Bigger Tuna helps develop product ideas
When people with big ideas need a little help — or even a lot of help — turning concepts into reality, there’s a company in Franklinton that knows what to do or can reel in others to assist.
Bigger Tuna founder and “commander” Jeff Myers, a former Battelle engineer, talked with Columbus CEO about how his engineering and design firm works at the company’s headquarters in the Columbus Idea Foundry.
Q: What was the impetus to create Bigger Tuna?
A: Bigger Tuna was founded in 2012 by myself when I left Battelle. For just about 20 years at Battelle, I did a mini version of what we’re doing here, which is take ideas and problems and find a rapid solution. Sourcing experts and bringing together resources of people, equipment, materials, ideas and solving a problem. Bigger Tuna started out as, like Battelle, how do we solve technical problems through innovation and bring a variety of skills together under one roof with our core team here, and teaming with groups around Columbus and central Ohio that have technical expertise in certain areas to help solve the problems we present.
Q: How did you come up with the name?
A: Bigger Tuna was an available URL that was based on my love of football growing up. I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, and growing up in Youngstown in the ‘70s, you had to be a Steelers fan or a Browns fan, and I was a Steelers fan, the Terrible Towel and Steel Curtain defense and all of that stuff. I really loved football, and in the early ‘80s, the (New York) Giants coach, Bill Parcells, was nicknamed the “Big Tuna.” And I was a big guy at the time, and I got to be bigger after college, and so thinking through names and nicknames that I had over the years, I thought, ‘What would be a good brand?’ One could be called Big Tuna design and engineering, but there were several companies named that, and lots of people waiting on the URL, Bigtunadesign. But I’m even bigger than that, so let’s be bigger tuna. So Bigger Tuna was born.
Q: What does Bigger Tuna do?
A: What we try and focus on is taking ideas and problems, and ideas that solve those problems, from someone’s brain immediately to reality through the tools around us. Along the way, (we) try to take out the risk by moving quickly from idea to prototype to iterating, that cycle. So take out the risk, capture as much intellectual property or assets as you can through the design, a brand, maybe a trademark, copywriting, intellectual property like you saw on the wall in there, claims, broad patents, design patents, utility patents, and then get to the prototype stage … and then
help those small entrepreneurs launch their product. So that’s kind of what we do.
Q: What is the most rewarding part of your work?
A: For myself, it’s really two things. One is working with the team here, these guys. It’s very rewarding. Not only are they smart and talented at what they do, but they also give feedback to help grow the company. There are a lot of good minds here. And our customers, it’s really rewarding when they are excited and see an idea turn into a product or go down the path towards a product. It’s almost like the joy of creation. And we get to share that joy with the people that had the idea.
Q: How many ideas actually come to fruition?
A: It depends how far down the pike you define fruition. So we have, maybe at any time, 20 projects, and I’d say a quarter are trying to license their idea and don’t want to ever make anything. Maybe another quarter of them have a clear, very well thoughtout business plan and want to take their idea to term, the distance. And the other 50 percent remaining don’t really know what’s happening, they’re kind of learning as they go. And then maybe there is a hodgepodge of all of those.