Beverly Hills, California · marketable concepts
We know, because ours sat there too. A drawing, a prototype, a service nobody else offers, a way of doing something better — and no route to a single customer. So we built the route. It does not have to be patented and it does not have to be a product. You keep what is yours. You never pay us a cent. We only earn when you do.
What we do
Not every product should become a company. Some should be licensed to a factory that already has the tooling and the shelf. Some need protecting and funding before anyone builds anything. Choosing correctly is most of the work — and choosing wrong is why good products stall.
Route one
Your concept goes to a manufacturer who already holds the tooling, the certifications and the distribution. We identify the right company, prepare the approach, and negotiate the agreement.
Fastest route to income, no capital required, and your product reaches shelves through a channel that took decades to build.
Route two
When no licensee fits, we form the company. Sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, pricing, distribution, the first customers — we run it and we fund it to first revenue.
For products where the brand is the asset and handing it to someone else would give away the thing that makes it valuable.
Route three
Some inventions need to become defensible before they become products. Patent groundwork, prior-art work, and non-dilutive government research grants that pay for development without taking any ownership at all.
Federal programmes award hundreds of thousands of dollars to small companies for exactly this. Most inventors never apply because the process is opaque. We run it.
Route four
Not only inventions. A product, a service, a brand, or a whole small business that runs itself. If it earns, we will make you an offer.
Retiring, and nobody will buy it? Brokers will not list a business below a few hundred thousand, so owners close them instead — decades of work simply switched off because there was no buyer. We are that buyer. You built something that works; it should outlive your decision to stop.
Published formula, independent valuation at our expense if you want one, and you can sell part and keep the rest.
Our terms
One number, whichever route your product takes, and it does not move. You should not have to out-negotiate us to be treated fairly — the same terms for a first-time inventor with a drawing as for anyone else. What follows is not marketing. It is what we sign.
Why twenty and not more Licensing agents commonly take thirty to fifty per cent of an inventor's royalties. Venture studios routinely take half a company or more. We could ask for either and be within the norms of the industry. We would rather take a fifth of something that reached the market than half of something that never left the garage — and there are four of us here, doing this across many products rather than squeezing a few. Putting people on the map is the business. Twenty per cent of a great many maps is a company; forty per cent of a handful is a fee.
No submission fee, no evaluation fee, no retainer, no marketing package, no expenses. If we take your product on, we spend our own money on it. If we make you nothing, we have earned nothing. Anyone asking an inventor for money before they have made them any is not in the same business we are.
Most people who reach us are brilliant and broke. So where it is needed, we advance living costs — monthly, while the product is developed — drawn against your own future share rather than paid as a wage.
It is non-recourse. If the product never earns, you owe us nothing and we will not ask. Not reduced. Nothing. You cannot end up in debt to us.
We will also check first that it will not affect any benefits you receive, and warn you about the tax, because help that costs you your healthcare is not help.
Physical products take time — a licence negotiation alone can run a year. So the clock is honest: a written report every 90 days whether or not there is good news, and if we have not reached the milestone in your agreement within 30 months, everything returns to you free and clear.
You will never be left wondering, and your product will not sit on our shelf the way it sat on yours.
On the licence route the patent stays in your name. We hold a share of income, not your intellectual property. We cannot sell your product to a company you did not choose, and the agreement covers the concept you brought us — not everything you will ever think of.
If you ever want cash instead of a royalty, we will buy — on a published formula, with an independent valuation instead if you prefer it, which we pay for. You can sell a quarter, a half, or all of it.
Fourteen days to change your mind afterwards, no reason needed. And if you are selling because money is tight right now, we will offer you the advance instead and tell you it is the better deal — because nobody should make a permanent decision to solve a temporary problem.
If something happens to you, your rights and your income pass to your estate exactly as they stood. No forfeiture, no reversion to us, no renegotiating with your family at the worst moment of their lives.
For many of the people we work with, this is the main thing they will leave behind. It is written into the agreement at signing, not left to be argued about later.
Nothing you send is shown to anyone outside our review without your written say-so. Where a concept is unprotected, protecting it is the first thing we do rather than the last.
Old partners, a collaborator, an employer, a friend who suggested the key thing. We ask early, in writing, and we help you settle it while it is still easy and free.
It is the question that stops a deal dead three years from now, in front of a licensee's lawyer, when it is expensive and everyone has already spent the money.
Why we say this so plainly Inventors have been badly served by an industry that charges fees upfront and delivers nothing. Anyone asking you for money before they have made you any is not in the same business we are. Ask us the same hard questions you would ask them — and ask them ours.
Submit anything
A product, a service, software, a recipe, a method, a format, a way of doing something nobody does yet. Most good businesses have no patent — they win on brand, on being first, on knowing the buyer, on doing the thing properly. We assess all of it the same way.
This tells you where your product actually stands before either of us spends time on it. Answer accurately — a flattering answer only wastes your own effort. Nothing is sent anywhere until you choose to send it.
Read this before you type anything Do not describe how your invention works. Tell us what it does, who buys it, and what stage it is at. Never send mechanisms, formulas, drawings or source code in a first contact — not to us, not to anyone. If a public disclosure clock is running you can lose patent rights permanently. When we are ready to see the detail, a signed confidentiality agreement comes first.
The marketplace
There has never been a real market for this. Somebody with a good product, a service, or a business that works has no idea what it is worth, no way to find the company that wants it, and nobody to sell it to if they need the money. We are building the place where all three of those stop being true.
Listing
A listing says what your product does, who buys it, what stage it has reached and how it scored. It never says how it works. Anyone wanting the detail signs a confidentiality agreement first, which we broker.
You can be visible to every manufacturer in your category without ever making the public disclosure that would cost you your patent rights.
Pricing
Nothing on this page is worth guessing at, so we do not ask you to guess. We publish a formula and we will buy at it ourselves if nobody else does.
That is what makes this a market rather than a noticeboard — there is a price you can always get, so every other offer has something to be measured against.
Settlement
Every transaction with a third party settles through escrow. The buyer funds it, the licence or assignment executes, escrow releases.
Our fee comes out of the settlement rather than out of a promise, and where we are the buyer we charge no fee at all — taking one while sitting on the other side of the table would be indefensible.
| What happens | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| Listing your invention | Free, permanently |
| A licence brokered to a manufacturer we find them, prepare it and negotiate it | 20% of income |
| An outright sale to a third party paid from the proceeds, never up front | 10% of the price |
| Selling to us | Nothing |
If somebody offers you more than we do Take it. We ask only for the chance to match, and to be told what we are matching. There is no clause anywhere in our paperwork that stops you selling to somebody else, and any company that needs one to keep your business has told you what it thinks of your product.
The studio
A writer with a project optioned four years ago and a man with a prototype in his garage have the identical problem: somebody took it, nobody says anything, and the years go by. We built a cure for that on the product side. It transfers exactly.
So we offer film the same terms, word for word 20%, published, never negotiated. You keep the rights. You never pay us anything. A written progress report every 90 days whether or not there is good news — and if we have not reached the milestone in your agreement within 30 months, it all comes back to you, free and clear. No option renewal, no quiet lapse, no letter you have to chase.
One
A documentary subject, a feature, a series, a person nobody has filmed yet. Same assessment as a product: audience counted, route argued, comparables named, what it costs to make, and who it is for.
You get the assessment whether we take it or not.
Submit a storyTwo
Director, DP, editor, sound, colourist. You make the origin films for products moving through the house — and you hold 1% of every product you film, from our share, for as long as it earns.
Not a day rate. A position in the thing you helped sell.
Write to jobs@Three
Manufacturers, licensees and retailers already buy content from agencies with no stake in whether the product sells. We have the access, the relationships, and a reason to care whether it works.
The division that earns while the longer work is still being cut.
Write to marketing@Five questions, an honest answer, and nothing sent anywhere until you choose to send it. Do not send us the script or the footage yet — tell us what it is about and what exists.
Move one
Not a crew. A phone and a discipline. The garage, the failed prototype, the call that goes badly, the first article off the tool. You cannot film the past — in three years we hold a library nobody can reconstruct at any price.
Move two
An origin film per product. It sells the product, so it pays for itself the week it ships — and it is the audition. Nobody commissions a series from a deck; they commission it from twenty films that already work.
Move three
Streamers do not buy ideas. They buy proven audiences, and they pay far more for one they did not have to build themselves.
Move four
We accumulate, then show. By the time we walk into a buyer's office the material is shot, the characters are real, and the endings already happened. A completely different conversation from a treatment and a wish.
Consent is asked separately at signing, and saying no changes nothing about how we work the product. Some people have spent nine years on something and do not want a camera in the room. Entirely their right.
Production companies compete for access — option a story, chase the people, hope the ending arrives before the budget runs out. We generate access as a by-product of the other business. Every submission is a story with a beginning already written and an ending we are personally responsible for producing. The pipeline is the slate.
For investors and funders
The portfolio above is the proof. The business is the engine that produced it — applied to every inventor who has something good and no route to market.
Accredited investors
The positions below — counted markets, unit economics, capital requirements and what each one returns — are shared with accredited investors. Confirm the three statements and the detail opens.
We record that you made this confirmation and when. Nothing else is collected, and there is nothing to sign up for.
Confirmed Everything below is open. When you want the full workings — the 21-page portfolio analysis, the assessment on any single product, the unit costs and the sourcing quotes — write to investor@shefanu.com and it reaches both principals directly.
We are not building a Ventura business. Every figure below is annual volume across the United States, Canada and Europe, built bottom-up from a stated denominator at a stated penetration. The penetration is printed on every line so you can move it and watch the number move. Nothing here is a forecast of year one — year one is the ramp. This is the size of the thing being ramped toward.
| Position | Reachable base | At | Units / year | Revenue / year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pump Drive Wheelchair — individual 16.35M wheelchair users across the three regions |
16,350,000 | 0.08% | 13,080 | $45.8M |
| Hummingbird — jobsite subscription sites carrying over $500k of equipment exposure |
158,000 | 0.25% | 395 sites | $15.4M |
| Lucky's — vacuum refills 319.5M vacuum-owning households, four packs a year |
319,500,000 | 0.15% | 1,917,000 | $12.5M |
| 3D Booth — capital equipment 13,800 event-rental operators, three-year adoption |
13,800 | 10% | 690 booths | $10.0M |
| Pump Drive Wheelchair — institutional 2,300 managed beach programmes, six-year replacement |
2,300 | 100% | 966 | $3.4M |
| BARMAN — bar display 475,000 licensed bars, pubs and venues |
475,000 | 0.5% | 2,375 | $3.4M |
| Brendan's — barbecue baste 25,000 specialty grocery doors |
25,000 doors | 20% | 500,000 | $1.8M |
| Build route — combined | $105.1M |
These cost us a presentation and our time. The units belong to a manufacturer who already sells into all three regions; we hold a royalty on what they ship.
| Position | Licensee units / yr | Licensee sales | Royalty | To us / year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good Vibrations 3.7M smart bidet seats sold annually; licensee holds ~10% |
370,000 | $88.8M | 4% | $3.6M |
| Home Drone Garage 3.7M active drone owners; 5% buy a housing |
185,000 | $15.7M | 5% | $786,250 |
| Thule leaning post 22M registered recreational boats in the region |
10,000 | $12.0M | 5% | $600,000 |
| Contour Crib 8.0M annual births; 1% smart-crib penetration |
20,000 | $13.0M | 4% | $520,000 |
| .22xs an established manufacturer's production run |
50,000 | $13.0M | 4% | $520,000 |
| ORCA foils & FISHTAIL 400,000 dinghies; 2% buy hardware yearly |
8,000 | $760,000 | 6% | $45,600 |
| 12' Dory & SABOTnegro premium hand-built craft, low volume by nature |
200 | $480,000 | 4% | $19,200 |
| Licence route — combined | $6.0M |
One per cent of people who already need protective headwear. A seventh of a per cent of households that own a vacuum. A quarter of a per cent of construction sites. If those rates look small it is because they are — and the portfolio still reaches nine figures. Every denominator is a published population, household or establishment count, and we will hand the workings to anyone who wants to argue with them.
$96,140 takes the first three products to a first sale. $4,065 opens a $305,000 grant that is neither repaid nor exchanged for ownership. $5,600 pursues all seven licence positions at once, because each is a different industry with a different decision-maker. The expensive decisions come after the cheap ones have told us where to spend.
A licensing position costs us a presentation and our time, and pays a royalty for the life of the product. A build position costs capital once and holds equity permanently. Neither requires us to grow headcount in proportion to the portfolio — the same market research, the same manufacturer relationships, the same grant expertise and the same negotiating position serve the tenth product and the thousandth. What accumulates is ownership across many companies, from one operating engine.
The studio compounds against the same engine. Every product we take on generates the access that a production company would otherwise have to buy, and every film we make sells the product it is about. Two businesses, one pipeline, each lowering the other's cost of acquisition.
Because nobody else offers these terms. An inventor comparing us against the alternatives finds companies that charge fees before delivering anything. We charge nothing, we publish what we take, and we hand the rights back if we fail to move. The terms are the acquisition strategy.
Manufacturing access, contract production and direct distribution that were once available only to large companies are now reachable by a small one. The constraint on a good product is no longer capacity — it is knowing which route to take and having the relationships to take it. That is a knowledge business, and knowledge scales.
What is above, and what is behind it The figures on this page are ours and we are content to publish them. Behind each one sits the workings — unit costs, margins by channel, volume assumptions, sourcing quotes and the full 21-page portfolio analysis — and any serious counterparty can have all of it on request. What we do not publish is how anything works. Not our mechanisms and not an inventor's, because we would be a poor custodian of somebody's life's work if we did.
Contact
Every submission gets a reply. If your product is not for us we will tell you why, and what we would want to see.
Concepts & product
inquiries@shefanu.com