Middle Market Deals and how to buy, sell and raise capital from $5 to $500 million

In the last few weeks, entirely by coincidence, I've had a few meetings with inventors hoping to commercialize their inventions. 

As a generaly rule, I can be of little help to someone at this stage.  Frankly, very few professionals can be of service to an inventor at this stage.

Let me try and article a few patterns of failure that I see with inventors who've failed to commercialize their inventions. 

First, let me say that as far as I can tell, none of the inventors I've met with have bad inventions.  Some would be genuinely world changing, multi-billion dollar ideas if properly commercialized.

So, the problems: 

1)   Partners:  unsuccessful commercialization is typically presented by a inventor with either no partner or the wrong partners.  Commericalizing an invention can be incredibly difficult and finding a trusted partner is, I believe, the first big hurdle.  It is extraordinarily rare that a technologist can bring a commercial product to market without help from the right people.  Outside advisors are no substitute for a partner.

2)  Execution:  inventors, in my experience, tend to be focused on product design.  Sometimes this enthusiasm for engineering transcends into business planning.  When an inventor can't leave the lab to stop development and start selling, this lack of execution leads to failure.  Some of the inventors I've spoken to recently claim to have had their core invention "done" years ago and yet they have no product revenue today.   Successful entrepreneurs execute.

3)  Reality:  inventors who haven't been able to commercialize their technologies seem to share a lack in a clear connection to reality.  This may come from using family members as the "management team"--will your spouse really tell you the truth about your invention, the market, your business plan?  Results of this lack of reality may include a fixation on past achievements with little connection to the current situation or a gross overvaluation of a "business" that amounts to an unproven, unpatented invention with no sales. 

4)  Listening:  the final element in the pattern of failure that I've seen lately is an inability to listen.  One such entrepreneur got me on the phone for an hour, giving me his entire pitch.  When I invited him into the office, he repeated the same pitch face to face--with visual aids.  I finally had to get abrupt just to get a word in after an hour.  While I suspect this is a product of genuinely being the smartest person in the room throughout their lives, inventors seem to ignore advice that doesn't fit their world view--a world view that is often formed in a laboratory with bad lighting.

I apologize to every inventor that I offend with this post.  I write it in hopes that some inventors who want to become entrepreneurs will learn from the mistakes of their colleagues and therefore will be able to make the leap from inventor to entrepreneur. 

None of the inventors that come to mind as I write this post is dumb by any measure.  They are all smarter than I.  Some may yet be successful, but I believe that they will only be successful when they break the pattern I've described above.

What's your take?  Have I got it all wrong?