Creating a product is an incredibly challenging venture, but there are several boxes to check before you’re ready to engage a CM. You’re ready to engage and scale once you have: a product and have made a number of successful prototypes using a reproducible build process; achieved any related regulation approvals (FDA, etc); cleared any financial or funding hurdles; a stable corporate structure (including operations, engineering and quality control), as well as a go-to-market strategy with support (sales and marketing) in place.