "sick" idea you'll just end up wasting a bunch of time and effort on a concept that might be doomed from the very beginning.

I love your posts including the one on content creation, so I went to check your profile and didn't find any intro from you. What's your background? You obviously know a lot and I wouldn't be surprised if you're the owner of GymShark or Mark Cuban spending his leisure time here.

 

[J_007]

Hey, I just had a really sick idea for a product. The problem is that it is really complicated lets say on the level of a printer. How can I make such a product reality? I do not have any knowledge about the technical aspects of it I just think the thing it would do would be sick. Looking for help from people who where in the same situation.

In the Great Rat Race Escape MJ talks about The Specialized-Unit Strategy (ch.18) and The Hardline Strategy (ch.43) to which your product relates to. Yet, I think it would be better to focus on Value Skew (ch.32) instead. Also, in The Expected Value Strategy (ch. 56) he talks about matching your (potential) skills with the largest potential outcome.

 

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[Panos Daras]

Hey, I just had a really sick idea for a product. The problem is that it is really complicated lets say on the level of a printer. How can I make such a product reality? I do not have any knowledge about the technical aspects of it I just think the thing it would do would be sick. Looking for help from people who where in the same situation.

I really feel you! I was on the same train half a year ago just to develop something simple. You can hire designers from Fiverr and Upwork that can help you with more affordable prices. Then you can search for factories to produce it in China through Alibaba or Bing AI search. In order to patent it, start with the site of EUIPO. Gods speed!

 

[Niptuck MD]

if the marketing would be good and people would try the product it would revolutionize a huge problem of the average household.

why would anyone WAnt to try your product newbie?



not trying to be crass just thinking as a perspective buyer. you need to delve into specifics when it comes to new product development. if you need any help shoot me a DM

 

[jamesgatz]

why would anyone WAnt to try your product newbie?



not trying to be crass just thinking as a perspective buyer. you need to delve into specifics when it comes to new product development. if you need any help shoot me

why would anyone WAnt to try your product newbie?



not trying to be crass just thinking as a perspective buyer. you need to delve into specifics when it comes to new product development. if you need any help shoot me a DM

thanks for the offer, will get back to it.

 

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[AusAppDev]

I think this highlights a point, to talk to as many people as possible to get feedback and darts thrown at ideas as early as possible. Great to see the various perspectives that can save so much time.

 

[techvx]

i think the better solution would be a kind of printer which scans the document, and then shredds it.

Thinking won't get you a viable business - researching, collecting data, and testing your hypotheses will. Right now you only have an extremely abstract, vague, and blurry concept in mind. Before you get any chance to turn into anything tangible, you've got to gather actual facts to form a perfectly clear and cohesive picture of your final deliverable.

There is a reason why so many folks recommend to get a basic landing page with a few of the your final product's best features, benefits, and advantages in mind. You've got to get a sense of whether the people will be there to buy it once you make it - and how many of them will be willing and ready to part with their cash to buy your brand new thing.

An alternative would be to get physically in front of the people you're convinced have the same issue as you do, spell out the specifics of the solution you intend to give them, then ask them to pay $X - and gauge their reaction. If the solution sparks a flame and you sense them being ready for that transaction - you're onto something. If they're only able to come forward with some variation of "I'm good" or "I'm sure there's a way to get around it for free", look for another idea.

I love your posts including the one on content creation, so I went to check your profile and didn't find any intro from you. What's your background? You obviously know a lot and I wouldn't be surprised if you're the owner of GymShark or Mark Cuban spending his leisure time here.

Just pointing out the obvious, in my mind. Few years of experience in a professional setting of businesses being wholly consumed with extorting as much cash out of the unfortunate people who get the misfortune of being their clients tends to open your eyes quite a bit. I might unroll a progress thread of my own with a few points about my background later on. Helping people and pointing out the ways, by the means of which they're extremely likely to lose a bunch of time and money, is enough for now. I'll let you know once my net worth is twice their both combined, though - promise.

 

[wade1mil]

Well what I basically had in mind was following: Today I could finally get myself to organize all the important documents I have laying around. Documents for taxes, health, finances etc. Things you will definitely need at some point. I sorted them and put them into folders. It took hours and it was frustrating. And if I will ever need again which I probably will, it will still take me some time to find one specific sheet of paper again. This is not only a problem I suffer from but a millions of other people suffer from as well. So I thought to myself what if there was a way to make this process easier and also solve the problem of finding the documents again. My solution would be a box. The box has a slit where you can put in a sheet of paper. The box then sucks this document inside and a pop up on the connected app would ask you to give a name to this sheet of paper. You can give it a name and organize it further by per example putting it into a specific folder on your phone. The box then stores the piece of paper. Now if you ever need this document again you can just go to the app, choose the document and the box will instantly give it out to you. If you forgot where you stored it you can search for the name or if you know when you stored it you can search it by filters. This would save a lot of space since you eliminate the need of folders, you wouldn't loose any documents and storing them and searching them would be done in a matter of seconds. But as you can imagine it would be hard to create a box which can store paper on little space, but still manage to remember where a specific sheet is and manage to somehow only "grab" this sheet. I would call this box the "DocuMind". But yeah as you probably realized by now this box would be quite hard and costy to create.

So you want to create Carvana box for physical documents and have it index the data so it's searchable? It's basically turning physical paper into a hard drive. It would mostly be software with a mechanical part that software controls. They have websites that do this, but I can see how it would be useful to some people.

 

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[EngineerThis]

Hey, I just had a really sick idea for a product. The problem is that it is really complicated lets say on the level of a printer. How can I make such a product reality? I do not have any knowledge about the technical aspects of it I just think the thing it would do would be sick. Looking for help from people who where in the same situation.

Ask and you shall receive...

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