I'm helping my dad design a replacement for the Digital Signal Processor. Actually, it's already designed and it actually works through the Phase I testing. Talk about years of painfully drawing up electric engineering diagrams and deciphering electric engineering language to a way that you would understand it to draw the diagram and write the description out. It's like having a crash course on 4 years of EE education in a week. (I'm not an EE major). Not to mention making suggestions upon the improvement of the design and have your dad say "no it won't work" only to find out days later that your proposal actually works but your dad is just too proud to admit it. I think the closest he got to an offer was from Nokia but he chickened out and didn't pursue it. Sucks for him and especially for me who spent days finding a personal contact information to someone at Nokia.
Too bad, he's one of those guys who just likes to invents to see if it works. Not much of a 'start a company' guy...I think he just wants to sit back and enjoy the rest of his life as opposed to dealing with the politics of a company. 9 years on working on something and the fear of someone stealing your idea keeps you from sharing it to the world. It's a shame but oh well. It's his 'baby'
I have my own 'baby' project to work on.