Halfway through the fall of 2007 and my utility patent had been filed, LegalZoom.com filed the documents forming the LLC partnership for me and my investors with the secretary of state and I had just deposited $23,000 in the business bank account. It was starting to feel like a real business, now it was time to start developing a product. I needed to find a manufacturer and to have some unbiased market research conducted. How inventors in the past ever brought new products to market before the internet and computers is beyond me.

Finding a manufacturer to build my product was a matter of using Google and Thomas Net to locate several possible companies that could do the job. After several emails and a couple of phone calls I decided that Kasper Wire Works in Shiner Texas was the best company for the job. I sent them my crude homemade prototype, some dimensional drawings and talked to the manager of wire production. With in a few weeks first professionally manufactured prototype would be produced.

Now I turned my attention to market  research, one of the inventors books I read mentioned a research group associated with the University of Wisconsin School of Business. Most inventors suffer from being overly paranoid and in the beginning I was no different. Hiring a company associated with a University seemed like a safe bet even if it wasn't the most economical, so I contacted WISC (Wisconsin Innovation Service Center) and decided to hire them to complete a "New Product Evaluation" and "A Licensing Partner Search". At this point I still had I high hopes that I could license my idea and walk away with regular checks hitting my mailbox, wow what a dream that would have been, but then I would have missed on all the fun that was to follow. 

While the market research was in the works, I circled round with Ron Reardon, my patent agent, to see if he could give me some idea of how long the utility patent was going to take to issue. After he contacted the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) he called me and said that the 1st office action was 19 months out and that there could be several office actions before the utility patent would issue, he suggested filing a design patent because they issue so much faster and would give me legal protection much sooner. I agreed and hired him to "get-r-done".

The last thing I did before 2007 came to a closed was hire an accountant. I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any deadlines and got all my financial records in order before the new year rolled in. That's when I realized I made my first mistake. Why did I form a LLC in November 2007 when I could have formed the company in January 2008? If I had waited I wouldn't have had to pay accounting fees totaling $900 for 6 weeks of business and file a 2007 tax return. Make a note of that for your own reference.