127: Go From Idea to Finished Physical Product with Filip Valica
Filip Valica from The Product Startup is a mechanical engineer who runs a podcast where he interviews small business owners and Shark Tank winners about Do It Yourself product development. He discusses the path you need to take to go from an idea for a physical product, to\xa0selling it in a marketplace. (Test your idea quickly, make a prototype, validate the\xa0market, iterate, etc.) He also touches on\xa0different ways to make money with physical products, from Amazon FBA, to selling on your own website, tweaking existing products from suppliers, and even licensing.\n\nDisplay TranscriptRobert Plank: Filip Valica is the founder of The Product Startup, a site that provides a step by step blueprint to aspiring product creators wanting to bring their ideas market. Through interviews with successful small business owners, inventors and Shark Tank winners, he explores the intersection of his interest and experience, which is Do It Yourself product development. Filip, glad to have you on the show today.\n\nFilip Valica: Awesome. Thanks for having me on the show, Robert.\n\nRobert Plank: Cool, so in addition to what we just talked about, what is it exactly that you do?\n\nFilip Valica: By day I'm a mechanical engineer and an engineering manager. I work for companies to help take their products to market. Then at night I turn into a superhero you've never heard of to help other people kind of do the same with their own personal ideas.\n\nRobert Plank: Cool, so like with who and with what?\n\nFilip Valica: In my day job I work with, most of the companies I work with are in oil and gas, and some are in utilities and emergency vehicles. When I first got out of school, I worked for IBM and then I worked for a really tiny company. I went from working with like a 300,000 person company to like a mom and pap with 20 people. That 20 person company developed these products for, they basically connected the engine of an emergency vehicle and create a ton of electrical power to power like the Jaws of Life or other types of tools that a firefighter might use to get you out of a car.\n\nRobert Plank: That's cool. You take your mechanical engineering knowledge and someone has an idea, and you help them get it out there, get it patented, all that good stuff?\n\nFilip Valica: In a way. I'm doing it on my website and I'm not working with individuals right now. It's just a site where I put a bunch of information. It was a labor of love, so you could say. Our daughter was born about 16 months ago and the day that she was born I realized that you know what? If I don't get off my rear end and follow my passion and do something, then I'm going to wake up one day and she'll be in college and I'll be regretful. That day I basically started working on creating a bunch of content for a site and I launched the site in January of this year. Then I created a podcast in March, where I interview people that have been able to turn their ideas into products themselves. Yeah, the rest is history, so to speak. It's really just a information based site and a place where you can go to find how to take the next step if that's what you're looking to do.\n\nRobert Plank: Well, cool. Let's talk a little bit about that. As far as the site that you created and the content that you've created yourself plus the guests you have on, what's the most interesting, I guess, topic or case study that comes to mind right now?\n\nFilip Valica: Yeah, so I think most people will write in and say, "Hey, I have this really cool idea and I don't know how to take it to market" or, "What's the next step that I need to take? I've got a sketch of something and maybe I need to go and patent it, but what do I do?" To them it's probably the same thing that you guys have talked about in your other episodes. It's you really want to test your idea as quickly as you can, creating a concept prototype and validating the market, validating the customers. There's a process of all of this on the site for free,