Evan Carmichael addresses launching a food product combining existing ingredients into something new. Raw ingredient producers won't develop finished products, but might connect you to partners. Most investors won't sign NDAs, so focus on execution and careful partner selection rather than obsessing over idea theft.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm going to answer a question from one of our forum readers who had a question about a food product that they're trying to sell. So the question here is, "I have a food product that does not exist in the market. It uses an existing product as one of its main ingredients, but then with the addition of at least 4 more items turns into something else that has yet to be patented." and marketed? Obviously the producer of the main ingredient would be the ideal company to sell the idea recipe to, as they can easily use their production and packaging facilities to complete the new product. How would I approach them and protect my idea but, but still be able to tell them what it is? So thanks for the question. A couple of ideas are coming to mind as I read this. The first is usually, at least from my experience, the producers of raw ingredients or raw supplies are are very rarely interested in creating final products. They know their place in the food chain and they don't want to expand. It, it sometimes happens with vertically integrated companies, but it's pretty rare. So chances are the company who makes this ingredient isn't interested in making anything beyond their ingredient. And so they may be a potential partner for you. If they think it's a good idea, they may be able to try to introduce you to some potential partners or investors or other companies that they work with. Who might be able to help, but chances are they wouldn't be interested themselves. Could be wrong, it can happen, but for the most part, companies who produce supplies are rarely interested in then creating final products. So they're, you know, just through the channel, you have the producers, you've got the wholesalers, you got the retailers, and sometimes there's a little bit of crossover, but it doesn't happen that often. So I wouldn't think of them as being the ideal fit as a customer for this. The next thing comes in as to, should I, you know, protect my idea or not? And this is very common. This isn't just for the food business. This is across every entrepreneurial type of business. People are worried that if you tell people your idea, they're going to run with it and steal it and turn it into their own business. And, you know, that can happen, but your chances of success increase as you tell people. So you have to obviously be wary of who you tell. You don't want to go up and tell your direct competition, "Hey, here's this great idea I'm thinking of doing. What do you think?" They have the easiest ability to copy it and run with it themselves. But if you don't tell anybody at all, you're never going to hit success, right? So you have to tell people about it. And this is something that came up with us commonly in the venture capital business, where people wouldn't let me look at their business plan unless we signed a non-disclosure agreement. We never sign a non-disclosure agreement, and it's just part of the business. And you could ask people for non-disclosure agreements if you're really concerned about it, but chances are they're not gonna sign it. So now those companies who wouldn't give me their business plan and they're only asking for non-disclosure agreements, it's gonna make it a lot harder for them to get funding. For me, I'm just trying to raise money for companies, right? I'm not gonna go run and steal steal somebody's idea and try to do it myself. It's not the business I'm in. I'm not interested in that. So by telling me your business plan idea, I see, you know, I've seen thousands and thousands of business plans. I don't care if your business plan, you know, my only interest here is seeing if I can help you raise money for it. I don't want to run your business. It's not what I do. So the same thing with your business idea. You want to go to people who you think could potentially help you, but it's not in their business to do what you're trying to do. So you're getting feedback, you're getting advice, you're getting ideas, maybe you're getting money, maybe you're getting some partnerships, maybe you're getting a team together from the people you're talking to, but you're not going and talking to your direct competition. So that's just a general point for any entrepreneur who's concerned about their idea. If it's something that is patentable, then you can investigate going down that route. You get a patent for it so that your idea is protected, and any, anything like this, you could potentially get a process patent for, so how you combine things. I don't know if it would really work for a recipe, but something worth looking at, I guess, if it's never ever been created before. But at the end of the day, it's really going to come down to execution and picking your partners wisely. So I would be cautious over who I tell the idea to, but you have to tell people the idea. If you want to build this up, you have to get the momentum going, you have to get the execution going, And you have to tell people who can potentially help you with this and not just be fearful that they're gonna take the idea and run. 'Cause most people are locked into their business and they don't wanna expand into completely new ventures that's far outside what they do. So hopefully that helps. For those of you watching, if you liked the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Makes me wanna do more for you. And if you have a question about this video or a question about your own company, I'd love to try to answer it for you. If you wanna leave it in the comments below, I always read those. And that makes my day when I see new comments come in. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.
