I'm kicking around a few ideas en route to entrepreneurship. I'm in the conception stage, but wondering if any here has done the same and would be able to walk me through the process? I.e. patent timeline, design, engineer contacts, prototyping, and manufacturing

Idea to prototype to product to market is an arduous task. I can talk a bit about patents. I am not a lawyer.

A patent is a tool for protecting intellectual property. Usually if someone has an idea for which it is worth protecting in the form of a patent, a person can start off with a provisional patent. A provisional patent gives the patent office a placeholder to start the clock on submitting a non-provisional patent. A provisional patent does not protect your idea, and it will not be published. The provisional will give you time to develop your prototype and research the product market. If you are seeking help, make sure to have NDA's signed to keep your ideas confidential. Usually, you have a year to submit the non-provisional from the date that the provisional was accepted by the patent office. The non-provisional will be made public and it will be used to analyze whether the idea/product has claims that can be protected from infringement. You should work with a good patent lawyer to explain all of the steps in protecting your idea. There are many online resources to help with the process including the uspto website.

You could spend a lot of money trying to protect an idea. If there is not a market to sell to, then it does not make sense to invest $10-50k in patent protection. Talk to folks in the target market to see if your idea solves a problem that people are willing to spend money on to solve before investing large sums of money on patent protection.

If you are granted patent protection, this does not mean that people will be beating down your door giving you money. In many ways, obtaining patent protection is just a small part of the product to market process.

Product development can also be difficult. You need to find a developer/manufacturer that can help you along the way. This can become quite expensive as well. This developer must have a background/history/capability to help you specifically with your product needs.

I've spent the past 10ish years working for startups that have launched hardware+software products to market. AMA. Hardware is hard. You need to have a HIGH degree of certainty that what you're taking into production is what the customer wants. With software, you have the luxury of being able to re-build products based on evolving feedback. Hardware is fundamentally tied to physical constraints and reality, so changing a hardware product design once you're already into the process can be difficult or impossible (depending on the ask).

You need to validate your product idea before even thinking of building anything. Run cheap "experiments" to see if people are interested. Set up a website with a landing page. Do people click into it? Start a kickstarter campaign. There's lots of ways to have a "product."

What problem does your product solve? Is that problem painful or valuable enough for your customer? Are there enough customers with the same problems to justify product development?

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A patent is a tool for protecting intellectual property. Usually if someone has an idea for which it is worth protecting in the form of a patent, a person can start off with a provisional patent. A provisional patent gives the patent office a placeholder to start the clock on submitting a non-provisional patent. A provisional patent does not protect your idea, and it will not be published. The provisional will give you time to develop your prototype and research the product market. If you are seeking help, make sure to have NDA's signed to keep your ideas confidential. Usually, you have a year to submit the non-provisional from the date that the provisional was accepted by the patent office. The non-provisional will be made public and it will be used to analyze whether the idea/product has claims that can be protected from infringement. You should work with a good patent lawyer to explain all of the steps in protecting your idea. There are many online resources to help with the process including the uspto website.

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If you want to show your "product" in public, you need to have a provisional patent in place. If you do show your product in public without protection, it can be considered prior art and therefore, not patentable.