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Ask HN: Any product inventors or creators here?
9 points by hi21cn3 on Aug 15, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 30 comments
Hi, I’m Cat, creating a new start-up to make it quicker and easier for anyone to become a product inventor or creator.

Ever had an idea for a product then see it advertised years later? It’s annoying! If the path to invention didn’t seem so out of reach, maybe things could have been different.

I’m curious to learn:

1) How many people on HN have invented or created products? Did you take it to market yourself or license it? How did it go? 2) Did you use AI or other technology in the invention or creation process?

With Open Innovation, product licensing opportunities, and the rise of AI to assist with research and development, it feels like we could be entering a new era of invention and creation, an exciting time!

Currently, I’m collaborating with a design agency back in Scotland on a new packaging product. We’re diving into the entire invention process, identifying bumps and pain points, and exploring how tech can streamline the journey for others.

Thank you for input!

PS – I’m also on the lookout for a technical co-founder. Hmu if interested at linkedin.com/in/catdivers/



I've designed, developed, and released multiple video games, and designed several (not yet unreleased) board games.

One of my board game designs is licensed by another company. Another game was a finalist in a popular annual board game design contest, although it hasn't lead to any publishers licensing it yet.

I have not yet decided to bring any board games to market myself, although I've been tempted due to struggles with finding publishers willing to license my game designs.

For the video games, they went alright. Some were played millions of times, but they were also free games so I didn't make any money directly from them. One video game was a finalist in a contest and won me about $5,000 worth of prizes.

Another one was a first place winner in a game contest which got me a $5,000 check (it was a small Flash game I made in about 20 hours worth of work, so pretty good ROI there).

The games I released and charged money for, so far, haven't made a whole lot of money. But I also didn't know hardly anything about marketing back then either (and I'm still not great at it).

I've played around with A.I. to help with generating some ideas for features or items to add to my games, and I tried using it to help code a couple simple systems as an experiment (like something that handles the rumble in controllers), but I'm back to using pretty much no A.I. I found myself fighting the A.I. to get it to generate what I wanted without issues too much to be worth it for anything more than something really simple.

A couple times since I have asked it a technical question and it's helped give ideas on how to resolve the issue, though. So it's not like it has no use for me, but it hasn't been super useful yet. I can't wait until I can get away with just specifying the design of a product, like a product manager, and it comes up with the rest though. That seems pretty far away still, though.


That's really interesting. Congrats on getting a board game licensed, winning contest and releasing other games! What types of challenges or feedback did you encounter when facing difficulties in finding publishers for your other designs?


Here's something that I wished existed. After getting a 3D printer, and learning modeling software, I'm constantly creating "stuff" that doesn't exist in any store, but satisfy needs I've had around the house. Now there are 3D model hosting sites where you can sell downloads of your model file. And there are 3D printing farms where you can have them crank out and ship you any quantity of your models. I want that combined into one B2B entity where I can place a listing for one of my products on something like Ebay or Amazon. Then when a customer orders it, have it fulfilled by the 3D print farm company, package it up with my product instructions, and ship it out to the customer (and once volume hits a certain level, maintain inventory at Amazon for example). They collect payment and send me the difference between my sell price and their manufacturing price, with automatic price breaks when volume hits a specific level.

Objects that I've designed and 3D printed for myself include things like Dremel tool attachments, dust port attachments for my router table, nut/washer holders that you screw on the bottom of a table to hold the nut in place (so you can move a top post from one location to another as needed without reaching under the table to hold onto the nut), things like that. Some small items, some larger mechanical devices.

The closest I've seen to this is some woodworkers on Youtube run their own store and have a small number of 3D printers for cranking out the products they sell. I want something like this scaled up for any designer.


thingverse and their printing partners do that. you can buy most designs. But 99.999% of the models there are complete garbage that people print when they force themselves to use the printer they have no use for.

I have some that are fully parametrized (done in openSCAD) so that the buyer have sliders to adjust whatever they want before purchase. But all the time people just "remix" my design (after downloading the non-parametrized STL file) and print themselves, which is fine (designs are all gpl3/c-left)

All that said, i personally think doing artisanal-volume items with plastic is completely wrong. Plastic have no advantage over wood. None. zero. save from being a commodity that won't halt your factory production while you wait for the right wood in large quantities, which do halt factories very often.

If you don't run a factory non-stop, don't use high-volume methods like continuous extrusion, have no need for soft materials like silicon or things full of infinite holes... a 3axis mill and wood is a much better choice for quality. Not even considering the green arguments whatsoever.


This is a legit good idea. I would use this. There's a huge variety of things that would fit this category.


You may already know, but Slant 3D (print farm) do _some_ of this with Etsy and Shopify, and have an API for further integrations.

(I am working on a product myself, but it would likely have assembly needs beyond what Slant 3D do, and at any rate I am not in the USA)


How do you research and evaluate different manufacturing and assembly options? Is that difficult and something AI could perhaps help with?


That's a great idea - interesting to see Slant 3D in this space! What do you make of their offering?


Hey guys! We're engineers/designers from France, and we've built the Ultimate DIY Battery that you can repair and refill!

Check our founder video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsuW1NPkvNk

And a presentation of the battery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLoCihE0eIA

Features are:

- Ride Sustainably with the World's First Repairable Battery

- Refillable in 5 minutes (just buy $150 worth of new cells every 3 years or so, when they're depleted)

- Be Worry-Free thanks to the Fireproof Casing! There's been waaaaaay too many lithium fires!

It's launching as a Kickstarter in September and there is an offer for early-backers here https://get.gouach.com/1 for a 25% discount on the battery!

Follow us here: https://www.instagram.com/gouach.batteries/


This is neat, congrats on the invention! Did you get patents? Is the plan to supply or license it to some e-bike kit or e-bike manufacturers?


Thanks so much for your comment!! Appreciated!

Yes, it took us 1.5 years of R&D and we filed 5 patents! We're either licensing the tech or selling the batteries, depending on what each assembler / manufacturer prefers!


I market a physical product, but it's a weekend business. Something like a guitar pedal. No patents or other IP -- too expensive, and the protection is limited anyway. It's an analog circuit based on textbook design elements. No advertising, just word-of-mouth on web forums, and a web page. I build and ship from my basement.

The idea came from the fact that I'm a musician myself and tied into the community of players, who share their experiences and pain points on web forums. And an intimate understanding of electronics, physics, and small scale manufacturing.

All of my other inventions belong to my daytime employer -- about 20 patents so far. Since I'm plugged into a large business, I have access to market intelligence and at the same time a good understanding of the technical side of things. Plus, I can prototype virtually anything, so I'm less dependent on permission or having a formal plan to start making something.


That's cool! Why just a weekend business? Sounds like you have a good product there. Can I also ask, clearly you have some great ideas, skills and experience, why not go it alone full-time without the employer?


I invent something practically every day and I record the best ideas for the future. For example, one of my inventions from the 2000s was car displays on discs which I tried to implement and even bought a car for, but nothing came of it due to the toxicity of the people I was working with at the time. The idea was stolen, sold, implemented, and stolen again multiple times while I was trying to find co-founders. The ideas I didn't talk about were never realized, while those I did mention were immediately copied, including an installation at Burning Man. I think I was ahead of my time, before AI became mainstream. I don't use AI much now, but I think soon AI will replace all our old technologies.


So sorry to hear about your idea getting stolen. Whay are you recording ideas for the future? What's stopping you from acting on them now?


I invented and brought to market a physical product. There is some 'AI' in the product, but all the tech was hand-crafted. We sold the IP on post-covid when were having huge difficulty raising further investment.

(You may also want to take a look at factory.london that I am involved with, with the aim of easing the creative journey!)


Thanks Damon, did you apply for patents and how was the selling journey?


Yes, we did get patent(s). And it/they probably helped sell the business, and ticked off something on my bucket list, though I'm not convinced that they had much other value!

Selling the product was OK, though hampered by our product being novel enough that it didn't fit well into any of the existing evalation schemes. The product area is very regulation and 'points' driven.

(Or did you mean selling the IP?)


Do you mind sharing the approximate cost of getting the patent(s)?

It's something I want to do, but it seems expensive. For example, I read that "In 2013 it cost $33,000 to file a software patent." at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29115703


Did you not sell the IP with the business/product? Be good to hear more about your creation. Would you want to do it again? If so, would you do anything differently?


We started selling the product (a first manufacturing run) before subsequently selling the IP (post covid).

Would I do it (or something similar) again? Yes, and I am keeping an eye out for new opportunities (large and small) while doing a part-time PhD...

Lots of things I'd try to do better, obvs: always learning!


Infomercials have promised this kind of service for decades.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution of something good is hard and fairly unique. If it weren't, then there's little or no defensibility to it and probably not a good business.


Oh really? I'm from UK and never seen infomercials about taking an idea to market - can you please share some examples? I hear there are a few rip-off merchants out there that ask for tens of thousands up front even if your idea is not a good one.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7NrgUqxh4c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5620tI5nms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1zFTIEO3qo

There are zillions of them.


Thanks for sharing. We never had them in the UK (not that I can remember). Remind me of the no-win no-fee legal advice ads, something icky about them!


I design and build GPS-synched moon phase clocks (“LunaKron”) & other electronic novelties, and sell them on Etsy.

I’ve consulted with ChatGPT when I need help choosing materials and with some techniques.


Those LunaKron clocks are so cool! Do you do this as a full-time job or side hustle? Looked into mass-market manufacturing and distribution?


Thanks! It’s a side hustle.

Haven’t looked into scaling up.


Where can we follow this/you?


I'll share progress here, otherwise you can follow me on linkedin (OP) - although it's mostly full of my UK non-profit stuff.




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