Bringing an idea from concept to first sale is a huge undertaking, but can be fun and rewarding if approached the right way. As an IoT founder, the new idea that your product brings to life is 90% of its value. Unfortunately, 90% of the cost of an IoT deployment is in building a framework to implement it, not the idea itself.
Through our experience launching our own businesses (like APEX Pro) we developed a detailed understanding of just how important building an executable plan is. The purpose of the Mapping Meeting is to provide you a framework to launch your product idea. We are passionate about breathing life into ideas!
The Mapping Meeting should accomplish three things:
- Give our team a firm idea of your vision and objectives.
- Allow us to understand the current status of your project.
- Provide us enough information to research relevant competitors and intellectual property.
We usually find that these things are best revealed during a long in-person meeting, but we have had success with video calls as well. On occasion we will travel to you for this meeting, especially if your product or concept is based in a fixed location. This in-depth, semi-structured meeting is meant to provide our team with enough information to develop an engineering plan, time frame, and budget for your project.
The result of the Mapping Meeting will be the technical plan you need to proceed with the development of your product. The Mapping Meeting report is valuable for guiding your next steps, whether you move forward with our team or another.
Mapping Meeting Outcomes:
- Technical Mapping Summary (our review and analysis of your concept. approx. 3 pages)
- Mission Plan (week-by-week plan of action, sometimes paired with a Gantt Chart
- Statement of Work (a contract to move forward, if you approve. approx. 3-5 pages)
In addition to these three documents, we will offer data for comparison including 3 relevant patents, close competitors marketing materials, and examples of our previous projects that utilize similar technology. To generate the three documents mentioned above and this additional information usually requires 30 hours of research from our engineering team and project manager. This time is the reason we charge for the Mapping Meeting – our opportunity cost is billing for those hours for other ongoing projects. The paid Mapping Meeting structure enables us to prioritize your project and generate documents for you in a comprehensive and timely manner.
In most cases, the Mapping Meeting costs around $6,000.
The Statement of Work (SOW) is contract that outlines what moving forward with MOXIE will look like. We typically plan out projects in multiple phases, and will also bill based on Milestones as opposed to hourly. Oftentimes once the SOW is complete and obligations have been met, we will continue to offer engineering services billed hourly, until we can outline the next major milestone for the project, or wrap it up entirely.
Reach out to us to learn more about the mapping process. My email address is [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you!