If you're developing a product you plan to profit from, being protective of the idea comes naturally.

I get it, and to a point it's smart.

But after years of helping hardware entrepreneurs, I can tell you that secrecy kills more products than theft does.

Everything that moves a product forward requires showing it to someone.

You can't validate demand with customers you refuse to talk to, and you can't get expert feedback on a design nobody is allowed to see.

So the overly secretive founder ends up developing in isolation. And isolation is where the expensive mistakes happen.

Most founders are also guarding the wrong thing: the idea.

They won't describe the product, won't show the design, and won't ask questions about it.

But the thing actually worth guarding is a proven product. And you can never prove your product by keeping it a secret.

An unproven idea has almost no value to steal, because nobody knows which ideas will succeed until the market gets tested.

It doesn't matter how many products someone has launched. They still can't tell you which idea will win without testing it.

And anyone actually capable of executing your idea already knows this.

They're not going to drop their own projects to gamble years and money on an idea with zero proof behind it.

It's a different story once your product is proven.

That's when theft actually happens.

Your own factory is the easiest place for it to start, since they hold your design and watch your reorders grow.

You've done the risky part for them, and the proof is sitting right there in their production data.

But the risk isn't limited to your factory.

Once your product is succeeding on the shelves, that success is visible to everyone, including companies you've never met.

Cloning happens to successful products, not napkin sketches.

So here's how to match your protection to the actual risk.

Early in development, NDAs are all you need.

Engineers, contractors, and suppliers will usually sign them, they cost almost nothing, and your design is still changing too fast for a patent to capture anyway.

When you're ready for serious market validation, meaning you'll show the product publicly and start pre-selling, that's when you file a provisional patent application.

It's inexpensive, and it gives you patent pending status for a full year.

Just be sure you file before any public disclosure, because in most countries outside the US, showing your product first can cost you your patent rights.

Then let that year of real market data make the patent decision for you.

If demand shows up, you convert to a full patent with the evidence to justify the cost.

If it doesn't, you just saved thousands of dollars patenting a product nobody wanted.

A patent is real protection against cloning, but know its limits.

You won't be filing in every country, and no US patent will stop a Chinese company from selling copies in China.

So the real guarding happens in how you set up your manufacturing.

Don't hand any single company your complete product unless it's a partner you've built real trust with.

Split the work between suppliers, and control the sourcing of your most critical components yourself, so no one else ever holds the full picture.

In the meantime, get all the help and feedback you need, because sharing your design reveals far less than you think.

Think about a smartphone. It's got a CPU, a touchscreen, a battery, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, an accelerometer, a camera, and a speaker.

That list could describe hundreds of completely different products. Nothing in it tells you it's a smartphone.

Your product works the same way. Its components are just building blocks, and sharing them, or asking questions about them, reveals almost nothing about what you're actually building.

The same goes for your enclosure.

For most electronic products, the enclosure is simply a housing for the electronics: a molded shell, a display window, and maybe a few buttons.

Unless the enclosure itself is your invention, getting help with it doesn't give away anything proprietary.

None of this is what gets patented.

If your product ever earns a patent, it will cover whatever makes your product unique, and that's almost never the electronics design or a standard enclosure.

When it comes to asking for help, the main thing you need to protect is your unique selling proposition: the specific problem you're solving, who you're solving it for, and why they'll pay for it.

That's what you don't want your competitors to see.

Plus, if you plan to patent and haven't filed a provisional application yet, don't publicly disclose the novel part of your solution either.

But that patentable piece is typically just one small part of your product, and in most cases you can get all the help you need without ever revealing it.

The flip side is also true, though. Don't be overly secretive, but also don't blast your design all over the open internet.

Anything you post publicly stays searchable forever, by anyone, including your future competitors.

And when the time comes to share the whole picture, concept included, that's exactly what NDAs are for.

Talk soon,

John Teel
Predictable Designs