- [Male Announcer] Make 48 is funded by.

- [Female Announcer] Stanley Black & Decker provides tools and services around the globe to help turn great ideas into reality, and to help us shape the world we live in.

We proudly support programming that inspires invention, innovation, and hard work.

Together with Make 48, we're providing men and women the tools and resources to build a better world.

Stanley Black & Decker.

For those who make the world.

- [Male Announcer] On the last episode of Make 48, Matt and Dougal discussed the original prototype and created a game plan for improvements.

- So Matt, let's leave it with you.

You make toys.

So you know what a toy company wants, right?

That's really important to have the right designer sort of in the middle now.

- [Male Announcer] And the Design Edge team got to work on a new prototype.

- What's a good way to prototype?

Maybe we should build that on a vacuum instead of just the one's people see.

- Could be injection molded two pieces.

- [Male Announcer] Coming up, Tom consults an attorney about forming an LLC, and the team gets hands on with their new prototype.

This is Make 48.

Everyone's got a big idea.

(cheerful music) - What a luxury it is to have a inventing team have the perfect middle person in the middle to help prototype it.

So we can ask Dougal, you know, what are the trends?

What's the size limitations?

What do you think Spin Master is gonna want to see out of this prototype when it's been advanced?

So having Dougal there is gonna be like having that insider knowledge that only we know.

- So people tend to think, oh, well, you know, toys and games is toys and games.

It's very fun, very easy to do, but very complex product development processes.

And a lot of investment goes into these to really bring them to life.

- We got the big reveal, huh?

Got the fancy cloth.

- Are you guys ready?

Dun dun dun!

- Whoa!

- Matt and Design Edge did a really great job of the version two.

You know, it was a very shiny new prototype and it was when it was unveiled, you know, super colorful, some really interesting small touches on it that really made it.

- We got plunges as the feet.

That's pretty unique.

- That it really cool.

A lot of great touches here.

- Yeah, and we sort of tried to dance around the traditional bathroom colors and went a little bit more with slime.

You know, just cuting it up and not be as offensive.

- This green slime, how did you make that?

- You wanna know what the special sauce of the green slime is?

Don't tell anyone, but it's hot glue painted over with tester's paint.

- [Man] Nice.

- But don't tell anybody.

- The plungers for the feet.

You know, the slime coming out of the toilet.

All the little stickers of flies and things.

Those are things that start to build up the story around it.

When we go to retailers or anyone that's gonna be carrying this item, they will be bought into a story as much as anyone, you know?

They want to be lulled into, why am I gonna do this?

Why should I buy this from you?

And so you're starting to build up the overall look and feel of it and it has to be fun and engaging.

- I'm really interested, Matt, in what different materials, disciplines of your employees, who came to help build all this?

Is it one person or many people?

- Well, it's certainly a team.

So we all sat there.

We did drawings, we did iterations of how we thought things should be stylized and what we could do.

And everything from figuring out make it bright.

We wanted it bright and we wanted to contrast.

And so the yellow and the green really give the fun punch and adding some flies into that keeps that sewage sort of thing going without being-- - [Man] Cute touches there.

- Some cute touches and the plunger feet.

So bunch of drawings and designs, and then, you know, one guy working on the 3D modeling for the toilet and another guy working on the legs for the plungers, and then Chris did a lot of the heavy design for the vacuum forming.

- We came up with a simpler way to make it more like a toy and bring the price point down.

The materials we used here were vacuum formed PVC to try to make it as close to finished product that you'd see on the market, keeping in mind cost and playability.

So, as I was thinking of how to make this, I tried to use elements that were existing, and I had to build a lot of the pieces myself.

We started out first with a drawing just to get an idea of a scale and the positioning of all the nozzles.

And once I did that, I started making a master form.

That pretty much gave me the positioning of all the parts.

And once I made that form, then it was a matter of, all right, how do I make the plumbing work?

Where do I put all the pieces?

How do I get it connected?

Adding different things like these nozzles rather than the pieces that they had on the original sample to make it look more like a plumbing game and make it more fun.

- The plumbing does work.

- It does work, yes.

But we're in production though.

It wouldn't be as we have it set up only because in injection molding, we could have precise measurements, which we can't pull off of a 3D print or with a vacuum form.

So that's your classic sort of cheat, but when we work with big toy companies, they also know that.

And especially when we bring it in, they know that we know that.

So if I tell them we would just engineer it to be super tight, we're generally in good standing.

Well, to keep it simple and to be able to keep it so that it was randomized, we really decided to add some other elements that we knew were affordable, such as a spinner that was just made out of chipboard so that it can have different game plays.

And we can tell you to add another cup of water.

Turn two valves, turn your opponents valve.

Like those sort of things, which add some more risk and reward, which is something that we always look to do at Design Edge because that ultimately is what makes a game fun.

- And the cool thing about adding in this randomization in the game, especially if you're playing with kids, it's gonna just provide a little bit of a point of difference for people who are just playing it strategically, you know?

It's just gonna add random things that happen in.

So majority of the time, maybe the kid will win over an adult.

- Really at the end of the day, this is a presentation model, right?

The pieces function, but you could bring this to a buyer.

- Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

This is something that absolutely exactly what we would have in one of our showrooms, you know?

Really vibrant, gets across the idea of the game.

You could take this in front of a buyer and they would get the idea of it pretty quickly.

- And that buyer, Dougal, could be someone like a major big box store.

A Target or a Walmart would come to your headquarters at Spin Master and you'd present this version.

- Well, normally we would have like kind of a larger version of this screen.

We'd make a bit of a song and dance of it.

We'd maybe have the toilet noises going off.

You know, you gotta add to the whole experience, theater of the whole thing, but absolutely.

This is something exactly how we would show it in our showroom, yeah.

- Matt, I'm impressed.

- [Matt] Well, thank you.

- Yeah, this is great.

- [Matt] All design edge worked really hard on this, so I'm glad you guys like it.

- Dougal, what do you think would be the next step?

Is this something that Spin Master would be ready to look at looking like this?

In my opinion, this looks really amazing, ready to go for that final level.

- Yeah, absolutely.

This is something that we'd love to take in.

Once we take it in house, you know, I'd spend some time with our product design team, organize a couple of focus groups, we'd play through it.

There's a lot of things just consider not only just the product, but does this fit our line?

Is it the right season for it?

Some of the things that Matt has worked through already about the feasibility, can we make this viability, is this something we can afford to do?

So we're gonna be, we'll probably spend the next sort of eight weeks or so really, really digging into this.

But the model is an absolute perfect place to start.

So yeah, we'd love to take this in and spend a bit more time reviewing it and play testing it.

- Well, Matt, thanks to you and your team.

- Thank you guys.

- Outstanding job.

- Good job, man.

- Very impressed what you did.

(soft music) One of those things with innovation that no one really talks about is the company structure.

I really wanna meet with an attorney that knows company corporate structures, how to set them up, whether you're an individual or a group of four.

It's extremely confusing.

I've been through it many times, and I still learn something new every time I meet an attorney.

Doug, thanks for coming to talk to me about protection and how to set up a company.

So a lot of our inventors have created a prototype.

They're thinking about investing further into it, maybe with a potential with a license agreement or starting at their own company.

What type of companies could they form, and how do they get protection for themselves?

- So there are a variety of companies they can form.

A limited liability company is the easiest.

The least amount of rules to go with that, the least amount of paperwork to go with that.

The LLC for an initial startup is favorable because they can make it work like any other business.

- What is the benefit of having a corporation or an LLC set up to hold your assets, and how does that shield the inventor personally?

- It is an entity in and of itself, and the inventor is a member of that entity.

And so if they structure it correctly and they pay attention to the details, then the entity can be the owner of the idea.

They can license the idea to the entity to let the entity develop it and take the business risk.

There's a number of structures they can follow.

- What about the timing of setting up your corporation or a company?

We work with inventors a lot and often that first, you know, building the prototype and seeing if it works and all that is an investment that an individual often makes themselves.

But when should they form that LLC?

When's the right time?

Is it fair to say that if you've got a prototype that works really well and you're gonna apply for a patent, is that it's time to start an LLC or should you wait longer and see if there's actually a business deal waiting down the pipeline?

- If there are multiple people involved in the initial group, that's probably a good time to set your expectations among the group.

They need to define their rights and figure out what role everybody is going to play going forward.

- Doug, let's refer back to the operating agreement.

It sounds technical, but it's probably pretty straightforward, but what does it actually mean?

- So the operating agreement says who the members of the entity are.

You define in the agreement what the member's roles are.

You also define in the agreement, and this can be important if conflict arises later on, how you call meetings of the members, how many people it takes to call a meeting to have formal action of the liability company, who has the authority to bind the company, enter into contracts, how do you approve those things, open bank accounts, hire professionals.

It also sets forth, what happens if somebody wants to leave?

And it's a lot easier to determine those things and agree to them up front before somebody has an emotional vested economic interest.

It's a whole lot easier if everybody says, this is what we think will be fair before it's an emotional decision.

- Doug, tell me how long does it take to do it, and what are those steps of meeting those clients look like?

- It depends on the complexity of the arrangement with regard to the operating agreement.

It can be a week and it can be a month.

A lot of that depends on the clients because I'm asking them questions usually that they haven't talked through themselves, and then they have to go back and ruminate on it and figure out what the answer to the question is.

I've had people come to me and they know exactly.

They've given a lot of thought to it.

- Well, Doug, I think the summary here and all the wealth knowledge you've given us is that to communicate early with your members and your partners.

- Yeah.

Communication is key and engagement.

Some parties wanna pay attention to the details.

Some parties don't.

It's fine if they don't, but make sure they're involved in the process so they don't claim later on they didn't have the opportunity to know what was going on.

- And I think that that paper trail emails, and have that person, that member with the best detail, I guess, help lead that because a lot of entrepreneurs, they worry about it later or they forget to write it down.

Or worse, it's on a piece of sticky note somewhere in someone else's office.

Well, Doug, thanks so much.

Appreciate your time on this.

- Thank you.

- I think it's really important to set up a company structure at the right time.

You know, you're not gonna set up a company structure before Make 48 before you've ever built a prototype, but once you've built that prototype and you start investing money and you have business partners, it's really important to lay the rules, the groundwork, cross all your Ts, dot your Is.

You wanna make sure that if someone doesn't wanna be a part of the LLC or the company structure in the future, they can get out easily.

I'm sure this team's gonna need maybe potential investors in the future.

How is that group going to be able to absorb that?

The voting rights of the four different players involved.

They're at that point now, you know, they're gonna file for patents.

They've invested their seed money back into re-prototyping.

So now it's no longer just a get together and have fun and build stuff.

This product has huge potential.

So now's the time to do that and eliminate the frustrations and the let downs that can happen, you know, a year from now when there's huge decisions to be made and it's all too late.

So getting the LLC created now once you know you're gonna take to that next level.

Spend some money going together with your business partners is the perfect time to do that.

(cheerful music) - I've been told I'm now a Make 48 groupie.

I love the idea of what it is.

I like the idea that we can bring this into a classroom.

We can turn this into a full fledged curriculum.

- The Make 48 experience I think really validated the idea that everybody has good ideas.

- I love the idea that it wasn't about who was the best saw user or the best woodworker or the best laser cutter.

It was about who had the best idea.

I loved knowing that I could have lost to an eight year old who had a genius idea, but couldn't fulfill it.

To me, that's what makes this competition special.

- When it's all said and done, I'm grateful to have had the experience.

It's been a lot of fun collaborating with people I work with on a daily basis, but in a different way.

- It has definitely been a journey participating in these two Make 48 competitions and all of the follow up excitement associated with that.

I think back to that first city competition here in Indianapolis where it was the late nights, the scrambling to get together on an idea.

And I'm so excited by how really it reinforces the concept of sprinting and how high focused work during a short time period can lead to magic happening.

- We've had a lot of fun and definitely look forward to participating and doing other things of this nature with the same group of people.

- I'm really proud of how we did.

We have a lot of really creative people on the team, so I'm not surprised, but also I don't think we're incredibly special.

I think what make 48 does is it shows that anybody can have these ideas.

Sometimes all you need to be given is the push to pursue it or just the freedom and space to be creative.

I think when you're a kid, you often imagine all sorts of things, inventions you're gonna come up with.

And then when you become an adult, you kind of fall into your role in your job and you just kind of do that.

So make 48 was a good chance for all of us on this team to just be creative and make something fun.

- As one of the co-creators and Make 48, I get the luxury to showcase the new prototype to the team.

Team, good to see you.

Thanks for having me.

So we spent the last couple weeks, met with the team at Design Edge, and they got the new variation of your prototype.

You wanna have a look at it?

- Yeah.

(cheerful music) - [Woman] That is amazing.

- Seeing the updated prototype for the first time was awe inspiring.

- I liked the color scheme.

It's enticing, especially to younger children.

- It was great to see it closer to a finished product.

Something that you could see on the shelves.

- It was so cool to see something that we pieced together in 48 hours turn into something that looks like it could be on the shelf of a store tomorrow.

- I think there was about half a dozen people to work on this, touch at all different disciplines.

Design engineers, mechanical engineers.

Some of the features you'll notice.

My favorite feature is the feet, the plungers.

They did a lot of 3D printing.

The toilet here obviously was 3D printed.

They vacuum formed the main frame to replicate what a continuous piece would look like in manufacturing.

We know that with your prototype, obviously a lot of joints had a chance for leakage and stuff like that.

So this is what it would look like as a picture on a shelf as one unit, and underneath this contraption is a lot of engineering going into the water flow, getting the gravity to go to the right spots.

- You know, when I first saw that prototype that we got back from Matt, I was just blown away.

I was just genuinely was happy because not only was it still our idea, but it was like the best version of our idea.

Every change that they made was for the better.

And they had some ideas that I wish we had come up with, and I love the color scheme of it.

I like the functionality of it.

I can't wait to see what we can do with it next.

I was pretty stoked to see what had been done.

- They even did a feature, which I really like, but they added a game feature.

They created a spin dial to make it more intriguing for the competitors.

So then they're not playing the same strategy every time they do it.

They have to play from the spin game.

- There's definitely aspect to a spinner.

I know that you might playing games as spinner or some of these consequences, extra turn or skip a turn.

That's always exciting.

- I really like that they added this spinner.

It makes more sense to me.

I think about playing this game with my five year old and things that might make it accessible for people of different abilities to still enjoy it.

- We're a team of four, but really we're a team of much more than that.

All of the tool techs that supported us through the entire experience, including Matt and Dougal, who provided great advice on our product.

- I like some of the changes that they made.

I mean, some of them are a little, I don't wanna say hard to swallow because that's not at all it.

I really like the strategy of how we played our game, but I like the functionality better of this one.

Like this makes more sense.

I love the colors.

Like it's just all bright and vibrant.

- Definitely feels more like a toy that you would see people playing with compared to our rough prototype.

With colors that would make me excited to play.

- It's disgusting in a really good way.

- I'm disappointed that we didn't come up with this prototype.

- Yes.

Come on, what were we thinking?

- They put a lot of hours into it, even coming up to the point where they had to have it ready for you guys.

When I had a look at the vacuum forming, to make that vacuum form, if you're familiar with it, but just to build the mold, they had to then replicate this.

It was a huge amount of work.

- So the changes, it's always fun to see when you're collaborating with other individuals.

They come at it from a different vantage point.

And certainly the feet, the toilet plungers as the feet really, like I'm sure others have said, disappointed that we didn't come up with that 'cause that's just priceless.

I really like some of the things they did and we're really happy with how it turned out.

- I think that the cool thing is even though this is essentially our same design, so like if you wanted to play it a more strategic kind of game, you could still do that without the spinner, but I love the spinner.

I love the randomness and chaos that it'll throw in though.

- It does feel like maybe the level of thought to play this game is a little bit lower than our initial one where we had a lot more, and this is a little bit more randomness in there.

Whereas the original one was maybe a little bit more of a chess or checkers.

You had all the options to play.

I think this is something might intrigue kids a little bit more though, get them involved.

- I mean, for me, the one thing I've been thinking about since we ended all of this is like, I want this to be the next Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Like something that really kind of stands the test of time.

And I like the idea that this feels like this could be that.

Because of the spinner, because of the design, I could see kids wanting to play this over and over again.

- This feels a lot more like Hungry Hungry Hippos than our prototype.

- Yes.

I just can't wait to see what we can do to continue to refine it and continue to make it more playable.

- But now you've got something that's presentable to a manufacturer, to a major brand, to investors.

This is the kind of thing you want to then take as your final prototype to someone that you wanna partner with on it.

When we were at Design Edge, Dougal Grimes came to see the prototype as well.

And he gave us some really good insight.

Him and Matt are pretty close.

Matt obviously works close with Spin Master and other brands.

Again, he knows what they want.

So by using Matt and Design Edge was I think the best move you guys could have done.

Dougal loved the product to the point where he wants to take it back to leadership at Spin Master, and they'll do their full review, internal review.

They would love to have the first opportunity to see the product and review it for a potentially going to market.

- I vote yes.

(laughter) - It was really cool to hear that Dougal was interested in it.

I think when you create something, sometimes you have, you know, love for it yourself because you're the creator, but you don't necessarily know if somebody else sees that the way you see it.

To see somebody outside of us express interest, especially somebody from a company that has so much experience, it's really encouraging.

- A year ago if Drew had said, hey, this is what we're gonna do and this is gonna lead us to a bigger and better product.

I don't think we would've ever thought that that would've been to where we are now.

- For us, participating in the process was a huge win.

We took so much from that experience that we're able to bring back to our students, but now this idea that our prototype, we've made something that might actually have the interest of a toy company is just icing on the cake.

- It's pretty mind numbing to have Dougal Grimes at Spin Masters want to take our product and show it to his team.

It's so validating and reaffirming that not only did we win a competition against other people, but we came up with a good idea.

- And one thing too is that these things are never easy.

You know, to be on a shelf of a retailer means you got to displace somebody else.

Some other product that may be selling fine has to be physically removed on a chance that this may sell.

So that then equals very low success rate generally on innovation.

There's so much innovation out there in toys or any industry that to get it to a shelf and make it be a big hit takes the right partnership, takes the right retailer.

Has that shelf space or the relationship with the retailer.

So again, we've got the right audience, and to give it the best shot to go to Spin Master and Dougal is probably the home run for this point in all of the innovation.

As someone who likes to lead collaboration and preach collaboration is key and having the right team, I think this showed it by having Matt in place, Dougal advising.

The team has really got that, you know, clean road right through to hopefully the end line.

This is the part where you're gonna let the team go on their own, you know?

They've now got the goods that they can start their own venture if they want to, or hopefully we can set them up with the right licensing agreement, but it is the best part of the job to cut them loose and showcase something that has been made from a 48 hour competition to professionals leading professionals in the industry and just that difference.

Because if you were to do that yourself, that could have been 10 different prototypes to get to the prototype that Matt created.

I know their minds now going all over the place of excitement and what this could turn into.

And myself, I thought it was gonna turn into a strategy game, but no, it's now a fun game.

All age group time of game.

Anyone can play it, but I think the teams were really impressed.

- [Male Announcer] Now that the prototype has been refined, it's time for the Spin Master team to begin their evaluations.

Will this game make it to store shelves?

Only time will tell.

(soft music) Make 48 is funded by.

- [Female Announcer] Stanley Black & Decker provides tools and services around the globe to help turn great ideas into reality, and to help us shape the world we live in.

We proudly support programming that inspires invention, innovation, and hard work.

Together with Make 48, we're providing men and women the tools and resources to build a better world.

Stanley Black & Decker.

For those who make the world.

(soft music) - [Male Announcer] To learn more about the invention process and to get to know the teams, visit make48.com.

(upbeat music) (whimsical music)