Product Startup

Steve Grundahl founded Midwest Prototyping back in 2001. Today, they are one of the biggest private facilities in the United States for additive manufacturing of new physical products. Steve also just hosted the Kansas version of Make48 at their Wichita shop. In this session, Steve is poised to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can use 3D printing an...

Robert Irwin just wrapped up almost 3 years working as the Lead Industrial Designer at Amazon creating the Amazon Shopping Cart. Before that, he worked for many years as a freelancer, with agencies and at large corporations, doing industrial design and leading physical product design teams. Today, Robert is going to share his valuable insight into how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers c...

Rhett Silverstein is the Founder of Hegemon, an agency that represents consumer product manufacturers in partnering with big brands, celebrities, and athletes. Before founding Hegemon, he was a brand licensing agent at Beanstock, and before that a New York lawyer. Today, Rhett is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can license big brands and c...

Blair Severn worked for 4 years as the national manager for Sony Stores.  He managed not just marketing, but also how to best drive product sales in those stores.  Before that he worked for years doing a similar thing at Consumer Gas Appliance stores.  He really knows in-store product sales.  Today Blair is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers...

Jan Cavelle was the Founder and CEO for 20 years of Jan Cavelle Furniture Company which designed, manufactured, and sold their own furniture to wholesalers all over the world. She is also the author of Scale for Success, a book that helps startups go from their first sales to becoming a multi-million dollar empire. Today Jan is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and...

Tom Patterson is the Founder of multiple companies in the hardware space.  1. He owns a number of e-commerce brands and even owns his own manufacturing facility for one of his clothing lines. 2. He also owns an e-commerce agency that helps products scale from zero all the way up to 9-figure online sales.  Today Tom is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small man...

West Stringfellow rose the ranks in the early days of Amazon emerging as Head of Product.  He has also been an executive in innovation at Target, Paypal, Visa, & Rosetta Stone.  He even ran a Techstars incubator for a couple years.  Now West runs HowDo, a completely free education platform to help anyone become a successful entrepreneur.  Today West is going to share some valuable knowledge on...

Bill Carlin runs a massive hardware product warehouse, fulfillment, distribution, and logistics company called ShipMate Fulfillment.  They do everything from receiving your shipment from the manufacturer, to sorting and packing, then getting individual units to your customers, handling all returns, and everything in between.  Simply put, Bill is a great knowledge resource for inventors, startups,...

Victoria Wieck started from nothing and grew her jewelry business to over $500 Million in sales. She has over 30 years of experience in retail sales, and 20 years in selling on TV. She was a weekly host on the HSN and QVC for many years, and now a monthly host on the ShopHQ TV show. She is also host of the Million Dollar Hobbies podcast. Today, Victoria is going to share some valuable knowledge on...

Rob Crowder is the Head of Product at Nutromics, a high-growth medical sensor device company. Rob has over 20 years in the product development field. He has worked for General Electric, PWC, and more. Today Rob is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can learn from the best practices on user journey mapping for medical devices - How to apply th...

Mark Pecota is the author of Crowdfunded, the leading book on crowdfunding. He is also the Co-Founder of LaunchBoom, one of the first and leading crowdfunding agencies, an agency which has raised hundreds of millions for hardware startup clients. He also founded and runs LaunchBoom Academy, an educational platform for going from start to finish of a campaign, and runs the Crowdfunded Summit. Today...

Chrystal Clifton is the Founder of Chrystalize, a company that helps luxury consumer product brands grow and monetize their marketing and brand authority.  She also led the charge on growing a wine brand from nothing to the number eight wine in the world, which is just one accomplishment among 20 years in the premium and luxury product industries.  Today Chrystal is going to share some valuable kn...

Jamie Libregts is the Director of Product Marketing for Reliable Corporation, a 65-year-old manufacturing company that produces high-quality consumer and commercial garment care products all over the world. Today, Jamie is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can leverage marketing to stand out in a competitive environment - both with a new pro...

Joe is both a CPA and a lawyer from the manufacturing sector.  He has worked with many emerging and established manufacturing operations, including a major turnaround of Jefferson Electric, which went on to go public.  Since then, Joe has spent the past 10 years research how to financially scale hardware companies and is now working to launch Dream Exchange, a way for small companies to go public....

James is the author of the book Ramping Your Brand, which helps high-growth consumer product companies accelerate their growth.  He also has his Ph. D. in Anthropology aka Human Behaviour from the University of Wisconsin, and was a Harvard Grad before that.  Today James is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can use best practices in marketing...

Brett is the President of Goodlawyer, a law firm tailored specifically to startups.  Today Brett is going to share some valuable knowledge on business law considerations for when starting and scaling a hardware startup.  There’s two main fields of law for a hardware startup, one, is the intellectual property protection, aka patent law, and the second is business legal issues, things such as partne...

Peter-Paul is the Founder of FrontFundr, one of North America’s top platforms for equity crowdfunding for startups and small scaling businesses.  He is a TedX speaker on Investment Crowdfunding, is a member of the Securities Commission, and is an advisor to both the Private Capital Markets Association and the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association.  Simply put, Peter-Paul is the person to t...

Deirdre is the President of Growth Boss, an e-commerce strategy agency.  Her team helps product startups scale to 6 and 7 figure online product businesses.  Today Deirdre is going to describe which online digital sales platforms are the best for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers that are looking to sell their product directly to end-customers, along with some best practices on those sal...

Jefferey is the Founder and President of The Open People Network, an organization that invests in early stage companies, including many hardware startups. OPN simultaneously runs pitch nights, entrepreneurship communities, and expert panels for startup funding education. Jeffery also has been an Angel Investor for many years. Today he is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, sta...

Mike ran a design firm in Hong Kong back in the 90s, then was a Senior Industrial Design Lead at Sunbeam, before contributing as a Design Manager at Hewlett Packard and, subsequently, spending 10 years with Dell running their entire business desktops design division. He has made over 50 trips to China for manufacturing sourcing and has consulted dozens of hardware startups on overseas production....

Michael spent 22 years with Apple from 1988 to 2010. He is the author of Live from Cupertino, a book about how Apple created their winning messaging. Michael also was the Managing Director of LittleBits, a great hardware startup success story. He is now the Executive Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Indian River State College. Today Michael is going to share some valuable knowledge on ho...

Eric is the President of The Five Echelon Group, a full-stack marketing agency.  He is also the host of the Virtual CMO Podcast which educates businesses on how to maximize their marketing and messaging efforts.  With 30 years as a marketing executive, Eric today is going to tell us how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers should market their new product, and how to cut out all potential r...

Alison is the inventor and founder of Clasp Magic, a consumer product to help users with putting on bracelets one-handed. Alison came up with the invention idea, got it developed, and then hit the ground running by using 5 different product sales channels and strategies to really make sure her product succeeded.  We explore what those channels were, and how to win in them.  Clasp Magic is now sold...

Tom shares valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can license their inventions and products to get into the market - How licensing is actually done properly and professionally to get into the distributors, retailers, or big product brands with your product. You’ll hear Kevin and Tom talk about: How far do you need to develop your product in order to start talking to...

Today Sajag Agarwal talks about how he went from $0 to $2 Million in eCommerce sales for his products, then back down to $0, all because of failed quality control in manufacturing. Now, Sajag runs a quality control company that ensures overseas production runs smoothly from raw materials all the way through to final product loaded onto a container. Sajag joins Kevin Mako to share valuable insights...