Product Startup

Kapil Kane is the Director of Innovation at Intel and founded Intel’s internal hardware invention incubator. Prior to that he was a Product Design Lead and Manager at Apple. He is also a fellow keynote speaker, and he has done two TedX talks. Today Kapil is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can learn from how the biggest hardware companies i...

Alex Dantas is CEO of CircuitLaunch, one of California’s top hardware accelerator facilities.  CircuitLaunch is an almost 40,000 square foot hardware innovation space and makerspace for inventors, hardware startups, and hardware companies.  Mako Design is also a long-standing partner in the space.  Today Alex is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufactu...

EA Csolkovits has founded multiple product businesses, which in total, brought 75 new products to the market in the health and wellness space. He has been in the business of building hardware teams for 40 years, is the founder of GIVERS University, is a radio host, is an author, and is even a fellow plane private pilot. Today EA is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, product star...

Rich Goldstein is the Founder of Goldstein Patent Law. He has landed over 2,000 patents for his clients over the last 25 years. He is also the author of the book the ABA Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent. Today, Rich is going to share his wealth of knowledge with inventors, hardware startups, and small product manufacturers regarding the types of patents you can obtain for an invention, tips an...

Bryon Bhagwandin is a 20-year medical device entrepreneur with over a half dozen products in the market. He has won a number of awards, including the Top100 in R&D Magazine. He also has a PhD from the University of Washington in Medical Devices and Hardware. Today Bryon is going to share some valuable knowledge for hardware startups, inventors, and small manufacturers on the difference between...

Patrick Daly is the author of the book Just Start Up. He has built over 20 products from invention idea to market over the past 25 years. Today Patrick is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can get their first products sold by selling directly to other businesses such as wholesalers, retailers, distributors, or other brands, and then how to a...

Scott Evans is the Director of Inventionworks at the University of Texas, just a few blocks away from our Mako Design Austin office. Inventionworks is a 23,000 square foot product design and development facility with lots of fun machines and a team of 40 experts to help get student inventions off the ground. In addition, Scott has spent 25 years in the prototyping and product manufacturing industr...

Nic Beique is the Founder and CEO of Helcim, a North American payment processing company that has over 10,000 small business clients, and processes over four billion dollars of transactions per year. In fact, Mako Design is one of his clients. Today Nic is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers should understand the importance of payment processi...

Donna Griffit helps write pitches for hardware startups and small manufacturing companies to raise millions of dollars in funding. Before working with small product businesses, she used to do corporate pitch investment decks for Samsung, Cisco, Microsoft, Google, Visa, and more. She has raised over $300 million for hardware companies alone. Today Donna is going to share some valuable knowledge on...

Steven is the Founder and CEO of FundThrough, a North American accounts receivable firm that has provided billions of dollars in bridge financing to help small businesses scale.  His firm is also a fellow recipient of the Best Places to Work Award.  Today Steven is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can understand how big buyers like wholesal...

Amy is the Founder of Mozzafiato, a large e-commerce health and beauty product store.  She has over 1,000 products on her platform, and it only launched a year ago.  Before this, she spent 20 years as a university executive and an attorney.  Today Amy is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can join with other emerging consumer products to crea...

Will Russell is the Founder of Russell Marketing, a New York marketing agency that specializes in launching new consumer product inventions. He is also a fellow writer with me for Forbes. Today Will is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers learn to identify the main consumer buyer objections when purchasing your product, then how to overcome tho...

Jim Cermak is the Founder of Trade Show University, an organization that educates and consults small businesses on winning at trade shows. He has been both in the trade show industry for 30 years, but also in the consumer product development and marketing business for many years. He also is the host of the Trade Show University Podcast. Today Jim is going to share some valuable knowledge on how in...

Dan Soviero is the Founder of Signature Athletics, a highly successful sports gear company selling products all over the world. Dan is also a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, and like me, started his business while back in school. Today Dan is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can use the power of truly understanding a customer’s pain point, an...

Yohan Jacob is the Founder and President of RetailBound, an agency that helps emerging hardware brands get into major retail stores and sales channels. RetailBound has been around for 14 years and has worked with over 4,000 product companies. Yohan himself has spent 30 years in the industry, including being a major buyer for Sears and Office Max. Today Yohan is going to share some valuable knowled...

Toccara Karizma is the Founder and President of Karizma Marketing which is Hawaii’s leading digital marketing agency. She has spent 14 years in the industry, building many 7 to 9 figure product brands through online marketing and sales. Today Toccara is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can use the internet to sell directly to end-customers....

Taylor Ryan is the founder of Klint Marketing, a mid-size marketing company that has worked with many consumer product companies. He is a six-time startup founder himself as well. Today Taylor is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers should use video to showcase their hardware invention, and some best practices when creating your first product s...

Will Ford is the Co-Founder of LaunchBoom, the world’s largest crowdfunding agency. He also has built multiple successful companies prior to LaunchBoom. Today, Will is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can use smart testing before launching their product on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and how to use that testing for both marketing feedback and...

Luke Levene got into augmented reality and virtual reality back in 2014. He was an early adopter to build both hardware and software to disrupt the real estate industry. Today, he is the Vice President at XR Applied Technologies, a leader in VR and AR integration. Today Luke is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can think about integrating AR...

Joseph Fung is the Founder of Uvaro, one of the leading training platforms in the world on training how to be a great salesperson for your product.  He has spent 20 years as a leader in the field, selling everything from small ticket price items to multi-million dollar single transactions. Today Joseph is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers ca...

Jacob Rothman is the CEO of Platform88, a manufacturer that helps startups with their first production runs in Asia.  Platform88 is a division of Jacob’s 8 manufacturing conglomerate called Velong Industries, which has 1,500 employees.  Today Jacob is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers should factor in manufacturing and product sustainability...

Paul Rowan is the Co-Founder of Umbra, a household product company that designs, manufactures, and sells hundreds of consumer products all over the world. You likely have at least one of their products in your home right now. Paul ran Umbra for 37 years, starting the entire company with just one product. Today Paul is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small man...

Michael Solomon has been teaching marketing for 40 years.  He currently is a marketing professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.  He has written almost 30 books including many marketing textbooks.  His most recent book is called The New Chameleons, and is all about modern marketing lessons.  Today Michael is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small m...

Ben Drury is the Founder of Yoto Play, a connected hardware toy product for kids.  Yoto just recently raised $17 million in Series A financing.  Before that, Yoto launched their physical product via a successful crowdfunding campaign.  Today Ben is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers grow and scale their products after they finish their crowdf...

Brett Fox has a long history of raising millions of dollars for both his own startup and for many other founders.   Brett also sat as an entrepreneur in residence for a major Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm.   Today Brett is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can raise seed funding and venture capital funding - How to eventually raise mil...