Bootstrapping a New Technology? 360
Posted
by
kdawson
from the research-in-motion dept.
from the research-in-motion dept.
djk1024 writes "I've just filed for a patent on a new approach to motion capture that is simple, cheap, easy, accurate, and portable. It's RF-based, accurate to 1 mm, and simple enough that a sophisticated hobbyist could build one in a couple weekends from plans and standard electronics. So now what? I quit my job and have been working on this full-time for the past couple of years; now I'm out of money so can't continue development on my own. I'm also not an electrical or RF guy so I can't carry out my own independent development on the electronics. I'm quite frustrated at this point. I've been in the software development field for over 30 years and have gone through a large number of startups, but always just as the head techie, and always as part of a team. This doing it alone sucks. I would love some advice on how best to go forward."
Open source? (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now, artists from a lot of different domains can participate in open-source culture. There's open source music, open source art, open source writing, etc. The one 'media' where creators cannot participate in open source is movement -- dance, martial art, acting, miming, etc -- because there's no cheap way to digitize their work. If you open sourced your work you would change things forever. You would be like the guy who invented the computer or the printing press. I know the American dream is to invent something in your basement and become a millionaire, and I'd like that for you, but maybe things are changing in this day and age.
Contradictory? (Score:4, Interesting)
"RF-based, accurate to 1mm" .... "I'm not an electrical or RF guy"
So if you don't know the radio technology, how can you know that it is accurate to 1mm and be able to adequately describe the patent for the application?
Rondam's top ten Geek Business Myths (Score:5, Interesting)
Myth #1: A brilliant idea will make you rich.
Myth #2: If you build it they will come.
Myth #3: Someone will steal your idea if you don't protect it.
Myth #4: What you think matters.
Myth #5: Financial models are bogus.
Myth #6: What you know matters more than who you know.
Myth #7: A Ph.D. means something.
Myth #8: I need $5 million to start my business
Myth #9: The idea is the most important part of my business plan.
Myth #10: Having no competition is a good thing.
The actual blog has much more in-depth explanations of the myths. And, it has a special Bonus Myth!
SVASE (Score:2, Interesting)
Read "The Art of the Start", and look at www.svase.org.
Re:Sell your patent (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I have one question and please don't take this the wrong way: if you system is so simple it would take only a few weekends to build yourself, why is it taking you so long to develop? Many hobby kits have versions, as do essentially all complex electronic components. If you just filed for a patent you should be patent-pending soon, which means even if you sell kits or samples the users of your kits/samples will not be able to mass produce all they want - patent pending alone is enough to bring up and win a court case. Also, you don't really need a patent to copyright or license your idea, so why not do that now?
Re:Great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Great idea.
With RF, you also eliminate issues with hiding the normal lights/reflectors with clothing/costumes, etc. As I understand at the moment, motion capture is done with an actor in a leotard to avoid these problems. With RF, you open up new possibilities of filming a real actor in real costume, and being able to motion detect them in real time.
Using RF for mo-cap is not a new idea. Generally speaking, previous forms of mocap that used RF (in a variety of ways) has had problems with reliability, working with multiple actors in a volume, interference, and an already very mature toolset for performing optical capture. With optical, trackers are dirt cheap and scaling up to support more actors is mainly a matter of more processing power and sometimes adding more cameras.
I hope for his sake that his capture system is thoroughly tested in real world situations (like the fifty or so stage crew all using walkie talkies and everybody having cell phones running) and accounted for all the variables. If he hasn't, he'll easily be looked over.
Re:One question (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod parent up.
Our company is a contract electronics design house. We see all sorts of people come to us to implement their patents - most of which are usually about things that they barely understand. In most cases those patents aren't worth the paper that they're printed on.
It never ceases to amaze me when a client comes through the door with a 'valid' patent that contains a description of something that is standard practice within the industry. Then they get all upset when we show them another product from 10 years earlier that does what their 'invention' does, but better, cheaper and more reliably.
This is the scariest thing about the kind of software patents that are getting granted these days. The 'novelty' that they contain is hardly novel within the practicing industry. Fair enough that the truly clever inventions are granted, but the vast majority are just not novel, and in many cases are so close to prior art that they should never have been granted. And that's not even going down the 'obviousness' path.
Re:Rondam's top ten Geek Business Myths (Score:3, Interesting)
Lol. A Ph.D DOES mean something. Get real.
And the awesome response from the article, which I completely agree with...
Myth #7: A Ph.D. means something.
Reality: The only thing a Ph.D. means is that you're not a moron, and you're willing to put up with the bullshit it takes to slog your way through a Ph.D. program somewhere. Empirically, having a Ph.D. is negatively correlated with business success. This is because the reward structure in academia is almost the exact opposite of what it is in business. In academia, what your peers think matters. In business, it's what your customers think that matters, and your customers are (almost certainly) not your peers.
[UPDATE: this is not to say that getting a Ph.D. is useless. You can learn a lot of useful stuff by getting a Ph.D. But it's the knowledge and experience that you gain by going through the process that is potentially valuable (for business endeavors), not the degree itself.]
Regarding the original poster...the most important component of any startup is not the technology but the business plan. You fail to mention if you've even got a business plan, which tends to suggest you don't. So stop, go back to work, find a business angel or someone who knows how to run a business, and then convince them to give your idea a try.
Re:ok (Score:5, Interesting)
I managed a +100mil real estate portfolio and my parents made me (paid for) take a lot of courses in economics, business law and accounting, (they had a very straight forward, cogent argument: "if you ever want to see any of our money you'd better know how we got it and how you can hang onto it".) Also I'm in a situation similar to the guy who posted the story.
My education and business experience lends a few additional points to the parent. * Never take on your lawyer or your accountant as business partners. More generally, and this should even apply to your financial backers, but it's not always feasible, never give an interest in your company to another company, or, someone whose job it is to act in your interests, such as a lawyer or accountant. More generally, try not to place your trust in others when the trust you've placed in them creates a conflict of interest. Personally, I believe in "partners" and agents who have conflicting interests and watch one another as potential antagonists. * Try to keep your initial outlays low. It's very realistic to think you'll realize no more than 10% of your outlay if you're forced to sell off a failed business. * Don't trust a handshake, get it in writing, and, make sure it's an enforceable contract.
My own personally gleaned bit of advice is to always pay for professional services, hiring reputable firms whose errors & omissions insurance premiums are paid up, then, if they screw up, sue the bastards for all they're worth. Really, I'm deadly serious on this one. Business is a dog eat dog world. Good luck.
Re:Sell your patent (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, perhaps I used Copyright incorrectly. Here we have "è'--ä½oeæ©" which is automatically issued at the time of release of any created work. I could create software, hardware, an image, a document, an audio recording, it doesn't matter as soon as I create it and release it somehow I automatically get my rights to it. If someone were to copy it, regardless of weather or not I held a patent, I could raise legal action against them (unless I had already released it under a particular license which granted them use).
Re:Open source? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well in this case he may be able to start making money immediately.
Camp out as a street performer. Tape RF emitters to your fingertips. Connect your camera or whatever to your laptop. Turn up laptop speakers to 100%. Rest your hands on a table and start playing the piano with your fingertips and no actual piano.
I'd imagine that it would be very easy to go from knowing which fingers look depressed to producing tones.
Extend it to rapidly decelerating drumsticks making thunk noises and you could have a thing going. Drumming on air.
Paul Graham (Score:3, Interesting)
If I had something like this, I would call up Paul Graham at Y Combinator [ycombinator.com]... This is the sort of thing he (angel) invests in.
Disclaimer: I don't have a business relationship with those guys. I just find his articles really insightful and interesting. You might too. Start with this one The 18 mistakes that kill startups [paulgraham.com] ... Being a "Single Founder", like yourself, is his first point.
Good luck! I hope you find a lot of success in this
Re:One question (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sell your patent (Score:3, Interesting)
if you get a copy of my schematic and build the actual circuit
Wouldn't that be a derivative work? I mean it might not be if you followed a carefully monitored clean room reverse engineering process. But if you did literally take the schematic and build the circuit, wouldn't that be derivative?
Re:Help will be required (Score:2, Interesting)
Umm - no.
Low cost - 1mm accuracy - there are _lots_ of applications.
Robot hoovers that don't random-walk - but navigate.
Game industry - the wii would be lots better if it could have absolute
position information.
Sports analysis - analyse your swing/... .....
Robot lawnmowers, parking aids (to your garage), fork lift navigation,
Re:One question (Score:1, Interesting)
He didn't; do a patent search. Not only is there nothing under his name there isn't anything that sounds like this recently filed. So unless he literally just put it in the mail then the story is BS just to sound good to get on the slashdot front page.
I mean seriously, "a sophisticated hobbyist could build one in a couple weekends" ... " can't carry out my own independent development on the electronics."..."the software development field for over 30 years "
Nothing makes sense here. I can't believe people fall for this stuff.
You need partner (Score:3, Interesting)
This is late in the thread, this post will probably not be modded up. I hope you read it nonetheless.
You need PARTNERS! There are four planks to a well-run business, and they are: 1) Technical, 2) Operations/support, 3) Legal, 4) Finance.
You need to 1) Produce the product, 2) Support the product and the staff who do 3) CYA, 4) Count the money made.
It really is as simple as that. Since you provide #1, you either need to provide 2, 3, and 4 yourself, or find others who can provide them. I was in a position like you some 8 years ago. I had some interesting technology for application development that I thought was useful. I tried to go it alone for a year or two, and had only limited success.
But then I took a community business training class called "V3", run through my local college, that taught me the basics of running a startup business. They actually had a worksheet that you could use to evaluate the likelihood of success of your business. It was hard to swallow to realize that my odds of success were somewhere around 8%.
So I realized that I needed partners. And partners I found. Good partners, that, between the 4 partners, actually covered all four bases very nicely. And it's been a very well balanced company - not a single down quarter in 6+ years, and 40% to 70% annual growth.
We chose to grow organically rather than go the sudden rush/VC route, and we've done well with it.
Find partners who are decent, who you can trust, who are motivated and professional. If you do, you'll never regret it.
I wish you the best of luck.
Re:Help will be required (Score:3, Interesting)
It depends on what you are tracking.
If you are tracking the rotation of a wheel or a hinge in the robot itself, then you probably need that high accuracy. The problem of this kind of tracking devices (e.g. measuring rotation of a wheel to get the distance traveled, or a speed difference to try and make out directions or direction changes) is that your robot is basically trying to navigate an environment blindly, guided by a known map.
However, if you are tracking the movement of the robot relative to it's environment, then 1 mm tracking is generally accurate enough. It will do anything from navigation to avoiding collisions - if you are less than 1 mm from a target you're usually way too close unless you are actually aiming for it, and if aiming then the last part could be done by e.g. touch sensors. And then you are really close to how humans do it. The eye for roughly figuring out where you are, directing movements of arms and legs to get your body in position, and then use touch sensors for small movements. Such as typing on a keyboard, where you use touch and some motor sensors to navigate blindly over the keys. But getting your hands to that keyboard is done using your eyes looking at both the position of the keyboard and your hands, bringing the two together.
What I'm typing here may not be what the patent application is about exactly, as there is no link provided. And I believe US patent applications are even kept secret until issued, not sure about that though. At least when the patent is issued, anyone skilled in the art is supposed to be able to build a working sensor using the information given in this patent application. And this, by the way, is totally legal. You are just not allowed to sell such a device.
Re:Sell your patent (Score:3, Interesting)
If you release it and don't tell someone it's patent pending, they can copy it and won't have to pay royalties till the patent comes out. If you put patent-pending on it, you can go to them for retrospective royalties once your patent comes out.
No, it's not. You can't copyright the functional aspects. In fact, your schematic is just barely copyrightable itself, since its primarily functional. But you put some creativity in how you arrange the pieces and things like that, so you manage to clear the copyright hurdle. While I'm not aware of specific case law, I think it's questionable whether a raw netlist would be copyrightable. That is just the raw facts of which terminals are connected to which nodes. In any case, the functional facts of which pieces to use and where they connect are not copyrightable, so your circuit is not a derivative work.
If I buy from you a book, and make a copy of said book, that is OK.
No, as belmolis pointed out, that would be copyright infringement.
But if I then sell the copy, then I have infringed on your copyright license to me.
Again, no. When was the last time you saw a license agreement on a book? You have purchased a copy of the book. You don't need a license, because you have no reason to make a copy of the book. You just read it. The reason software comes with licenses is because you make copies of the program on your hard drive and in memory.
"Bunny" Huang (Score:3, Interesting)
Talk to Bunny:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/
Bunny is the guy who did the incredible XBox reverse engineering way back when. Since then, he's gone on to work for the Chumby guys. He loves open source, is brilliant, has huge experience getting hardware built, and is a pretty cool guy.
Take a look at his blog and read about his experience in China, lining up manufacturers for the Chumby. Also, his discussion of the Shenzhen hardware/software wizards is mind-bending....
Entrepreneurs! Entrepreneurs! Entrepreneurs! (Score:3, Interesting)
You have to relax and take a step back. Get yourself out of the day-to-day in order to reevaluate your position.
I would recommend you this book:
Little Black Book of Entrepreneurship [amazon.com]
BTW I'm not affiliated or anything. It's just is the best book about the matter I've ever read.
Do you need short term or long term help? (Score:2, Interesting)
For a short term solution, I can help you get funding that will probably take you through the next 12 to 18 months if that will help.
For a long term solution, you need to start making contacts with hardware makers and license it out. Unless you know how to run a business, you don't want to run the business. Let someone else run the business and send you a check. One key is to retain a good contract lawyer to look over your contract. A lot of companies will screw you six ways from Sunday if you let them and you can bet that they have lawyers writing their contracts for them. The better companies will fix any contract "problems" your lawyer finds.
Also, watch ABC's Shark Tank (on Sundays or on the ABC site). Watch the show to learn what the investors are looking for and why they offer the deals they offer. One of the lessons you learn each week is: do you want to make $1M or do you want to run your company into the ground. When they ask for 51% of the company they aren't being greedy (well, except for the bald guy in the center). They know that they know how to run the business in a way that will make money and that the business owner does not.