FAQ Category: For Inventors & Startups | MAKO Design + Invent

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Can you help someone go from just an Idea all the way to Store Shelves?

Absolutely!  That’s literally been our motto for over 15 years.  Everything that we do here is intended to streamline the product development process so that literally anyone, from any walk of life, can turn their product idea into a successful business.  We do all of the heavy lifting in the back end, so that you can focus, through our advice and guidance, on getting your product to market.  Give us a call to learn more, it’s really quite amazing what we have developed over the years all to help inventors and startups.

I’m interested and I would like to learn more. What is the first step?!

Contact us for a free consultation, like right away! If you’re sitting on something, the worst thing you can do is procrastinate – No matter what you decide to do with your idea, at least do something with it! We are always more than willing to talk through what you are looking to do, and advise you the best and most practical way of doing it. Even if you don’t want to use our services or even if we don’t think it is likely to work, we’re still happy to help where we can as we love anyone who is helping to bring inventions to the world.

How do I spot a Licensing Company or Invention Submission Scam?

Unfortunately, there are groups out there that try to rip off inventors, and we can give you the 3 simple steps to ensure that you don’t become one of them:a) Right off the bat, be wary of any organization that uses ‘royalties’ or ‘licensing’ as a sales buzzword. b) If they are offering royalty agreements, licensing deals, or something like this, ask what their success rate is. They will likely either try and deflect the question, or they will have already been sued and thus legally have to disclose the rate. If it is less than 10%, turn right around (and 10% even seems low!). c)If they pass the first two, ask them what specific industrial design software they use. Most of the bogus companies use low-end computer game software to make fake designs of what the product might look like, not the actual engineering of it. If they are not using AutoDesk, Solidworks, AutoCAD, Rhino, or ProE (the 5 industry standard software providers for product engineering), then back away.

Why do you focus on home inventors and small business?

Simply put, we love the small-time inventor, and we have good reason… While all of the other development firms were scrambling to take a piece of the big-bucks from the large product corporations, we decided to go against the profit-driven grain and focus on the home-inventor with a small budget. Our philosophy was to streamline and simplify the product development process so that we could offer the same caliber of service for a fraction of the cost, and thus make it affordable for a regular person to get a product to market. At first, the competitors shrugged us off; however, what they didn’t realize is that 1) 40% of products are derived from home inventors, 2) Home inventors put way more thought into their product idea than a corporate employee, as it is something they truly and deeply care about, and 3) Regular people are the ones thinking of the best ideas because they are the ones who are identifying a real solution to a real problem in their own day to day lives… So, what happened when MAKO Invent took this route? Within a matter of only months, MAKO Invent saw explosive growth. A huge and unforeseen need was out there, and now that need had a realistic option available. By 2008, MAKO Invent became the largest invention development firm in North America catering to small business and home inventors, and we are quickly overtaking the US (it will just be a matter of time).