060: How to Professionally License Your New Product

Product Startup

Jan 19 2021 • 39 mins

Tom shares valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can license their inventions and products to get into the market - How licensing is actually done properly and professionally to get into the distributors, retailers, or big product brands with your product.

You’ll hear Kevin and Tom talk about:

  • How far do you need to develop your product in order to start talking to potential licensing partners and brands?
  • Protecting your intellectual property, and when to do it in the licensing cycle.
  • Which partners, manufacturers, and brands to first reach out to with a new product.
  • The best product tradeshows to showcase your product.


Tom is the Founder and Executive Producer of the Make48 TV Show, a show where contestants have 48 hours to come up with an invention idea and build a prototype to showcase it to the judges. The show is on PBS, Amazon Prime, and many other networks around the world. Tom also is the President of Handy Camel, a company that distributes client products all over the world. Simply put, he is one of the big names in the North American product startup space.


Episode Links

The Product Startup Podcast Links:


Tom Gray’s Links:


Mako Design Links:


Kevin Mako’s Links: