After developing what to do?how?

Hi,
I am working on "Internet based alerting system" and it is almost finished. I did it roughly with what I had in my personal tiny lab. Now to complete it with error free and thinking of commercial value I need to spend a huge amount of money (PCB, all ICs , error checking , again PCB correction, debugging etc.). But without profit it would be total waste. I think it has a good commercial value. But I don't know the proper way to how to sale it.

I was wondering what the developers do when they work on projects not ordered by any company. Do they sale the copyright to other companies? or Do they sale those by themselves? and for both situations how they do that? Do they tell about their projects to the big companies? How they calculate in which way they would get more money? And when it goes for magazines or research journals?

I think many newbie developers has these questions in their mind without any proper answer. I also know many professionals and researchers from different fields are active here in this forum. And your experiences and views are of course very much valuable for the newbies like me. Please share your experiences and suggestions.

Please tell me in details. Thanks very much.

hi , i have the same questions but that question mustn't be posted in microcontroler forum but in 'Hobby Circuits and Small Projects Problems' forum

Ok..ok ...Now you are what is called here in the states in phase 2 ..A working prototype .Well next step is to raise money ..There are several ways .One is to get Venture capital .You will have to surrender a part of your company .But this people can get you to phase 3 .Which is a a finished product .Then is necessary to get serious investing to manufature .
Now there is another avenue .Is once you a can demo a product.You can start a company and here in the states is possible to get it PUBLIC without having a finished product .Once you have a public corporation the goverment allows you to sell a certain amount of shares .That will allow you to raise money .Usually is up to you to determine what is the value of your industry .Let's say you will estimate that your bussiness will be worh $20M then you have to proyect how many shares you want to sell .If you plan to sell a total of a million then the potential cost of a share will be $20 . But in the beginning nobody will buy shares for that amount ,because you don't have nothing .So some people will take the risk( friends) if you sell them for $0.50 and convince them that they will be worth $20 in 5 years ! .So if you manage to sell 100K shares you raise $50,000 without surrending any control of your precious company !

Regards

You can also approach this in next ways.

1.- Present the idea to possible customers and get sponsorship ($$$) from them to build the prototype, and probably future orders.

2.- Buid the prototype yourself and take the risk to lose money if you can not find customers, and then present the prototype to possible clients.

You need to consider how to address manufacturing capabilities if you will get high quantity orders.

There are several companies that can build general electronic circuits, like Foxcomm, Jabil, etc.

Ok,let me get it clearly and correct me. In prototyping stage-

1. First I have to register a company if I want to let my project be the finished product and sell it.

2. I have to show the prototype to the companies who deal with products like mine and try to make a deal with them. If we have a good deal then my job goes through the deal. I don't need to worry about marketing or other stuffs.

3. If I want to sale the final finished product by myself (as that is more profitable with higher risk), then I have to find out investors. Then deal with some companies who will manufacture as per my order and supply my company. Then I will have to advertise, sell that product... bla bla bla.

Now my question is – when building prototype I have to consider the ICs and MCUs what will be used in final product, isn't it? Now how can I calcualte the cost of mass production? For example when we buy an IC from digikey or when we get sample from companies, those prices shouldn't be the same for that in mass production. But it should be much lower. Will I contact with the IC manufacturing companies directly for quote? Or, should I ask the distributors like “Future Electronics” or “Avnet” for quote? Will they response?

For example- I am using 8051 in my project and developed my project using Maxim's pricey DS89C450 . But i get cheaper same MCU from Taiwan or china based semiconductor companies. Now, How would I compare the mass price of those MCUs and select during prototyping?

So, I need to show my project to the companies who deal with that sort of stuffs. Should I show and send those companies all my project details with the creative ideas implemented? If companies get my ideas before I start manufacturing the end products, then what would guarantee that those companies wouldn't copy and implement those ideas? How would I protect my products secrets and creativities from others to copy or implement before me?

You need to consider how to address manufacturing capabilities if you will get high quantity orders.

Click to expand...

Why me, the designer to calculate the production quantities? Isn't it the duty of the manufacturing company to estimate the price and the quantity?

There are several companies that can build general electronic circuits, like Foxcomm, Jabil, etc.

Click to expand...

Your voice seems most of the designers don't follow that path of manufacturing the final product as it is too much responsibility. Then what they normally do?

When would I consider to write in the magazine and make my product open source? Or send it for any journal?
:?:

Patent your design. Build a prototype - it doesn't even have to be a production prototype. Show the prototype. Sell the patent. Take a deserved vacation.

There's no proven recipe. (It's not even known which region do you want to sell your stuff to.) There's only a lot of hard frustrating marketing work. At some moment you might get lucky.

Added after 1 hours 2 minutes:

eltonjohn said:

So some people will take the risk( friends) if you sell them for $0.50 and convince them that they will be worth $20 in 5 years !

Click to expand...

I would think that $0.50 for the extremely early money (aka angel investment) is kinda steep. A more realistic price would be $0.01.