Founder Journal #10
"Sometimes the people who don’t open the door for you force you to build a better one."
About the Founder Journal
Building a company isn't a straight line. It's a series of experiments, setbacks, unexpected lessons, and small victories that rarely make it into product announcements.
The Founder Journal is where we share the stories behind PFV Innovations—not as a marketing campaign, but as an honest record of what it's like to invent, build, and keep moving forward. Whether you're a musician, an entrepreneur, an inventor, or simply someone with an idea you can't stop thinking about, we hope these stories encourage you to keep going.
When we first started reaching out to manufacturers, we were sure people were going to be excited.
We had a working invention.
We had filed for a patent.
We thought Flip Pick was going to be huge.
In our minds, surely any manufacturer who saw it would immediately understand the opportunity.
They would want in.
They would call us back.
They would see what we saw.
That is not what happened. A lot of manufacturers never responded at all.
Others sent quotes that were so far beyond what we could afford that the conversation ended almost as quickly as it started.
At the time, that was incredibly frustrating.
Looking back, I’m grateful.
Because we weren’t ready yet.
We Thought We Needed a Manufacturer
What we really needed was to become more capable.
Once we realized no one was coming to rescue us, we made a decision.
We were going to build Flip Pick one way or another. If we couldn’t find the right partner, we would figure out how to make it ourselves.
That mindset wasn’t new for us. Jamie and I have always been people who figure things out.
Neither of us is particularly comfortable saying, “I don’t know how to do that,” and leaving it there.
For us, “I don’t know” usually means: “Okay. What do we need to learn?”
That became the operating system for the next few years.
So We Started Learning Everything
We learned more CAD. We learned different 3D printing methods. We learned CNC machining. We learned mold design. We experimented with materials.
We figured out how to make test molds ourselves.
At one point, I taught myself to use a benchtop CNC router and started machining clear acrylic molds just so we could prove out the FlexBand concept before spending real money on production tooling.
We even considered buying our own benchtop injection molding machine.
The thought process was very simple:
If other people can do this, I can learn how to do it too.
That didn’t mean I thought I could suddenly become a professional mold maker.
It meant I could learn enough to keep moving.
And that distinction turned out to matter.
The First Mold Changed Everything
I still remember pouring one of those early molds and opening it later to see a real, functional FlexBand.
That was one of those moments where the project suddenly felt more real.
Not finished. Not production-ready. But possible.
We had gone from:
“Maybe this could be manufactured.”
to:
“We know this mechanism can work.” That gave us something far more valuable than another rendering.
It gave us proof. And proof changes the conversation.
By the Time Manufacturers Took Us Seriously, We Were Different
Eventually, we reconnected with Murray Plastics.
They had actually responded to us early in the process, but at the time we were still thinking in terms of a rigid ring and we weren’t ready to commit to the tooling costs.
About a year later, they reached back out after rediscovering our original email.
By then, the product had changed.
So had we.
We had a better design. We understood molding far better. We had prototypes. We had customers. We had sales.
We could explain the product more clearly.
We could have a much more intelligent conversation about manufacturing.
And instead of treating us like a nuisance or a risk, they said something that stuck with us:
They liked the idea. They thought it was novel. They thought it would be fun to work on and watch grow.
That was different.
For the first time, it felt like someone wasn’t just quoting a job. They were seeing the vision.
The Delays Helped Us More Than We Realized
One of the strangest lessons from this whole journey is that nearly every delay has created room for improvement.
While we were waiting on manufacturing, we redesigned the product.
We improved the FlexBand.
We improved the website.
We built the Companion App.
We refined our packaging.
We learned from customers.
We found better materials.
We eventually connected with Delmar Products and D’Andrea USA.
Obviously, a company cannot stay in development forever. At some point, you have to launch.
But we’ve also learned not to panic every time the timeline slips.
Sometimes a delay is just a delay.
Sometimes it gives you the space to build something much better than you would have built six months earlier.
That has absolutely been true for us.
Manufacturing Taught Us to Think Bigger
One of the biggest misconceptions we had was about volume.
As a small inventor, you think:
“Wow, 1,000 units is a lot.”
To a manufacturer?
Maybe not.
Manufacturing is built around scale.
The machines are expensive.
The molds are expensive.
The dies are expensive.
The tooling is designed to produce thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of parts.
That changed how we thought about the whole business. If we wanted a genuinely high-quality product, there was no magic shortcut.
We had to find a way to make the economics work. We had to be patient.
And we had to keep looking until we found people who understood both our product and where we were trying to go.
Looking Back
If a manufacturer had said yes to us immediately in 2023, I’m almost certain Flip Pick would be a worse product today.
We would have committed too early. We would have tooled a design that hadn’t matured. We would have locked ourselves into assumptions customers later proved wrong.
What felt like rejection at the time turned out to be an incubation period.
The invention needed that time. So did we.
Just Keep Swimming
Our kids grew up watching Finding Nemo.
One phrase from that movie became part of our family vocabulary:
Just keep swimming.
That probably sums up our philosophy better than anything else.
Not:
“Rush.”
Not:
“Never change course.”
Not even:
“Never give up.”
Just...
Keep moving.
Learn something.
Improve something.
Send another email.
Build another prototype.
Ask another question.
No one understands your idea better than you. No one is more invested in it than you.
And no one is going to believe in it more than you do at the beginning.
That means you have to do enough work to prove the idea deserves someone else’s belief too.
Some people will have shorter paths than others.
Some will find the right partner immediately.
Some of us will have to learn CNC machining in the garage first.
Either way, the lesson is the same.
Take the time you need. Make the financing work. Make the product better.
Don’t rush just because you’re impatient to arrive.
But keep moving.
Just keep swimming.
Thanks for reading.
The Founder Journal is our ongoing record of what we're learning while building PFV Innovations. We don't have all the answers, but we believe there is value in sharing the journey honestly. If you're building something of your own—whether it's a business, a song, a piece of art, or simply a better version of yourself—we hope you'll keep going. So will we.
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