If you’ve ever had a product idea and done absolutely nothing with it, then this newsletter is for you.
And it’ not because I’m going to tell you it’s easy. It isn’t. But because I’ve spent the last several months inside a company actively figuring out how to make it less impossible.
At the beginning
Before Cadly.ai, there was a guy locked in a camper in Florida with the lights out. I’ll let Pat (our founder and CEO) tell it as it was.
“We were living in a camper on the beach in Florida,” says Pat Brennan, CEO. “I spent probably eight months locked away inside this box with the lights turned out. I started learning how to code, learning how to build things.”
Eventually that turned into a 3D printer and dabbling in manufacturing as COVID raged across the outside world. Having had dropped out of rocket science, Pat switched to robotics engineering at the time. So he did what engineers do when they’re stuck in a small space with nothing but time — he started building.
Senior design students needed 3D printing for their capstone projects and couldn’t find anyone during lockdowns. Pat naturally became that person. Over two years, he scaled it into a small company of three employees, printing almost anything and everything students asked for.
Then one day he asked, what if other people want this outside of college students?
He moved to Boston. Venture capital route. Innovation hub, MIT next door. And then he found out someone was already building the exact product he had in mind.
“I had this huge rut. I was like, I’m done. I moved all the way up here, sold everything, and now I’m in this apartment stuck in the city… and then one day I was like, man, getting products to market is so freaking hard. What if we just streamline the process?”
That pivot is Cadly.
The problem nobody talks about
“The first hurdle is always a conversation with a friend leading to a notepad idea,” Pat puts it. “You’re at a family event, or you’re doing something on your own and it just pops into your head. And that’s about where it ends almost every time. People get excited about the idea, and then they move on.”
If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company.
The next wall, if you do try to push forward, is that nobody tells you what to actually do. There’s no degree for this. The instinct most people have, that is just go get a patent and sell it, almost never works.
“Nobody will buy your patent,” Pat says bluntly. “You have to have a product on the market that’s actually selling, and it has to have value to somebody else. Most people don’t realize how much selling is involved with their product outside of just designing it. Most people spend all their time designing the product and never get it to market.”
A big reason for that is the nature of the idea’s market. Ideas get stolen, someone else gts there before you and without a real (costly-to-build) brand you it’s a massive mountain to climb as fast as possible so few people naturely do that.
So where’s Cadly now?
Today, Cadly.ai is a platform where anyone can take a product idea. It could literally a sketch, a description or a 3D file and get access to a network of designers and manufacturers who’ll help bring it to life.
The model works differently from anything else out there for a few reasons.
- Designers work for revenue share, not upfront fees. You offer a percentage of profits every time the product sells. No money changes hands until something is actually selling.
- Manufacturing is made-to-order. No minimum order quantities. No betting on bulk inventory before you know if anyone wants the thing. You sell one, they make one.
- Products list on the Cadly marketplace with their own storefront (as opposted to being dumped into a generic shop) and ship globally.
There are two paths we offer. There’s the Do It Yourself (full platform access, you set terms and manage your milestones) or Do It For Me (you upload the idea and step back — Cadly coordinates designers, manufacturing, affiliatesand branding while you wait for revenue).
Cadly currently has around 200 manufacturers across the US doing direct-to-order production. Eight products from the first cohort are about to hit the market. And we’re partnered with an affiliate marketing company actively recruiting highn level influencers to promote products on the platform.
We’re in the middle of transitioning from a service-based business to a full e-commerce platform. The new storefront feature is weeks away from launching. We have products in manufacturing review right now being iterated to improve their margins before they go live.
Getting here has not been a straight line. Pat moved across the country and hit a wall. He’s been in a camper, an apartment, a Techstars program. The version of Cadly that exists today looks nothing like the one he started with.
That’s actually the thing I find most interesting about this company and it’s why I wanted to write this newsletter. The people who need to hear this story most are the ones still sitting on their idea, waiting for some sign that it’s worth trying. The honest version of how startups get built is more useful to them than the polished version.
Need more? There’s a cohort too.
If figuring all of this out on your own still feels like a lot, stick around. We’ve got yet another option to set you on the path to success.
The Cadly Innovation Cohort is an 8-week structured program where Pat personally guides a small group of inventors from idea to market. Think of it like a startup accelerator, but for physical products (and, no, Cadly doesn’t take equity). They earn when your product sells, same as everyone else.
Each week you meet with the team, work through design and manufacturing milestones, and build toward a real product launch. The top product at the end receives up to $10,000 in direct marketing ad spend which is easily something most first-time inventors could never access on their own.
Cohort 5 applications are open now!
One more thing worth mentioning: we’re bringing on Clifford Starks — UFC fighter and performance coach — as a cohort mentor. Pat specifically wanted to call this out. Clifford brings a mindset and discipline angle to the program that’s different from anything else in the product space. More details on that partnership coming soon.
What’s yet to come
Next issue: we’re launching our first product of the year drum roll please a ski wax scraper that one of our community inventors has been developing for months.
I’ll walk through the whole launch in real time including what we did, how we promoted it, what the numbers looked like, and what we’d change.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, subscribe below. It’s free.
Oh, and if you know someone who’s been sitting on a product idea, please forward this to them. That’s exactly who this is for.
— Jaclyn
Communications & Marketing, Cadly.ai
jaclyn@cadly.ai
I handle communications and marketing at Cadly.
I’m not a product engineer or a manufacturing expert. I came into this world the same way most of you probably did from the outside, thinking “why is this so complicated?” That’s why I’m writing this. The people who need this information most aren’t looking for technical manuals. They’re looking for someone who gets why it’s confusing and can explain it like a human. That’s what I’m going to try to do here, every week. For more stories like this one, please subscribe to us on Substack.
P.S. — Have you ever had a product idea you never acted on? What stopped you? Reply and tell me! I read every one.
