The Neutrino Donut recently completed a series of review sessions on grants for SBIR, DoD, and a few other places. Commercialization has been a weakness in the process. Let’s review.
- You need commercialization experts on your team. People who have taken a product into the marketplace. Not your friend’s nephew and definitely not the grad student who worked on the project.
- Who are your customers? Who is going to buy your product? If you have to resell them the product next year, will they be around to buy it? Also, a minor point – do they have money to spend on you?
- Who are you selling to? Who approves the sale? Where is purchasing in this process? Who can veto your sale?
- How do you create ongoing revenue? Selling to someone once and moving on does not work.
- Have you considered partnerships with people who already work with your targeted customers?
- Do you need product certifications, such as security with the Amazon Cloud product? This is where the partnership discussion above comes in handy.
- Do you have IP that can be acquired?
- Do you have any competitors? Don’t forget – doing nothing is a competitor.
Find a consulting organization who can help you with the commercialization part. That would be us at The Neutrino Donut, LLC.