Product Genius, the Podcast for Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Startups
Honest advice for inventors—with obscure cultural references included at no extra charge.
Episode
251
The Wait Calculation in Product Development
When should an inventor move forward—and when is waiting the smarter product-development decision? In this episode, Steven and Noah introduce the “wait calculation,” a framework for judging whether improving technology will make an invention easier, cheaper, or more practical—or whether delay will simply cause the entrepreneur to miss the market. Using a thought experiment about competing spaceships traveling to Alpha Centauri, Noah explains how a later launch can sometimes arrive first when technology is advancing rapidly. He then maps inventions along a spectrum. Bleeding-edge products may require years of research, major investment, and a high tolerance for failure. Post-technology or commodity products rely on mature processes and compete through speed, features, design, marketing, and execution. Many viable invention ideas sit between those extremes. Steven and Noah discuss insulated cups, early cell phones, the Nasoni fountain faucet, the Caulking Finger, and an unsuccessful wound-treatment technology to show how complexity changes risk and funding needs. They also examine licensing timing and the danger of waiting for perfection. The practical lesson: identify where your product sits on the technology-maturity spectrum before choosing a development budget, funding strategy, launch schedule, or licensing approach.
Core Topics for this episode:
- Invention Process
- Inventor Strategy
Key Takeaways Include:
Listen here:
Episode Blog
The Wait Calculation: When Should You Develop Your Invention?
Inventors are often told to move quickly. Speed matters, but “start now” is not universally good advice. Sometimes a technology is changing so rapidly that waiting can reduce cost, shorten development, or turn an impossible concept into a practical one. In other cases, waiting gives competitors time to take the opportunity while the inventor pursues a perfection that will never arrive.
The wait calculation is the judgment behind that choice. It asks where the invention sits in the technology cycle, how quickly that technology is improving, and whether delay creates more value than risk.
The Spaceship That Left Too Early
Imagine launching a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri with the best propulsion available today. The journey will take 1,000 years. One hundred years later, a better ship launches and completes the trip in 500 years. It arrives centuries before the first ship. A still-later spacecraft completes the journey in 200 years, and another eventually makes it in five.
The first travelers invested the most time and accepted the greatest hardship, yet arrived last. They would have been better off waiting for the technology curve to improve.
Product development can follow the same pattern. A new sensor, battery, processor, material, manufacturing process, or artificial-intelligence capability may be too expensive or immature today but commonplace a few years later. The important question is not merely whether an invention can be built. It is whether building it now creates a durable advantage.
Place the Product on the Technology Spectrum
Noah describes a spectrum with bleeding-edge technology at one end and mature, post-technology products at the other.
# Bleeding Edge
A bleeding-edge invention requires fundamental technical development. The science may be uncertain. Testing may take years. Regulatory pathways may be complex. Multiple expensive failures are likely before a commercial product appears—if it appears at all.
Projects in this zone usually require substantial capital, specialized expertise, patient investors, and an honest tolerance for failure. A lone inventor financing the work personally may be taking on a problem designed for a well-funded research organization.
# The Middle
Many valuable inventions combine established systems in a novel way while requiring one genuinely new mechanism. Noah uses the Nasoni faucet as an example: faucets already existed, but the mechanism that converts ordinary flow into a drinking fountain required real development.
Middle-spectrum products can be attainable for startups, but they still need technical risk reduction, prototyping, testing, and an appropriate funding plan.
# Post-Technology
At the mature end, factories already understand the core processes. Vacuum-insulated cups are one example. The foundational technology is widespread, so a new product may compete through a better handle, lid, straw, attachment, shape, brand, or customer experience.
These products can often reach the market faster and with less technical risk. Their challenge is differentiation. When manufacturing knowledge is widely available, execution, positioning, and marketing become more important.
Match the Strategy to the Spectrum
An inventor should not use the same plan for every point on the spectrum.
For bleeding-edge products, early work should focus on technical feasibility, intellectual property, research partnerships, grants, and serious capital. The commercial form may need to wait until the enabling technology proves itself.
For middle-spectrum products, the goal is to isolate the unknown. Build targeted proofs of concept, test the new mechanism, and use existing technology everywhere else. Avoid reinventing components that already solve the problem economically.
For mature products, the priority may be speed. Validate customer demand, protect the meaningful innovation, build a focused minimum viable product, and invest in branding, distribution, and sales before competitors copy the idea.
Do Not Solve a Five-Dollar Problem With a Hundred-Dollar Solution
Technology can be impressive and still make poor business sense. A product must create enough value to support its cost. If customers perceive a five-dollar inconvenience, they are unlikely to buy a hundred-dollar solution regardless of the engineering achievement.
This is one reason an experienced product developer may advise an inventor to pause. The obstacle may not be technical. It may be a price-value mismatch, an unrealistic funding requirement, a weak market, or a project far outside the inventor’s resources.
Waiting is useful when it allows those business problems to be solved. It is not useful when it merely postpones hearing an answer the inventor does not like.
Licensing Has Its Own Wait Calculation
Inventors who plan to license must decide how far to develop the concept before approaching companies. Licensing early limits personal investment but leaves more uncertainty for the licensee, which can weaken the deal. Developing further can increase value by demonstrating function, demand, manufacturability, or intellectual-property strength.
Taking the concept too far creates a different risk: spending heavily on engineering, tooling, or inventory that the eventual licensee may not want.
The right stopping point reduces the risks that matter most to the prospective partner without duplicating the partner’s own development system. That might mean a compelling proof of concept, preliminary patent protection, customer validation, or a clear manufacturing estimate rather than a finished production line.
Perfection Is Not a Launch Requirement
The wait calculation can become an excuse. Some inventors always want one more feature, one more prototype, or one more round of refinement. But every product enters the market with limitations. Customer feedback often reveals more than another private design cycle.
The How to Train Your Dragon example in the episode illustrates the value of pausing before an irreversible action. WALL-E illustrates the opposite danger: waiting forever for conditions to become perfect. Product strategy lives between those extremes.
A useful launch threshold is not perfection. It is sufficient safety, function, reliability, manufacturability, and customer value to test the business honestly.
Questions to Ask Before Acting or Waiting
- Is the core technology proven, emerging, or still theoretical?
- How quickly are cost and performance improving?
- What must be invented, and what can use established components?
- Can the expected customer value support the development and unit cost?
- What resources are required to reach the next risk-reduction milestone?
- Does waiting improve feasibility, or merely delay validation?
- Could a competitor enter while we wait?
- For licensing, what evidence will materially improve the deal?
Product Genius Take
Before committing to a development plan, identify where the invention sits on the technology-maturity spectrum. Bleeding-edge ideas need capital and patience. Mature products need speed, differentiation, and marketing. Products in the middle need focused risk reduction. Wait when time genuinely improves the opportunity—but once the product is good enough to test safely and credibly, act before waiting becomes the strategy.
Or, read the full transcript here:
Steven Julian
Hey there, loyal listener of Product Genius. Are you working on your spaceship that you're building to try to get to Alpha Centauri inside of 500 years? Well, stop what you're doing and listen to this episode because we talk about fantastic things you need to hear like the weight calculation and weighting versus acting or leading edge versus bleeding edge or commoditization or post-technology. We also talk about other keywords like maybe Sidney Sweeney, Frank's Cheese Hammers, and other things that really aren't on this episode.
Noah McNeely
Do you want to be a successful inventor entrepreneur struggling to get your product from idea to market?
Steven Julian
Well, you've come to the right place. Welcome to Product Genius, the down to earth podcast that explores important topics about inventing and launching new products. Noah McNeely is your trusted guide. With more than 20 years of product launch experience, he's here to help you on your journey to become a product genius. Let's get started.
Noah McNeely
Here's your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian. Hey, that's my line.
Steven Julian
Yes. Welcome to another fantastic edition of Product Genius. I am your slightly annoying co-host. Why am I slightly annoying? Because I drew out the yes. Not. way longer, just long enough that Noah got concerned. I am seated next to the intrepid producer, Jody Smith, and Noah is dying to critique my long intro.
Noah McNeely
I was just going to say slightly might be a slight understatement. That particular long yes.
Steven Julian
I was feeling it, brother. I was feeling it.
Noah McNeely
You were. I was feeling the reverberations over here. It also occurred to me while listening to the intro, we might need to think about re-recording that because I am trying to figure out. Where I fit in late middle age or I don't know what I am. Twenty-five. Twenty-five. Now it's more than 25 years. So when we started that, it was more than 20. Yeah.
Steven Julian
That's right. We started this coming out of COVID. It's been like four years. Yeah. Holy cow. It's your silver anniversary of being a product developer.
Noah McNeely
That's offensive. Kind of. I don't know. It just makes me feel old. Too many things make me feel old.
Steven Julian
Listen, as an independent financial advisor, and that's all I can say, silver is a great investment, but past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please consult your perspective.
Noah McNeely
Not a particularly exciting. investment.
Steven Julian
No, no. Actually, for 15 years, silver, man, everybody says silver is going to take off. I'm like, yes, I'm still waiting.
Noah McNeely
I can dye it and get rid of the silver. Oh, wait, we're not talking about hair.
Steven Julian
No, that's a sliver. This is the mushroom-inspired episode of Product Genius. This is the CBD gummy-inspired episode of Product Genius because the title of this is, Have You Ever Built a Spaceship? Noah, long-time listeners, we have a lot of fun, and Noah sends out these great... Pre-show emails. Hey, here are the topics I want to do when we record. And this one was, have you ever built a spaceship? Which I'll say it up front. I immediately thought, have you ever built a spaceship? So I, you know, I went to Frozen, even though I've never seen the movie, but I've never seen, I don't have daughters.
Noah McNeely
I have three sons. Oh yeah. It makes sense. Yes. I've seen it like 80 times because I have daughters.
Steven Julian
Have you ever seen Meet the Robinsons?
Noah McNeely
Oh yeah.
Steven Julian
Oh, okay. That's a very underrated movie.
Noah McNeely
Especially with the Tyrannosaurus with the tiny arms.
Steven Julian
Yeah, exactly. My arms are too, yeah. But we quote that movie all the time. That's a, okay, so I was trying to think of a, okay, so have you ever seen any of the Transformers movies?
Noah McNeely
The first one, yeah.
Steven Julian
That's a boy thing, right?
Noah McNeely
Maybe like bits and pieces of others.
Steven Julian
You're not missing much.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, I kind of got that. Yeah.
Steven Julian
I just know the song because a few years ago you heard, have you ever seen Built a Snowman? You know, you couldn't avoid it.
Noah McNeely
They should have put that in the Transformers.
Steven Julian
Else it shows up and freezes. That would have been great.
Noah McNeely
Somewhere someone's making an AI video of that right now.
Steven Julian
I like it. So, Noah, explain your questions.
Noah McNeely
Well, I was directing the question to you. So, Steven, have you ever built a spaceship to go to another planet?
Steven Julian
No, not to go to another planet. To play with my Legos, yes, absolutely.
Noah McNeely
So, what's holding you back?
Steven Julian
I believe it'll be the topic of this show. So, what's holding me back? is I...
Noah McNeely
Well, you're afraid someone's going to build a better spaceship.
Steven Julian
That's not why I wasn't doing it. I would, because I'm like, I'm... I'm. mechanically, engineeringly impossible for me to build something to do that.
Noah McNeely
Okay.
Steven Julian
Yeah. And I don't have the resources.
Noah McNeely
Not today. Stop it. Yeah. At all, no. Exactly.
Steven Julian
You have a different answer to, Noah, have you ever built a spaceship?
Noah McNeely
No.
Steven Julian
And why not?
Noah McNeely
Well, for the same reason, actually, because I would not know how to build a spaceship, even though I am an engineer. So the topic of today is the weight calculation. And I'm not talking about how heavy either of us are. I'm talking about weight as in W-A-I-T.
Steven Julian
Yeah. So the weight calculation is relevant to the topic of building a spaceship because there are people who would go, yes, I could build a spaceship. It's better to wait. Talk about that.
Noah McNeely
So let's think about it. Let's do a little story. So let's say you were— Does it involve Frank? It could. He could be one of the colonists on the ship, I guess. So let's say that for whatever reason, you're part of a group. We're going to go settle a planet in another star system, Alpha Centauri, and whatever. So we do all these calculations. Well, let's go to Alpha Centauri.
Steven Julian
This is a topic of conversation. we have to get off the planet and yada yada. There are people talking about it.
Noah McNeely
Possibly. So anyway, Alpha Centauri takes, what, four years for light to get there. It's a long way away. So you do all that, you know, you work with your engineers and whatnot, and you guys develop this spaceship, and you push the science as far as you can. It's going to take you a thousand years to get there. So either you find some way to
Steven Julian
freeze
Noah McNeely
everybody and thaw them out when you get there, or either that or like 20 generations of people are going to live and die and grow up on this spaceship before it gets to
Steven Julian
Space Mutiny, one of the greatest MST3K episodes of all time.
Noah McNeely
Okay. I've not seen that one. Oh, you got to look at it.
Steven Julian
Okay. Sorry. That's a, that's a, let's stay on topic.
Noah McNeely
So anyway, you build this spaceship, you and your group and all your colonists and you build it and you launch and a thousand years later, you arrive on Alpha Centauri. But guess what? There's already people there.
Steven Julian
How is that possible, Noah?
Noah McNeely
Because a hundred years after you left, somebody came along and developed a better form of propulsion that got them there in 500 years. So by the time you get there, they've already been there for hundreds of years. And then, but guess what else? When they got there, there were already people there. How is that possible, Noah? Because 100 years after they left, someone came up with a way to get there in 200 years. But when they got there, there were already people there.
Steven Julian
How is that possible? No, I'm getting tired of saying that.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, yeah. Stop saying that.
Steven Julian
So on and on and on and on and on.
Noah McNeely
At some point, they got the technology. They maxed it out to where they could get there in five years.
Steven Julian
Right.
Noah McNeely
That's almost the speed of light. I don't know if it's possible or not.
Steven Julian
The concept of this is the famous Apollo 11 movie, Apollo 11. that happened in the Apollo 11 movie, Tom Hanks, there's a great line where he goes, he's showing people around the spaceship and it's for congressional funding. And he goes, imagine a world in which the computers fit inside. of one room, computing power fitting inside of one room. So the idea of... Everything gets faster. Everything gets better. Everything is done quicker. That's Apollo 13. But, okay, sorry. The movie Apollo 13. I thought you were saying four. Apollo 13. You're right.
It was Apollo 13. I apologize. Apollo 11 was the first one that landed on the moon and that some people think we didn't do. Anyway, the point being that technology always gets better and faster and we get better and faster at doing things. A hundred years ago, 150 years ago, they plowed, you know, an acre, a farm, you know, how many acres could you get in a day? Now they're doing giant swaths of land and now we're planting upward, vertical. So the idea is the weight calculation, things will always get more efficient or vaster or better.
Is that kind of what you're talking about here?
Noah McNeely
Well, to a point. So like in our example, assuming no one... That violates the laws of physics as we understand them. Eventually do reach a point of diminishing returns where the technology is not going to get any better. You're not going to get there. any faster than five years. You're going to eventually reach that point where it is what it is. The technology, it's ubiquitous. Everybody knows. I mean, by that time, if you've got a way to get there in five years, probably every country has a shuttle that goes to Alpha Centauri.
You know, Sri Lanka. It has a shuttle that goes to Alpha Centauri by that point. And the only difference between the Sri Lanka shuttle and the Germany shuttle and the Australia shuttle is just style and the type of food they serve and the music they play. Technologically, they're all the same. Just like, you know, you can fly on a jet airplane. All different carriers, all different countries have their carriers. Not a lot of difference, really. Some are a little cheaper. Some have nicer people. Some have nicer food. But they're all basically the same.
Steven Julian
So to wrap up your story, the first people that left and it took them a thousand years to get there, you're saying not only will they see the people from 500 and 250 and 100, they'll also see the people who took an Uber. Shuttle there and are just staying. for the weekend and going back.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, imagine you get there a thousand years later, you get there and all of a sudden it's like there's a spaceship taking off every three days. You know, you're like, what the heck?
Steven Julian
What the H? If I can quote Norm MacDonald from his sports show. So at this point of discussion of the weight calculation.
Noah McNeely
You would have been better off to freeze everybody and wait 500 years and then send them in five years to get there. Okay, we've taken that far enough. Okay.
Steven Julian
So, actually, in terms of your weight calculation, the original Planet of the Apes movie, they should have never sent the astronauts. And when those astronauts landed, they should have found all the other people that were sent after them. That would have made for a much different movie.
Noah McNeely
There are a lot of inconsistencies in the Planet of the Apes franchise that we don't need to go into right now.
Steven Julian
Get your hands off me. Anyway.
Noah McNeely
Right now, science nerds listening are saying, tell me more.
Steven Julian
About Planet of the Apes, gladly.
Noah McNeely
About that.
Steven Julian
About the weight calculation.
Noah McNeely
Everyone else is saying, how on Earth or. off Earth. does this relate to product development and inventions?
Steven Julian
Okay, tell us.
Noah McNeely
Okay, so imagine the weight calculation.
Steven Julian
Imagine if you will.
Noah McNeely
But, yes, join us as we go on a journey.
Steven Julian
I've got you going in so many different directions now.
Noah McNeely
You do.
Steven Julian
We're having fun.
Noah McNeely
We were kidding about the mushrooms.
Steven Julian
It might sound a little like it.
Noah McNeely
Even though that was a joke, there were no mushrooms involved today.
Steven Julian
I just had the same thought. I think people are listening going, they may have had a CBD gummy. We really haven't. All we've had is coffee. So, all right. Tell me more.
Noah McNeely
As soon as those things are legal in Georgia, you know, who knows?
Steven Julian
Oh, yeah, absolutely. But they're not, and we're not. Yes. So an inventor entrepreneur has got an idea for a product.
Noah McNeely
But with a similar dilemma. It's like, when do I start developing my product? When do I launch my product? It's the whole thing, waiting versus acting, waiting versus doing. Is the time right? And as is often my answer.
Steven Julian
We need to have a sounder for this, Jody, at some point. It depends.
Noah McNeely
In this case, it depends on. what type of inventor or entrepreneur you are and what type of invention you've come up with. So those of you who can imagine my left hand on the left side of the spectrum, you've got our thousand-year spaceship people. This is what you might call... The leading edge technologies, the bleeding edge, leading edge, and you don't really know which one you're on until you start bleeding, but it's, let's replace the time, the thousand years with money, money, effort, et cetera. So if you're on that side of the spectrum, it's going to take you a lot of money to get some sort of really new technology that maybe will never work.
And even if it does work, it's going to take you a long time and a lot of money. To get that developed to where you have a product. On the way other side of the spectrum, your five-year spaceship people, this technology is well proven. You know, you're not necessarily developing any new technology. You might be putting something stylistically on it. Maybe you're adding a little feature. But fundamentally, the technology is what it is. And you're not changing that. That's a product you'll. get to the market cheaper, quicker, very cheap, very quick.
Steven Julian
What's the name of that? What's the name of the five-year that you would say? What would you call that? So if leading edge, bleeding edge is the maximum dollar, is this like...
Noah McNeely
Well, I don't have a good name. In my notes, I was calling it the post-technology.
Steven Julian
Post-technology, yeah. Because the technology already exists.
Noah McNeely
Or the commodity product space, maybe. I don't like to think of it quite like that. So an example is like... Insulated or vacuum coffee cups, insulated coffee cups. When they first came out, they were like, hey, this is cool. Not every factory knew how to make them. And you could charge a lot for them. It took a good bit of time to develop that first one. After that. People started learning how to do it. And now, you know, they're ubiquitous. Everybody, well, not everybody, but lots of companies make these things.
And, you know, one will have a better handle for you. One will have this, that, or the other. Maybe your invention is just a more ergonomic handle for that. Or maybe it's got a magnet on it. so you can stick it somewhere. Or, you know, maybe it's got a better straw. Who knows what it is? Some little thing you've added to it so you get your invention on the market. But those are much cheaper products to get on the market because you're not developing a new tech.
Steven Julian
You've done a great job of kind of circling this topic and having us start it. because I'm going to give you something. We didn't talk about this pre-show, but the commoditization or the post-technology. I like the idea of post-technology. Something may be post-technology. A good example, and I think the Insulated Cup is a great example. If people are offering to put your business logo and name on it, that's a post-technology because that means it's so ubiquitous that we're like, hey, slap your name on it.
Noah McNeely
Either that or they're desperately trying to raise funds and they need a sponsor.
Steven Julian
But to that point, let's talk about the Insulated Cup because when you and I are of a certain age. Thermos was about it. And the kid who had a thermos in his lunchbox, that's middle class. Wow.
Noah McNeely
And the real high class was the. old school Stanley. You remember those things that you put your soup in? You like your grandfather had this thing and he would put like a gallon of coffee in this and just drink off. He would take it hunting. He drank on it all weekend or whatever.
Steven Julian
So that's where Stanley originally came from before they be. And they kind of went back down the thing.
Noah McNeely
They got these frou-frou Stanley cups now, which, you know, your grandfather wouldn't.
Steven Julian
And Stanley Cups with company names on them. Hey, why don't you get your clients a cup with your logo on it?
Noah McNeely
Go to Vistaprint and order a cup with your name on it.
Steven Julian
Exactly right. And I was thinking on the leading edge, bleeding edge, my first thought of an example is cell phone technology. You know, cell phone technology took a decade to develop and it started.
Noah McNeely
And it had a lot of failures.
Steven Julian
It had a ton of failures.
Noah McNeely
A lot of very expensive failures.
Steven Julian
The first. Sell call made in, you know, the early 1980s. It took 15 years before it started to become more used. And there's an actually, there's a great comedy bit by. Andy Kindler about, you know, can you believe, or Seinfeld had an episode about, they took a sell call in front of me. How rude. And it's like, okay, now that's just, that's standard social procedure. Anyway.
Noah McNeely
Using what my wife calls the Zach Morris cell phone. If you remember from Saved by the Bell, there was an episode where he had this giant cell phone. The big brick. Yeah, it's the size of a laptop that we have today. It's crazy.
Steven Julian
I was thinking of Seinfeld, the cell phone. walk and talk. You're calling me back on a cell phone.
Noah McNeely
There used to be cell phones built into your car. Remember that?
Steven Julian
Yeah, they were car phones. And there were cell phones that had bags. You had to carry the bag with the cell phone.
Noah McNeely
So anyway, those are some of our 1,000-year spaceships and 500-year spaceships there. But now we've got, you know, lots of companies make cell phones. It's still not what an inventor would make because they're still extensive.
Steven Julian
So let's go back to the inventor.
Noah McNeely
Okay. The inventor is— Stop talking about stupid stuff, Noah.
Steven Julian
No, no, no, no. I'm enjoying—this is going to have. so many cultural references in it. This is one of my favorite shows. I love it when we get to do that. I get to shine on all my useless, trivial knowledge.
Noah McNeely
I wasn't quoting you. I was quoting what's going through Jody's mind. Exactly.
Steven Julian
And our listeners who are like, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. Because it's not just the science nerds doing that. It's the people who go, okay, so I'm an inventor. Are you telling me to stop? My idea, if it's going to take too much blood and too much sacrifice and too much money, it depends.
Noah McNeely
I'm not telling you that at all. Okay. What I am saying is most inventor entrepreneurs are going to fall somewhere between these two extremes. If you're on that left side where it is a new tech, you're not going to have enough money to do it. You're going to have to go out and your entire strategy is going to be different than someone on the far right side of that. Store hydrogen in vehicles and you've got this great idea, but there's a million things that aren't known right there. You're not going. to be able to fund all that.
You're going to have to go out and get venture capital. You're going to maybe government grants, all sorts. You're going to need millions and millions of dollars to get that all the way to the point of a product in the marketplace. because you've got, you know, how do I compress the hydrogen? How do I store it safely? How do I make sure that I'm not blowing up a bridge when I drive a truck under it? All that sort of stuff has got to be figured out. Long before you have a product on the market.
So you're talking about years, millions and millions of dollars, bleeding edge, leading edge. And the difference there, bleeding edge, I'm saying that stuff, you may simply spend millions of dollars on a bleeding edge technology that never develops. Whereas leading edge, you need to actually get it across the finish line. But most inventing entrepreneurs are going to be somewhere in the middle. So if you're on that left side, you've got to have a total, or closer to that left side, you've got to have a totally different strategy about, Your focus. has got to be more about raising funds, taking your invention far enough along that you can go out and you can present it well.
You're probably going to have to have a team behind you presenting this. You may need a spokesperson. You may need a lot of stuff to get all the money on board to make that happen. And a long horizon kind of viewpoint there. If you're on the right side of this or closer to the right side, then you might be able to do it all on your own. You may not need. Other people's money, it might be a small enough, a cheap enough thing that you can get that on the market in six months.
If you put a few thousand dollars toward it, 10,000, whatever it is, kind of depends on what the product is. Very different strategy. There your strategy is like, I'm going to come up with a name for this thing. How am I going to market it? How am I going to sell it? Those are things you figure out early. Whereas if you've got a revolutionary technology to store hydrogen, people are going to figure that. out for you. And that's going to be way down the list versus not blowing up that bridge I was talking about.
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Noah McNeely
We've had people on the show. So I'll give an example, some examples. So a gentleman we had on a few months, a few episodes ago, very successful business. He's closer to that post-technology side. It's the caulking finger. People remember that. There's not really new technology there. It's a new idea on using technology, and it's a cool product, and I think he does well with it. But at the end of the day, it's an elastomeric material on the end of a plastic. You know, there's nothing bleeding edge about that, but he found a clever way to use those technologies, those long-established technologies, to solve a problem that was in the marketplace.
Steven Julian
Well, the right side was. the finger. And so he said, Let me give you the finger. And so, you know, Daniel Stevenson of the Caulking Finger, caulkingfinger.com. And what he did was he took what was existing, which was everybody's finger, and he said, use mine. It won't hurt as much. And it'll, you know, and it works.
Noah McNeely
So a lot of what he has is a stylistic difference, kind of like the difference in the airlines. But there is a little bit of... Uniqueness to it in the sense that he is solving a problem. You know, who wants to get caulk on their fingers?
Steven Julian
And I was going to say that. I didn't want to jump over that. I think a lot of our listeners who've listened a long time were thinking right along with you. And this is more for the people who are just kind of finding this show. You have said multiple times that the people you work with that kind of find success, it starts with you're trying to solve a problem. Yes. Have you ever built a spaceship? Somebody's building a spaceship because they're probably trying to solve a problem, not just because, hey, I'd like to. do it.
So even the people now who are doing space, you know, space is kind of back in the news. You're trying to solve a problem or you're trying to achieve something. So I didn't want to gloss over that. I know that is the main thrust of what you do with everybody you do it with. But if you're not trying to solve a problem, you're not going to waste, you're not going to use a ton of money just to. Do something. So that's, I want to make sure and just acknowledge that.
Noah McNeely
Right. I think we did a whole episode on that, the difference between art and design. You know, if you're designing something, you're solving a problem. If you're just doing it because, hey, this is cool. Well, that's an art project, which is fine. Got nothing wrong with art projects, but that doesn't make. That doesn't make them good business choices.
Steven Julian
Got it. Okay. So that, so you talked about Daniel, given, I assume you've got, we've got some examples from this show of the other side of that.
Noah McNeely
I do. So, well, sort of more in the middle I was going to give, because I tend to work in that sort of maybe a little bit left to middle all the way to the right on this spectrum. I stay away. I'll come to it, but I stay away from the left side these days. So Steve Waddell is a gentleman we've had actually on a couple of times. He was on when Tiffany was running the show. And oddly enough, Tiffany and I both met Steve through different pathways. I'd worked with Steve to help helping him develop his first product.
And then he and Tiffany got connected on LinkedIn and she asked him, hey, how'd you do this? And he's like, well, I met this guy named Noah. And then she's like, I know Noah. And then, you know, anyway, that's a long story. So Steve's product, the Nassoni faucet, it's sort of in the middle because what it does, it's a faucet that you can flip a switch and it becomes a fountain for brushing your teeth, filling up a glass of water, all that sort of, or drinking out of without using a glass of water.
And you might say, well, faucets exist. Isn't that further to the right? I wouldn't say so because in the middle, because yes, faucets exist, but the mechanisms to flip it to actually be a water fountain, that had to be developed kind of from the ground up. That was not existing. So that's why I'm putting it in the middle. It's not... Store hydrogen level difficulty, but it's also much more complex than the caulking finger.
Steven Julian
It's more than just adding a magnet to a thermal mug. And there's nothing else on the market like it that turns a faucet that water comes out of, goes down, and flip it to have it be a fountain that comes out. That's... Barely out there, if out there at all. And so go check out nasoni.com, N-A-S-O-N-I. Both of these examples, neither of them paid sponsorship dollars for you to shout them out.
Noah McNeely
No, but we should start hitting people up for that, maybe. Absolutely.
Steven Julian
You can email me at...
Noah McNeely
If you'd like to sponsor a product genius, please reach out to Noah or Steven.
Steven Julian
Either that or give us the...
Noah McNeely
We accept Dr. Pepper as sponsorship.
Steven Julian
And royalty rights to secretive men. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.
Noah McNeely
So I tend to stay away from. the bleeding edge, leading edge these days, just out of choice because those tend to be very long projects and I tend to get bored with them.
Steven Julian
The bigger companies tackle that stuff because they've got the resources.
Noah McNeely
They've got the resources. It's not typically the – I do get involved occasionally, like I am working on some now, but really more as an advisor. I'm not doing the technology development. I'm doing the productization. Earlier in my career, I did work on some of those. And an example of a bleeding edge that never really, millions of dollars were spent on, never really launched was this wound treatment chemistry that there was one I was involved in that did launch, totally different. It's not that one if you look up my history.
But there was a wound treatment chemistry really meant for battlefield medicine and other places where you could slap this stuff on a wound and it would help.
Steven Julian
You conclusively said no to that one. We did. Okay.
Noah McNeely
Good. But anyway, there was so much to figure out. Millions of dollars were spent by a very large company. Figuring this out, they eventually just let it sort. of fade away because they couldn't. The reward versus risk or reward versus expenditure ratio just reached a point that they were no longer comfortable. And they were such a big company that it really didn't matter that much the money they'd spent. It did, but it didn't. Anyway, bleeding edge never made it.
Steven Julian
That's funny, bleeding edge. And I would imagine in that time, other decisions were made, other companies tackled it, found maybe not everything they wanted to do, but something that kind of works. It's rather interesting.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, other solutions came along that maybe attacked part of the problem in ways that were more established and easier for. Military to absorb.
Steven Julian
A triage wound treatments thing that could then be scrubbed off when you're ready to tackle it. I don't know, rather interesting. People are having flashbacks to movies where they see people, you know, I'm thinking of Mark Wahlberg in Shooter. Why is Shooter the movie that comes on TV? Like every day. There was a period of time you'd flip through the channels. I could always find Shooter on. My wife and I have a joke that in the 90s, it was Clash of the. Titans. TBS showed Clash of the Titans and Beastmaster.
They showed it every day. one of those two movies was on.
Noah McNeely
I remember Beastmaster. That was probably a lot cooler when I was a kid than if I watched it now.
Steven Julian
It was never cool to me.
Noah McNeely
Well, I was eight years old.
Steven Julian
Okay, eight years ago. That's awesome. Eight, nine. I'm with you there.
Noah McNeely
And Mark Singer was the guy that kind of seemed like Mark Hamill, but wasn't Mark Hamill, right?
Steven Julian
That's a great one. Well done. But, you know, and I just bring up Shooter because of the... He pulls out the first aid kit and you shake things in the wound and it kind of settles or whatever.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, kind of like that, but different.
Steven Julian
Yeah, and the technology, I would assume, has gotten better. And yeah, so that's rather interesting. You work more on the right side of that spectrum and center of that spectrum because that's where the inventor entrepreneur who doesn't have a ton of venture capital or some, but you don't have unlimited resources.
Noah McNeely
Right. So those are much more... Attainable goals for a typical either small startup or inventor entrepreneur. Now, again, if you've got millions of dollars of VC money behind you, that's a different story. That's a different type of project. That's generally going to be a much longer term project.
Steven Julian
And we didn't talk about this pre-show, but I know if people go back and listen to episodes, and maybe this goes back to when Tiffany was hosting and you were one of the geniuses around the table. I distinctly have memories and more than once of you kind of go in. There are certain projects where I want to make, you know, this that's going to be this going to change the world. And you're like, well, if you really want to solve the problem, you could use this that already exists as a base.
And then if we just did this, this and this, then you'll make it so that and I guess you've used the phrase of, you know, not having not. Fixing a $5 problem with a $200 solution. No one's going to pay $200 for a flashlight just because it has a level on it, you know? So shout out to iLevel. All these people need to, no, I'm just kidding. So is. that part of it too? Part of your job is going, okay, we can go down that path, but you may need to wait for the technology to get more attainable and usable.
Noah McNeely
How do you time this right? I think that is part of the answer is to talk to people like me or me.
Steven Julian
Well, you sponsor the show, so yeah, they should talk to you.
Noah McNeely
We can provide some suggestions and insights there. Not that I'm always right, but I've seen a lot of things, like they say in the insurance commercial. And a lot of times I do advise people not to do anything. Perfectly straight up. And you come to me and I see problems with what you're trying to do. I'm going to tell you, look, here's the problems I see. I advise you not to spend any money with me or anyone else unless you can solve these business problems. And it can be that $100 solution for a $5 problem.
It can be a lot of other things too. It can be you're trying to do something way outside your ability. And the problem there is. you got to get other money. first. And some people... You really appreciate that. And I've had some that come back years later and then they work with me and we get their product done. And I've got some people that get really angry at me. It's like, you know, you should just do what I tell you. You know, I'm not at a point in my career where I'm just going to, I want to take your money just to take your money.
Right. A lot of people out there, they'd be happy to do that. Go work with them.
Steven Julian
You have given me free reign and not trampled on any of my cultural references. I think a couple of them were good. I think a couple of them were terrible if we're talking in spectrum today. I believe you had a couple of cultural references. Is it time for those now? Is it time for Noah's movie time?
Noah McNeely
It is. Well, this kind of relates to that. So one very specific group of inventors where this is... Important, but maybe in a slightly nuanced way, are inventors that want to license their products out. And that's that whole case of how far along you. are in your development. Do I want to sell now and cash out early? Sometimes that's the answer, but you're probably not going to get as good of a deal as if you take it further along and take more risk out. The risk of taking it too far along is maybe you spend...
More money on it than you wanted to or more time or whatever, and you don't get a deal. So finding that balance is also very important. More so than, not more so, but in parallel with the complexity of the item, it's also timing your approach to licensing companies as well. But that's also timing the approach to the market. It's all kind of the same thing, just nuanced a little bit differently. So cultural references. I have two from cartoon movies. I have kids who've watched a lot of cartoon movies. They're older now.
We don't watch as many. Now it's all Marvel movies. But by the way, Fantastic Four, fantastic. Is it good? It is. I'm not going to say the word fantastic again, but it's great.
Steven Julian
It's great.
Noah McNeely
Yeah. It's the best Fantastic Four movie ever, which doesn't say a lot. That's.
Steven Julian
not hard.
Noah McNeely
Yeah.
Steven Julian
Release the Roger Corman version.
Noah McNeely
It's one of the best Marvel movies in years, I thought. Yeah. Okay. So cultural references. One is from Train Your Dragon. So there's this character that the boy, his name is Hiccup. And his, it's Hiccup, he's got this long last name. It's like, you know, Hiccup the Horrible or something is his dad. So he's Hiccup the Horrible, the third or whatever, Junior, I can't remember. Anyway, so he's sent out to kill this, or he's supposed to go kill this little, or his tribe kills dragons. They fear dragons and whatever. So he's a little black dragon, this Night Fury dragon, this special dragon.
He has an opportunity to kill it, but he decides to wait. And it turns out dragon's friendly and then becomes, you know, saves the tribe in the town. And, you know, not all dragons are evil. They find all that out because he waited. He didn't jump at the first opportunity he had. So that's the example of, you know, waiting a little bit sometimes. The wait calculation. The wait calculation. On the other end of that, a movie called WALL-E, which involves a. robot. He's like post-apocalyptic kind of, but not, but in a very friendly Disney sort of way.
Cover what happened to all the rest of the people on Earth, but we won't go into that. Anyway, there's people living out in space in a spaceship because the Earth got all polluted. Nobody lives there anymore. And they keep sending these probes back to find these plants. And if they find a plant, then it's time to go back to Earth. But the computer on the spaceship has been programmed to say, I'm never going to do that. I'm going to wait forever because Earth will never be good enough or never be perfect enough again.
And, you know, part of the theme of the movie is breaking that wanting to wait forever cycle. Of course, it's more dramatic than all that. Defeat the robot and all that sort of stuff. But that kind of illustrates that you can also, as an inventor, and I've seen this a lot, is you want to wait until your invention is perfect. And we've talked about this. It's never going to be perfect. So at some point, you have to find that balance of, okay, it's good enough. Let's launch. Okay, it's going to take me 100 years to get to the other planet.
Let's launch. If you keep waiting and waiting and waiting, it may never get faster than 100 years. Now, that might be as good as it's going to get. And or you might. Miss your opportunity in the market if you keep waiting.
Steven Julian
I like it. I like it.
Noah McNeely
Good. I'm glad I said it.
Steven Julian
Okay.
Noah McNeely
All right.
Steven Julian
So now I've come to the point in this very cultural reference rich episode and also non-performance enhancing substances used in this episode to say, Noah, is there anything else you wanted to add? Which is a horrible interview question.
Noah McNeely
Our next episode will be recorded in Colorado, which, by the way, I drove to Colorado earlier this year, and there's dispensaries just everywhere. You're in the middle of nowhere, Colorado, and there's no buildings for 20 miles, and there's a dispensary right here in the middle. There aren't even any houses near here. Why?
Steven Julian
Almost a decade ago, I went out for a business trip, and I, of course, I looked on the business trip like, okay, the Rockies are playing, and where we're doing it is nearby, so I'm going to walk to a Rockies game. That was my first experience with dispensaries, and they could be within a certain, there was a part of the town they could be in back then. And I was like, wow, okay, this is a unique experience. And I am not going on that parking lot. So, yeah, we have not been using any of those substances.
Noah McNeely
But back to your question. Anything else I'd like to add? I think the most one thing I would advise is understand is do your best to understand where you fit in this in this cycle. And that's going to help really guide your strategy as an inventor. It's like, do I need to focus because I'm more commoditized? Do I need to focus on? Getting this to the market quickly and focus my energy on marketing and selling it really well. Or am I on the side where I got to go raise a lot of money to make this happen?
Or am I somewhere in the middle where, yeah, maybe you still need to raise some money, but it's a little bit different approach. I just need an angel investor or friends and family investors to do this. I think figuring out where you belong or where you are on that spectrum, that's one of the early things you should do because everything else strategy-wise is going to fall out from that.
Steven Julian
So much of what you do in this show is help people think about things they wouldn't necessarily think about. We joke all the time about, I got an idea, call me. That joke is one of the through lines of this show.
Noah McNeely
Still every week. Every week.
Steven Julian
You still get it every week. But if people will just listen to this show, they will get such a better idea of the way you think as someone who has 25 years experience. And brought tons of products to market, helped other people who their product is never going to get to market or not going to get to market the way they want it to or they first think it will.
Noah McNeely
And or tried to help those people who should have listened to you. They don't want to listen.
Steven Julian
Right. And so I just think this has been a very good reset. of a big topic that most people don't think about. When they're thinking about their idea. And listen, one of the things that we haven't said on this show in a while, that used to be something we said a lot, there's a reason why these things are their babies. It's very precious to an inventor entrepreneur. This is my idea. This is my thought. This is my original idea. And it's good for you in a somewhat humorous, but also an empathetic way.
Of reminding everybody, of pointing out something that I would not think about when I'm dealing with my baby of the greatest, you know, wound treatment chemical thing that's going to change the world.
Noah McNeely
You don't think about sending your baby to another planet?
Steven Julian
No. Okay, good. No. And I don't think about Train Your Dragon because I've never seen that movie. But I did see one. It's a worthy watch. I've heard. Isn't it a Broadway show now, too? Or is that just Spider-Man?
Noah McNeely
No, no. There's a live-action movie. I've not seen the live-action one yet, but I probably will watch it. Yeah.
Steven Julian
I'm going to have to go. First, I'll check if there's. an honest trailer or pitch meeting about it, and then I'll decide if I want to watch the movie. So let me just give you a shout-out. We are so desperate for sponsorship dollars in this. No, we have a lot of fun.
Noah McNeely
We just like to share what we enjoy.
Steven Julian
Yeah, we have a lot of fun. Great topic. I'm glad you brought this. I'm still not going to build a spaceship because I don't have the engineering skills.
Noah McNeely
I would advise you against it.
Steven Julian
But I'm glad other people with billions of dollars.
Noah McNeely
That's a million-dollar problem for you.
Steven Julian
Yeah, exactly. I'm glad there are other people with billions of dollars who just decided, okay, that's what we're going to do, you know. Because it used to be government, now it's a little bit private enterprise. But that's a whole other topic for a whole other show. I want to remind everybody that you can go to productquickstart.com. There's a Contact Us page. Noah, please give him as much information. He'll handle all the NDAs and all that. He's not out to steal your idea. He's out to help you bring your product idea to market.
If you. want help... For podcasting, go to JodySmith.com. And if you want to talk to me about financial advising, just search my name, Steven Julian, because that's all that compliance allows me to say. So for Jody, our producer, and for Noah, our chief genius, this is your slightly knowing co-host, Steven Julian, saying we will catch you next time on Product Genius.