Craig is correct on patent protection. Hardly worth consideration unless you're a mega-corporation that measures your in-house lawyers by the tonnage. The world economy is such that lot of emerging economies that weren't there 10 years ago, are today grabbing and cloning anything in reach, patent or not.

One thing that is hard to appreciate is that an idea for a product (or patent) isn't actually as valuable as we are led to believe from the old success stories we grow up hearing about. The ability to get an idea or product to market and to sustain the operating company is worth much more by normal business standards.

As the inventor or designer, you're not likely to agree with how much the business people claim as their due share, and the only way to combat that is to become an active participant.

After you've been through the process handling some of the business headaches, you may end up agreeing with their claims. :) Still its better to learn hard lessons while ending up richer then to simply believe businessmen.

I'm biased against venture capitalists after studying several enterpreneural courses in grad school.

In my opinion venture capitalists draw people in by giving them big money, and quickly assist them to roll up big expenses for office, personel and advertising. It doesn't take long to get into big financial trouble and they're ready to give you more money in exchange for taking over.

The only time I recommend involving VCs is when the product idea and profits are mediocre and you don't want to risk your own money. If the product really has great potential, you'll do better keeping the corporation in your control.

If you plan to sit back and let the company run on it own, don't reveal that to your business partners. They'll usually be planning to push you out in time anyway so don't make it easy for them. :)

I don't think you'll have any problems with con men as Bannister suggests as long as you go through proper channels. You might think everyone you meet is a con man though... capitalists look out for themselves first.

You can learn a lot dealing with what I call *throw-away* contacts. If I need to learn how a type of business is down, such as how to get aluminim extrusions done, I'll contact some companies I *won't* use and make a list of all the questions they ask and find out everything I can from them. The idea here is that its ok to appear stupid to someone you'll never do business with anyway. Compile the information, figure out the proper answers to common questions and then you're informed and ready to talk to a potential contact. By the time you contact them, you'll sound like a pro. :)

aka j