In this advice video, Evan Carmichael answers a viewer’s question about how an inventor can partner with a large company. He outlines three approaches, ranking them from least to most preferred. The first, direct outreach, involves contacting the target company’s decision‑maker or responding to open calls, but it offers little leverage because the inventor has no incentive for the company to engage. The second, partnering with a trusted intermediary, leverages someone who already has a relationship with the big firm—such as an agent or a business partner—to make an introduction, thereby shifting power to the inventor. The third, building momentum and creating a movement, focuses on generating public buzz, customer traction, and media attention so that large companies notice and approach the inventor on their own. Carmichael shares personal anecdotes, including a successful shopping‑channel pitch and a missed acquisition where a competitor bought a rival after the inventor had spent a summer preparing a pitch for a different target. He emphasizes that the deal that materializes may differ from the one originally envisioned, often for the better, and urges viewers to take action, avoid paralysis, and engage with his channel.
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How to present your idea to big companies. I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers— love you guys— Bruce, who wrote in to say he's an inventor, he's got a product, he wants to get it out there, and he wants to partner up with this big company that's in his industry, and he wants my advice on how to connect with them. The right deal with the right big company can make or break a business, right? And so it's a, it's a great idea to be able to reach out to these guys, but how you do it is is important, and a lot of people go about it the wrong way and end up not getting the deal that they want. So I'm going to give you 3 different ways to do it in order of my preference, from least preferable to most preferable. The first one is— so number 1, reach out. And this is where you are contacting the company directly. You can find out who the manager is in charge of the division that's similar to what you're trying to do and reach out to them. Or they may have casting calls where they're looking for inventors to come in and pitch their products to them. I remember this is how I got, uh, in the salsa company that I've invested in. We made a DVD and we went on the Shopping Channel. They had an open call to say, "Anybody who wants to pitch to us, come in and one of our buyers will talk to you." And so we pitched to them and we got on the Shopping Channel that way. So sometimes there are these open calls, or you can just reach out to them. Reach out to the person you want to reach, email, phone number. And reach out. The problem that I have here, the reason why I have a problem with this, and this is what most people will do, is because it gives you no leverage, right? You're going to them to say, "Hey, here's this great thing I have, check it out." They have the power, and that, it bothers me. It's hard because there's no incentive, motivation, reason for them to want to give you a deal and give you a good deal because you're going to them. So here are two other ways around it. That can still work, but here are my two more preferred, preferred ways. Number 2 is partner up, and this is where you find someone who already has a connection into that business and you find a way to work together. Maybe they represent you, maybe they introduce you, but basically you have somebody who's already done business with them, who they trust, who they like, who they know, and they say, this is a great company who you have to check out. And so now it's not you on your hands and knees begging, "Please save me, I'm this inventor, please save me." But there's somebody who they respect and look up to and trust saying, "Hey, this guy Bruce, he knows what he's doing. You should connect with him." That's so much more powerful, puts you more in the driving seat. Here's an example. I'm working on a book deal and I have an agent, and my agent is out there pitching to publishers. They have done a lot of work with my agent. They respect her, they like her, they trust her. When she says this is a a good deal, they want to listen to her. And so that puts me in such a better position because now I'm not going to the publisher and say, "Hey, please, Mr. Publisher, do you want to do a deal with me?" So find someone who's already connected to that big company and have them recommend you and make that introduction. The third one is build momentum and create a movement. This is my favorite way to do it. I don't even go out anymore to talk to companies. I have them come to me, and I've done deals with some of the biggest companies in the world— Microsoft, Dell, Google, banks, tons of companies have just found me because they're looking to partner up with and buy from people who are working with entrepreneurs. And if you're doing that, then you're going to come to me because you see all the stuff that I put out there. So put out some similar stuff, build momentum for your business. If you look at companies that get acquired, okay, if that's a long-term goal for you, I don't know if you want to build a business or just sell your idea, but If you want to sell your business, look at how companies get acquired. It's rarely the company going to the bigger company saying, "Hey, will you please buy us? We're desperate, we don't know where to go, we suck, please buy us and save us," right? It's not that kind of pitch. It's usually the big company seeing all the noise that this little company has made and saying, "We need to get this company, we need some of that here," and they reach out. This is the scariest One, because you don't know who's watching you, and you don't know what kind of momentum that you're actually building. You may see a little bit of results from customers and social media, but you don't know if that big company is watching you or not. And you have to keep going, trusting and believing that it's going to work out, even though you have no idea what the end result is going to be. Okay? And that company that buys you, that company that you end up partnering with, may not be the one company that you had in mind. This is a huge problem that I had in my business, okay, my first business. One of the biggest mistakes that I made, okay, this is it, this is the goal. We wanted to partner up with a big company. We saw us being acquired by a big company and we picked the company, say, "This is the company that is going to buy us." And we worked for a whole summer on preparing a presentation and how we're going to pitch to them. And we finally got in a room with them and they were interested, but because, again, I think because we went to them, we had no leverage. They really weren't too interested. And it ended up being another company, one of their competitors, that called us and said, "We want to get into your space. We're interested in maybe buying your business or somebody else." And we had to do a 180 and start working on that deal instead of the one that we spent all this time working on. We didn't expect this deal to come out, and they ended up buying our competitor. We were in the final two, but they bought our competitor and for almost $100 million. That was a deal I missed because I was so focused on this one big company that I didn't go off and think of other opportunities and pay attention to the momentum I was building and that maybe there are other people who are interested in this. So you're gonna have— if you create a lot of— you create a storm, you create a movement, you start creating momentum, you're going to have a lot of people interested in what you're doing for a lot of different reasons. And the deal that you think you're gonna get is never the deal that you actually get, but it could be way better. So those are my 3 ways to reach out to big companies and get your company off the ground. It's great that you're asking it, and start taking action. Don't get so confused at all the options you don't do anything. That's the worst option of all. Start moving forward and believe. For those of you watching the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Let me know what you think, leave a comment underneath, subscribe to the channel, and I will see you guys soon.
