How do you get your idea to a company?

Question

I have lots of million dollar ideas, and I'm not sure how to get them where they should be. I'm not looking to start a company, just sell my ideas to companies who will profit from them.

These are ideas for new products that will make life easier.

Answer 1

Hey Buddy,

IF YOU JUST NEED LINKS GO TO THE "SOURCE" SECTION AT THE BOTTOM

--- Your Idea ---

Ideas have no worth if you cannot prove them. You can also have an idea of having a multi-billion dollar resort in Mars, but people would take it as Joke. Only if you show how profitable it is - then you can get a sponsor or a buyer of an idea.

Yes, I understand you dont want to start a company, but you would have to indulge yourself and forsee that if any company likes your idea, they would want your involvment with it. Probably as MD, or Project Manager or whaterver post - but they would want to have you on their board.

--- Copyrighting ---

Mate, you cant patent an idea, so you have to copyright it. All you do if you live in UK, US, Canada, or Western Europe or Japan + Australia, that put your idea in a Word File, and post it to yourself. You should email one to yourself as well. Just add that (c) mark at the bottom, and the date. Dont open the post and it would be automatically registered as a CopyRight.

--- Getting it to a company ---

Lets, talk about how to get the idea to a company or an organisation.

It is often seen, and experianced that if you have an idea that, is profitable, you are more likely to get funding / sponsorship / buyer as company who has very enthusiastic directors and a visionary boss who belives in introducing innovations.

I will tell you my life example, I had an idea, of having a Hydro-Electricity Plant in India, where the left our Hydro (Water) is used in Bottling and other purposes. I after few procedures (which I will list below), went to a multimillionaire (visionary) and sold it for $200,000. Now you might think I am lucky, but there are lots of things that they expect from you before just saying, "Hey lets do a Hydel Plant in India and reuse the water". We will go in that detail later on, but lets see which companies to target.

Target companies like Virgin, Easy Jet, Google, Apple, YouTube, etc. Now you will see these companies in past have supported ideas and vision and made them happen. It is not because these companies have better employees then others, but it is because that there is one (or a group) of founders for these companies. They have a "BOSS", compared to companies like HP, IBM, RollceRoyce, where there are board of director who select one CEO and Chairman. You are more likeley to get funding for your aviation project from Virgin then from British Airways, because the owner is (almost) ONE, he / she is the BOSS and wants to develop the company on and on and belives in ideas and vision. Whereas in British Airways, you have to go through 100s of procedures and techniques to convice that you have an idea. Or you might find that they dont have a department or procedure to accept your idea directly - like Easy Jet, Virgin and other innovative companies would do.

--- Preparing Your Idea ---
Lets now talk about "How to prepare your Idea and make it tangible". As I said earlier that you cant walk in and say "Hey I have got an Idea", what you need to do is work on it (without opening a company, ofcourse).

I will give you two examples for this:
1) The first example is me, myself. Before selling my idea (of Hydel Project), I went to India - did all the research about it - studied Hydel Law, and foreign investments, etc. What I found was a USP (Unique Selling Point) for my idea, and that was that every HYDEL Project is 80% funded by Govt, and the income is guaranteed by the Govt itself.

What you have to do is get a Unique Selling Point for your idea. Then I went on and found a suitable management team (ex-director of electricity board, retired chairman of hydro power projects in India, etc), it took me 2 months to convince them and to agree with them on their terms. Remeber, to look for retired people, they are always willing to join projects and they have better CV (experiance and achievements) then others.

I know had to work on the project and its feasbility as I now have an idea, its USP (unique selling point), its legal procedures, rough estimates and a management team that can work if funding is provided.

What do I need now? To present my idea to suitable buyer.
But before do that, lets see one more example:

2) A guy called Ehsan, had a dream to build a "Financial City" where all the investment banks in the world have their office, and all the financial companies have their interest.

He prepared people and went to all the financial companies with his project (I will emphasis on this in next point), and got a letter from them that these companies would be interested to have their offices in the future "Financial City" if they build one.

Next that he had to do, is contact Bahrain's top authorities, from which one minister / investor bought huge land around the required area, and wanted to buy the project all together. The project would be finished in 2015 - and Ehsan is now playing with his millions - as he got cash and equity share for his idea.

Ok, now its time to discuss "How to Present your Idea"...

This is the toughest part. After selecting about 10 potential clients for your idea. You need to put the idea in a piece of paper that is presentable.

Now, you dont need to do all of this yourself. You have already made some arrangement with all the retired directors, and employees, who you want to involve in the management team. With their help and an learning-account (who wont charge you more than £150 or $300), you can produce a business plan. Now this plan does not have to be more than 30 pages, and should include cash-flow analysis, PNL (Profit and Loss for Cast), and must include details in series like [Introduction, Executive Summary, Management Team, Project Profile, Feasibility Report, Cash Flow, PNL, Projections and Investment Req, Project Details, Marketing, Employment and Staffing, Issues (like social, environmental, etc) USP, Brief and Conclusion and Bibliography (or in other words you need to validate your facts)].

After you do this, you have to prepare a presentation on the project, which would have all these details in a limited format.

This is what you will present to your investors / buyers and when they ask for further details you give your Business Plan.

--- Contacting Them ---

- Many of these would be availble on companies website (as I have listed below)

- Try BVCA, and Independent Angles

- Make sure at the time of presentation you take your management team with you

- Wear always Black-Suit and Socks always "Black".

- Try avoiding Ties. But your management team should have ties.

--- Lists ---
I am providing sites where you can find people who would buy your developed-ideas and who would listen to you. There are brokers available for this in UK, Canada, US and Japan. So hire one if your direct try fails.

It is a common perception that Angels and VCs always put money into your ideas, but they also buy your ideas - so if you are tired contacting direct employers then goto these guys.


PS: I am not providing direct contacts that I have - as it wont be good to give out email addresses and phone numbers of executives in here. Email me if you require them.

Answer 2

I am so glad that this is a featured question.
I will be watching it very closely for information.

I have so many ideas, and one at least
is a million dollar idea. I would love to
have the company pay me for it. But
with my luck it would just be some lazy
lunkhead that I would talk to - sitting at
his desk between coffee breaks
and watching the clock.

I know somebody else that sent
a letter with an excellent idea to
a company. Never heard from
them again! It is infuriating.
They could at least pass the
letter on till it got to the right
person! (and not the lunkhead!)

I hope they have real departments
for ideas and inventions, and they
will take us seriously and sift
through all the ideas and pay
for the good ones!

Ideally, they would have some
sort of contract that would give
a percentage to the inventor.
It would be agreeable to both
the company and the inventor.

Corporations, companies, etc.,
have no clue the well in good
ideas they are not tapped into,
because either they do not
have the correct department to
handle the ideas, or they do not
advertise it or make it readily
available to the general public.

The failure-oriented business
would just be saying, "We have
PLENTY of ideas right here inside
our own company -
don't need any help!"

In a perfect world, we could
give and receive, but right now
it does not seem possible!

I can tell you one thing for sure -
Do NOT call one of those
1800-idea numbers.
I did that and - you know the
new paint cans that pour
without dripping?.......

I couldn't afford to do the
prototype and the up front money.

But "just tell me your idea -
send it to me and at the same
time send it to yourself and
that way you can prove it is
your idea."

I sent it in good faith. I still
have the sealed envelope that
I mailed to myself.

They have the no spill paint lid -
I have the shaft.

Good luck to you.

Answer 3

Most companies don't want to hear them and I agree I don't either.
Ideas are not worth much at all. I have a lot of people who come up with ideas all the time. You'd need to develop the idea into a working product. Ideas are a dime a dozen, ideas that are developed are worth something.

Answer 4

how about you could work somewere and you could be like a consultant for things that could make these companys better but instead of people taking your ideas and getting promoted and you getting fired maybee by you being a consultant you could make some improvements in these companys cause maybee you have a gift and you might have given up so you know what dont git discouraged if you been beatin down bad if you know in your heart that you been doing the right thing and only you know best what you want instead of you leaving your research to other people so pick your self up out of any krap those nay sayers and there discourageing your every bright idea i bless you three times that you can git this done cause this is what i should be telling to me

Answer 5

Not to rain on your parade but not every idea you think is a million dollar idea really is one. You need to test the idea with hypotheses and determine how bullet proof it is. You also need to determine how the company you want to sell it to is going to make money from it. You might think it'd be great to create a gadget that will take, for example, UPC symbols from food packages and automatically determine caloric and nutritional so you can count calories on a diet (free idea for you all).

Just remember. An idea is worthless. No one is going to pay you cash for an idea (at least no one scrupulous). You need to either create the product or patent it. The latter is an actual asset you can sell or license (I would license it but companies would usually like to just buy it...depends on the business). The former is a sort of gray area as you have a working prototype but you still don't have much to protect yourself.

Also, be sure your idea really is unique. Often times, there is some patent out there for some thing close or similar enough that if you get someone serious enough to buy and they do due diligence, they might find the patent and say the deal's off.

Your best bet in protecting yourself with your idea is to really keep it underwraps until you can protect it some way, like with a patent.

As far as who to talk to at a company if you want to try to sell an idea/product to:

- if your product/idea is new to them (i.e. they haven't sold something like that before), then look for a VP of Business Development, a product manager or, worse case, the office of a non-sales exec (like the CEO, COO, sometimes even the CFO).

- if your product/idea is NOT new to them and is something that fits their current product line, look for a division head or product manager.

Again, always protect your idea. Nothing really protects it beyond secrecy or a legal document like a patent.

Some URLS:

U.S Patent and Trademark Office (patent area)
http://www.uspto.gov/main/patents.htm

Wikipedia on patents in the US
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_patent


There really is a lot you can discuss related to this so I did what I could but it's not in anyway complete.

Answer 6

You need to copyright your own ideas by producting a portfolio for them. Why can't you do it yourself. Why let a billion dollar company get the majority of the money. Look at the two who just sold youtube to google..

Take some business courses in college if you need help. Have a degree in Buisness will help get those you need's attention

Answer 7

What kind of idea for what kind of company? There would be varying avenues. But in a broad sense: Check the co.'s website; See if they have a contact person that could answer such a question; Send the proposal to the head of the department under which your idea would fall; Send it to the President

Answer 8

Now, you dont need to do all of this yourself. You have already made some arrangement with all the retired directors, and employees, who you want to involve in the management team. With their help and an learning-account (who wont charge you more than £150 or $300), you can produce a business plan. Now this plan does not have to be more than 30 pages, and should include cash-flow analysis, PNL (Profit and Loss for Cast), and must include details in series like [Introduction, Executive Summary, Management Team, Project Profile, Feasibility Report, Cash Flow, PNL, Projections and Investment Req, Project Details, Marketing, Employment and Staffing, Issues (like social, environmental, etc) USP, Brief and Conclusion and Bibliography (or in other words you need to validate your facts)].

Answer 9

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Answer 10

You sound like a person with a good head on her shoulders kinda. First of all if i was gonna sell an idea i would want some profit from and you should too.Begin a local store and try looking for great ideas on the tv. too cause they advertise that "GREAT IDEA " THING ON TV JUST EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE, BUT BE CAUTIOUS AS TO WHO SELL TO AND GET EVERYTHING IN WRITTING TOO, DON'T TAKE ANYONES WORD FOR IT.

Answer 11

What you say is very typical of a young and soon to be entrepreneur or rich person who has her ideas in mind, evolves them and has order as well as discipline. You will not be a millionaire in this lifetime but will get to every satisfaction you already provide to your loved ones, that is a fact. The best business along with family that I see about you is arquitectural, design, engineering, technological factory and shop, where to expose current alternatives with some classy, conscious, traditional and picturesque mark. Perhaps it will not make a sudden sucess but it is the current hit of events to come in two months, you will make decent money out of this, ask counsel to your parents and those of your spouse. Bye, wish all sucess, Karim Hakim.