Hello, ladies.
Welcome to this week's episode of the hourly to exit podcast.
As you can tell, this is a new and exciting location for us.
I'm very excited about today's guests as well as this conversation.
I know it's going to be a great one for you.
So welcome Nate.
Thank you
so much.
I'm excited
to
be here.
Yeah, great.
So we have Nate Hecker, who is the CEO of big idea with us.
And so I'm going to let Nate tell you about his, company, but this is
a topic that I know a lot of you have been interested in, understanding
how to inventory and protect your intellectual property, ways to
license it and to monetize it.
And so we're going to cover all these things today.
So Nate, can you introduce yourself and the audience to your company?
Absolutely.
Like you said, I'm Nate Hecker.
I am the CEO and co founder of Big Idea.
The creator of the big idea platform.
so big idea platform is a revolutionary new type of platform that will help,
with IP management in the digital age.
so we take a different type of approach.
We use crypto ledgers, and blockchain behind the scenes, to enable IP
into the digital age, into the intelligent age, and try to, hopefully
shake up this industry a bit and, be a driving force of good impact.
Okay.
So before you go any further, cause I know that crypto and blockchain
is a big mystery for me, most of us.
So just give us basics.
Yeah, absolutely.
So yeah, most people shy away when they hear blockchain.
It's a very scary, disruptive technology.
They immediately think of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency.
but we look at blockchain as a technology.
so there's a lot of good things blockchain can do as a utility.
so one of those things, when we talk, I mean, when we talk
about timestamping something.
Or proving authenticity or even assigning ownership or attribution
to something blockchain can act as a public notary almost.
you can think about as a mutable database that is completely public.
And if you find creative ways to.
use that in your technology.
You can really disrupt a lot of spaces.
And we think IP is one of those spaces where it can be disrupted with.
Well, how did you get here?
Like, how did big idea come to be?
It's a bit of a journey.
it wasn't an aha moment all of a sudden.
it definitely came to us over the last few years.
so my background is actually in healthcare tech.
Healthcare technology.
So I spent the last decade or so in that world, really specializing
in data interoperability as well as security, compliance and privacy.
So this is a new space for me, I will say, just being in it for the last two years.
But about two years ago, the company I was with was being acquired.
and so, as you know, with any type of acquisition, the
future gets a little fuzzy.
I've been
there.
Uh huh.
So,
it gave me the opportunity to pick my head up a bit and say,
okay, what do I want to do next?
and the obvious answer would be do something in your lane in healthcare.
But when I entered the space, it was, you know, doctors still wrote on notepads
and they still had medical record rooms, which, now fast forward, 12 years later.
None of that exists anymore.
So it's a very mature, very standardized industry.
And so we look to reenter that space.
we saw it as a challenge, right?
It was not as much opportunity in that space to come in as a startup company.
and so my, good friend and I now my business partner and co founder,
Jared Arnold, he and I sat down and just started going through
different types of business ideas.
We had.
30 different business ideas that we were working on and, going through and
doing market analysis and product fit.
started realizing as we were doing all this research, we
had nowhere to put all this.
And even though we thought we had some good ideas, like maybe it wasn't right for
us, it could be right for someone else.
we were using Google sheets and Excel and notion to track all of this, but.
There wasn't a platform for us to be able to like get feedback or collaborate on.
and so we said, well, why don't we look at the idea management space,
So we started going through the idea management, place and seeing
if this could be a viable product.
and one night.
I have this poster in my office that says, ideas are worthless without execution
and everyone loves to say that, right?
everyone's got a million dollar idea.
ideas are worthless.
Ideas are dime a dozen.
You heard them all.
So we decided like, Challenges a bit.
Like, why is that the case?
Because ideas aren't worthless.
Every great new innovation that comes about starts with an idea.
Every new product feature of a new service offering, it starts with someone having an
idea as you collaborate and as you iterate ideas, know, they start to take shape.
They start to take form.
When you go through, the different stages and get to strategy, get to
planning, And we see this now as ideas have potential to have a lot of value,
especially the more they get, worked on.
To their seeds, right?
Yeah, to their seeds,
right?
And so we went back and we really challenged this, okay,
well, why are ideas worthless?
Well, the hard thing is, is once you say an idea to somebody,
well, who owns that idea?
Right.
And if you say it to a dozen people or 20 people, it loses
more and more value because now everyone sort of knows that idea.
and that's where all of a sudden we were like, blockchain can fix this.
So, we have the ability of taking an idea and once documented, we can timestamp.
we can then prove authenticity of that idea happened at this time and we can
assign ownership and attribution to it.
So we really started going down this and at the time we didn't realize
we were actually in the IP space.
So we were actually building a really good software for trade
secrets and know how and copyrights.
and so that's where we sort of came about and we started looking at the IP space
and realizing, After studying it for almost a year of being in it and really
looking at what's currently available in the space, it was established.
It had software, but not a lot of new software.
it was very academia and it reminded me a lot of what
healthcare looked like 10 years ago.
And so it got us really excited.
you use the term idea management.
I've never heard that term before.
Is that something?
Yeah, I mean, our original concept was, I came from corporate my last few years
of working and we would always use consultants for everything to validate.
I know that working in smaller companies, great ideas come from
your entry level employees, employees that are working on your product
every day, dealing with customers.
But these ideas weren't getting up to senior leadership or they were
getting lost in middle management.
we started off with this idea of management software and
that's sort of where we started.
But there is a lot of companies that do idea management.
Not a lot of companies, utilize it, but there are companies out
there that do idea management.
How did you know what you're working on was IP?
Like, when did that connection get made in half?
That's a good question.
I just knew that we really started looking at ideas.
Ideas are really trade secrets.
Or they can be.
And so that's sort of where we started.
We really started the, we shift immediately to ideas into trade secrets,
because we saw this as a space of not many people know what a trade secret is, let
alone how to classify it, or protect it.
And my background being in security and privacy, I spent the last 10 years
protecting PHI, or sorry, personal health, personal health information.
and I realized like, I reflected on my career.
We didn't spend a lot protecting our trade secrets, our know how.
And we realized there was an opportunity here.
If we can teach people properly what a trade secret is, how
our software can help with it.
really focus on the people process and technology piece and being a technology
piece that helps streamline that process.
There might be something here.
And so, did you have a vision or a mission in mind when you first started,
or was it just, how can I use what I know in a way that's interesting to me?
valuable to people.
I would say it was the latter.
Mm-Hmm.
, I would say we started just sort of navigating and, constantly iterating.
And as we iterated, we kept shifting.
Mm-Hmm.
and like any startup, we're still shifting today.
as we learn this space and we learn new problems, we see our product can fit that.
And if we do a slight pivot, can it capture that market?
so yeah, it started with just the idea of love of being able to enable creators.
And we realized that, A good lesson here, right, is companies don't
create intellectual property.
People do.
But people aren't really empowered.
And
so the whole thing was to say, with decentralized technology, can we give
some of that power back to the creator?
Would they be more willing to contribute ideas and IP to a company if the
attribution was back to the person?
Oh, how interesting.
Yeah.
So we, looked
at it as like LinkedIn, right?
Like LinkedIn is great at documenting your experience and your accolades
and your, credentials, but what about all the things you contribute
to in a company over the course of, however many years you're with them?
You can talk about through your experience, but there's really
no software to prove that you contributed to this piece of IP.
And so we saw it as a way of, empowering the creators.
And that's still one of our core missions is we're building for the creator,
necessarily for the company, the company owns and manages, but the people are the
ones that you really want to get fired up and incentivize to create IP for you.
Right.
do companies feel a conflict with that?
They feel like, Oh, I will have extra responsibilities.
When I acknowledge who my creators are versus it all going into the kitty.
Yeah, I don't believe so.
I think the industry, in my experience has always been hard
to incentivize people to document.
and so there's this whole knowledge management piece and, we're just
trying to take it a step further of classifying that knowledge, and making
sure that, the institutional knowledge in someone's head when they walk away.
Can really hurt a company.
Yes.
So if you can incentivize them to take that institutional knowledge, those
trade secrets and be able to, incentivize them to document those and be able to
pass that ownership directly onto the company and that enable that company
to protect that now or use that to educate the rest of their workforce.
We see it as a huge upside and a huge benefit for a company
to want to use our software.
So it's not just a way to document big ideas, so to speak,
but also the nitty gritty.
of running your business.
Absolutely.
Yep.
we're trying to build a full stack intellectual property management system
that goes everything from documentation to protection to collaboration and then
moves into our real hope for the future is to enable IP new way and give people a
new opportunity because that's the future.
IP is everywhere.
Right.
And it's really hard to be discovered.
Most people aren't good at, showcasing their IP and getting it out there.
Yes.
We think we can build a platform that will allow you to showcase and
allow your IP to be discoverable.
And then with new technologies coming with ai.
mm-Hmm.
augmented and virtual reality and metaverse, there's a ton of
opportunity coming for how you can utilize your current IP in new ways.
Yeah.
Well you bring.
to, the audience that we have here, which are expertise based businesses,
service providers, professional services providers, who have corporate
clients, who aren't thinking, they're thinking about how do I build scale
into my business, how do I build a business that has some independence
from me, just, selling my time.
And they know that it somehow involves creating assets and leveraging
them, but they don't always call it IP or intellectual property.
I like that you talk about ideas because mostly they ask, you
know, how do I protect my ideas?
That's generally and it's very kind of overwhelming.
I'd like to say intellectual property is everywhere because, every time we use our
intellect, creating intellectual property.
But How do we help them understand it?
How do we help them categorize it?
Inventory it, protect it.
And so how does big idea platform help?
Yeah, we actually have the same challenge.
I remember the feedback I just received a little bit ago was like, you got to
cut the word intellectual property out.
Like people don't connect necessarily with that word unless they're in the industry.
so, what we call them are intellectual digital assets.
and I know that's not a better term than intellectual property, but moving it
more to a tokenization or digitalization using blockchain, we allow someone
to come in and register a creation, a piece of work that could be an idea that
could be a, copyright, a new material.
and then we wrap that into a container that we call an intellectual asset.
so our platform at first, like.
Just getting it documented and classified is huge.
And so as you start registering your intellectual assets or your different
pieces of IP, you start building out what we call your intellectual capital.
So that's like the first sort of stage, I think, of like really
helping out, uh, companies is just to document and get to a place where
your IP can start working for you.
once you have intellectual capital, if you're a company that's looking
to grow, looking to get financing, looking to fundraise, you said
it best, they're assets, right?
And so the more we can, document and build your portfolio of assets, those
can be leveraged in conversations when it comes to financing.
And investors and financiers, like they love to know what's what's behind
you, what's behind your company.
Like, what am I truly investing in?
And those assets are what make you unique.
So I think just starting with building your portfolio and giving a
very simple, efficient and low cost tool to allow people to register.
Now the whole blockchain piece, again, I know we've talked about it can be scary.
We just put it in the background, right?
So we make it super easy.
we don't put any burden on the user.
We just use it in the background to, be able to go back and audit
and prove that this asset was created here by this person.
So that's sort of like the first step, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
The language that we use, you use, I use, is so important.
probably left a little bit when you mentioned intellectual capital.
So, you know, I come from the corporate background.
Everything is IT, And then you have to, like, kind of
modify how you talk about it.
When you figure it out, can you let me know?
Because I think assets is the key.
people relate to assets and that's why we try to just talk about them.
These are just intellectual assets.
Yeah.
Which was, I know, still a new concept, but hopefully people can
grab a little bit more towards that.
Yeah.
I was talking to my team earlier today and we were talking about,
you know, one of the, audiences we like to talk to our business
coaches who help experts like you.
Create scale and I have been busy cataloging how business coaches talk
about how they help their clients scale.
And it's like this list that's growing of all the ways that they
talk about scale without ever using the term intellectual property.
I'm like, how, how is no, it's nowhere, you know, they'll have one Oh, webinars,
everything, and never once do they use the term intellectual property.
So I'm like, okay, I gotta figure out how to get in there.
That's amazing.
constantly trying to connect with, we don't call our users users.
We call them creators.
We try to relate to them in a different way that everyone's a creator.
And I think with new technology.
With a gen AI and, all the new tools out there.
I think everyone at some point is going to be a creator.
Most people are already on social media.
They're on Instagram.
They're taking pictures or creating.
They just don't know it.
And so what they're really.
Taking every time is they are creating that IP,
right?
And so we're trying to connect with them as a level of really trying
to empower the creator in you.
And then how does that work for your business?
Well, how easy is it to use the platform?
I'm biased.
I think it's really easy.
There is, I think in the front, it's a little bit difficult getting started.
We're working on trying to figure that piece out, but once you're in,
it's really, really easy to use.
One of our main principles with building this was, to build a
very usable, very, high end user experience, um, for the reason for
that, not to get too technical, right?
We heard of Web 2 and Web 3, sort of the shift we're moving into.
If you ever dabbled into the blockchain Web 3 space, the
user experience is horrible.
We really, in the last 10 years, have perfected that.
The web two space, Instagram, Facebook, Google.
it's very easy.
Your parents are using it.
Your grandparents are now using it.
Like everyone's on the internet.
And so we really did a lot of good the last 10 years.
And then web three came along and sort of ruined a lot of that.
Just
tell us web versus web three.
Yeah.
So I'll give you my explanation of it.
Hopefully that works.
so web one was the ability to just be able to post out there.
There's a thing about just Going to a company's website and seeing a billboard
of what they're selling web 2 was the ability interact We call that read and
write so now you can like Instagram you can now post Wikipedia you can post and
you can build communities to read the internet, but also write to it Web 3 gets
into ownership So you've never been able to own anything before right when you
post on Facebook you post them Instagram.
They own that Yeah You can't pull that information back out.
So web three is a new world where the individual creator.
is now able to own the materials that are posting.
so it's a really cool place where we're going.
trying to explain as easy as possible.
So going back to that user experience, we try to bridge the gap.
We try to put all that Web 3 behind the scenes and make a really elegant
user experience while giving them the, UI they're used to clicking on nice
big buttons, being able to write and document just like you would in Google.
like I said, the beginning is a little tough is because we do require every
person or every creator to prove identity.
So one little step, one little hurdle we go through the ability to take a picture
of the front and the back of your ID.
I have,
do have an account.
I remember going through that.
Yes.
Yeah.
So that's like the one hurdle, but like that step's really important
because now we're able to assign IP directly to an identity, not just
you as a user, you as an identity.
And to me, that's really cool because, it's an immutable record now that this
person, this human created this IP.
And so there's a really important reason for it, but once you get over it, I
think it's actually pretty easy to use.
And then we just got to massage how we talk about things, right?
Like, not necessarily calling things IP figuring out a better
usable word to represent that.
Right.
So one of the ways you helping people is like helping them actually reach the U.
S.
P.
USPTO.
Yep.
Yeah.
And so tell us about that.
Yeah.
So we're not here to compete with the patent service that, the United States
offers and today and a traditional IP.
And so as we talked about, right, we started as an idea management, we moved
into trade secrets and copyrights and we realized that we can keep going.
We can capture all different types of IP.
And so most recently, and our latest update coming out later this month, we've
actually integrated directly into the United States patent and trademark office.
so now you're like, well, I already have a patent or you have a trademark.
So what, but now we're able to sort of ingest that into our platform and one
represented as a intellectual asset as part of your portfolio and allow
you to manage it all in one place.
But the really cool stuff is what the comm.
What we are going to be able to do with that once it's in our platform.
So again, our main mission is to make IP enable IP, give it opportunity
to thrive in the digital landscape.
And so the very first thing is you need to register it.
And once you register it, what we're building next, I think is going to be.
Pretty cool.
And, give users and creators new ways of creating, revenue.
Well, let's talk about what you're building.
That's
yeah, excited.
we're in the building stages right now.
and so everything we built today on our platform around portfolio
management, collaboration, and we didn't really talk about marketplace,
but we do have a marketplace feature.
All of this was sort of foundational for us to be able to get started
on, to really build the next wave of how we're going to enable IP.
And so our plans is, if we can take a digital asset or digital intellectual
assets, and then we can facilitate licensing agreements with other
people and other parties, well, we can also facilitate artificial
intelligent licensing agreements.
Very interesting.
Right.
And so once we have those different licensing agreements, we can actually
partner with different AI engines.
So as an example, chat GPT, is an AI engine, Dolly mid journey.
We can partner with these types of companies we can actually take
the licensing agreement as well as the intellectual asset and
ingest it directly into the AI.
So they
actually have a license to use it instead of just stealing it.
Okay.
Yes.
Well, I will say like, so a good example, that I always use.
If you right now go to ChatGPT or go to DALL-E which is the image
generator of ChatGPT and you type in.
Draw me a picture of Taylor Swift holding a can of Coke.
It's not going to generate what you think it's going to.
It's going to generate you probably a woman that's blonde, maybe country-esque
Holding a red can without any labels.
So right now, all the AI engines are actually really good at making sure
they're not infringing on top of trademarks or likeness or other types
of IP and So everyone looks at it.
I'm like, well, that's amazing.
They can do that.
And it is But think about how much it's limiting them.
To be able to use.
And so if you're able to go out and license Taylor Swift's likeness
for who knows how much money that costs nowadays, and also be able to
license out the trademark for Coke.
Well, you could go back, ingest those, licensing agreements
directly into an AI engine.
and generate the exact image you were thinking about in your head.
Mm-Hmm.
. And the cool thing is.
The terms and conditions of that licensing contract.
Well, why aren't they just part of the prompt that goes in to make sure
that AI Stays compliant with the terms of the contract And so I think we're
entering a really cool world we have to first get a ton of ip into our system
and have it registered And then we really are looking forward to how we're
going to enable creators for the future
and so would you have a mass license like All the assets that we have People
would opt in, opt out, how would you
Yeah, I mean it's about just treating IP as a intellectual asset and then
allowing you to get full control of the management of that asset.
So you have the ability to make that public, make that private.
She kind of
have toggles of what exactly it's a bunch of
configuration options.
And again, we're trying to make it easy.
and again, we're not trying to compete with lawyers or agencies.
We actually see this as a new way for agencies and lawyers to actually manage
and come in and help manage these assets.
So, I don't know from your perspective as an attorney.
Yeah, I mean, I think we all want licensing to be easier, right?
I mean, so we have things like Creative Commons where you have, kind of
standardized licensing that you don't need to negotiate an individual license for.
And you have services like, is it the Copyrights, I can't believe
I can't remember the name of it.
Yeah.
So they have, kind of just.
They can license for you, if you want something from the New York Times or from
Harvard Business Journal or whatever.
And so we want things like that.
We want ideas to get spread around.
We want people to be have an easy way to access.
Our content because, guess what?
They steal it if they can't figure out how to do it.
And so, better for everybody to have an easy way, that people can get access.
So, yeah, I don't think lawyers are really that, the one on one stuff, right?
That's still the stuff that you need.
Yeah.
Presumably need lawyers for it.
And
we're trying to build flexibility into our site.
So we're starting with standard agreements that people can just use off the shelf or
give them the option to upload their own.
Right.
And then be able to make sure that the other party understands that
this is not a standard contract, that this is something written.
custom and you may just want to take an extra glance and have it reviewed
by your attorney before entering it.
So the licensing space is complicated.
We're trying our best to simplify it.
But, you know, start out, we'll just keep it very open to allow people to be able
to use their own contracts that are more
comfortable
with
that.
Right.
So, for instance, I have, I'm called the graphics queen.
I love to kind of visualize different concepts.
And so I had someone, Just last week asked me if she could use one of
my graphics, with her materials and say, know, I honestly just said yes.
Yeah.
but is that something where I could have uploaded that and she comes to me and say,
Hey, I would like to use, this content.
I send them over to big idea and.
Absolutely.
That's such a great, amazing example.
so yeah, if you would have wrapped that and created that as a intellectual asset,
you could have just sent her a link.
She could have registered, it, maybe that image is like, Your eyes only and
so we'll actually even you could protect it with a non disclosure agreement
So you could actually
send them a link but before they could actually see the contents of it They're
actually signing an NDA first and then you can enter into sort of negotiations
And so depends on if you're selling it or you're licensing it You'll have
the option of a one click button to be able to go and license that from you.
So we're hoping to be able to offer an express license like you talked about.
Just a one easy click.
here's the terms and conditions of what you can use it for.
And that person in our side has a choice to want to do it or not.
and then we execute that full contract right there.
So there's no need to go outside our platform and just keeps it
very efficient and very easy.
So yeah, that's a great example.
and then.
We're also looking at digital likeness and voice rights are a big theme
coming up with, AI and deep fakes.
So why not be able to register your likeness and voice rights as
an intellectual asset and do the same thing and just easily license
that out or just consent, right?
The big thing is with that is you have to have the ability to consent.
Then you have to have the ability to license, and then once you license
it, right, monetize and tracking.
there's just a lot of options we can go, we're not trying to boil the ocean,
but we're trying to stay broad that we can capture all types of IP, and
figuring out, and really let up to the users, for how they want to utilize this
to fit their business or their model.
Right.
you have many, many use cases, but I just thought of one, as you mentioned.
I'm
all ears.
Which is, due diligence room.
Right.
So, people can just kind of everything in there and then buyer wants to look at it.
They go in through there.
Yeah.
So collaboration, again, big point, today, what we offer is the ability to invite
someone into your intellectual asset.
you can add them as a collaborator, you can decide what role they
have and you can facilitate it.
They require an NDA before they're able to collaborate and see what's going on.
And then the cool thing, again, going back to this blockchain technology
behind the scenes, we are able to capture every edit that everyone's making.
And so you have this immutable log.
Of being able to contribute together, on this asset.
And every change, every revision is rehashed posted back up on our ledger.
and we're able to sign attribution to each person's change or upload of documents.
So we do see ourselves as a massive collaboration to what you are getting
into and something that we'll be releasing in April is part of our workspaces, the
ability to not only invite creators in, but businesses in now, and then we'll
have the ability of creating data rooms.
data rooms are sometimes like a one way facing way.
it's great for like M and a events, or if you're, negotiating a financing deal.
so we have the ability of not only doing data rooms, but like these
collaboration zones so you can add multiple intellectual assets into
a room or documents into a room.
And again, it's completely tracked of who owns what and who's
contributing what to really bring that transparency that collaboration needs.
And transparency to me builds trust.
Right.
Obviously, I know you just recently talked about collaboration, thinking about it.
Yeah.
Needing agreements.
Right.
And so like, we just want to
be able to be the technology that enables the compliance of that agreement.
Right.
So we got lots of good stuff coming.
we're very, very excited about that release and being able to
start working with businesses
And so can today, someone can go to, is it big idea.
com and
it is big idea platform.
com.
Okay, great.
But it is available for individual users to sign up, to identify
themselves and be able to start creating their first intellectual assets.
And if they want, they can go ahead and keep everything private and build their.
Portfolio or their intellectual capital, or they can make it public
and make it discoverable so that people can search and find it.
maybe there's multiple reasons why you may want to have your IP discoverable.
Would Google find it or you had to be
right now?
We're not indexing anything.
this is probably my healthcare background around privacy.
we don't index anything from these ideas.
And so you have to be a validated user in order to be on our platform.
And again, it's also comes down to auditing.
Right.
So we want to see who's viewing different assets.
So in order to do that, we track, who's able to do the different pieces.
All right.
And we're also reminded of the poor man's copyright.
Remember that?
Oh
yeah.
So I guess if I have, deposited something without registering
at the copyright office, I can.
Prove that I created it before somebody else created there.
Yes, exactly.
It's very, it's a very efficient poor man's copyrights, to be able to go in
there and take a piece of work, classify it as a copyright, and then we will
go ahead and do all the attribution, timestamping and authenticity for you.
So it's very, very efficient way.
obviously, once you create a piece of work, it is protected under copyright.
But sometimes it's hard to prove when you created it, or just gives you an
extra level to be able to prove that out.
I will say the cool thing is I'm learning this.
I'm not a lawyer by trade.
but I'm learning, learning the space pretty quickly that if you
created something, it's copyrighted.
It may not give you the same rights as a registered copyright
with the copyright office.
But you can always register that at any time.
So if you start seeing your copyrights being infringed, you
can still go get it registered and offer that level of protection,
that extra level of protection.
And
then we can go and pull that, eventually pull that copyright and show that this is
a registered copyright to make sure that users know that there's an additional
level of a registered copyright here.
Now has blockchain or, been used as evidence In litigation yet, do you know?
It has in many niche use cases, to prove, mostly in the finance
world around transactions.
there's a lot of research out there that shows of how it can be used as basically
a notary or a, public timestamp of events.
And so it has been used in a lot of cases, and I think we're going to see a
lot more of it happened going forward.
I get back to IP just really hasn't been an industry that's really been tested
with these new types of technology, even in AI, I think laws and the
industry is not ready for Gen AI.
No, not at all.
And we're seeing
that, the USPTO and copyright trying to figure it out quickly, and figure
out what side they want to be on.
And so I think in the next few years, we're going to see a couple of cases
being tried here and we're, obviously paying attention very closely.
but yeah, there's been some niche cases that are there, but nothing,
substantial yet to really back behind.
Okay.
Well, speaking of the future, I mean, you created this book.
business.
So many people start a business, in order for the exit, the ultimate exit.
How do you look at this business, your role in it, what your next
step would be for you to exit?
That's a good question.
I don't fully know the answer yet, but I know I look at technology from
an industry level, and I look at it from, I think industries go through
two different stages with technology.
It goes through a consolidated stage, which I think where the IP has been, and
then it goes through a disruptive stage.
And so I think the IP space is primed for innovation.
Disruption, just like healthcare was 10 years ago and has now gradually
moved into the consolidated stage.
so I look at it from that perspective.
And so I think we're just on the beginning of the disruptive stage in
this legal tech or IP tech type of world.
And so I'm really excited to ride this wave.
And I think in the next five, seven years when we start moving
to that consolidate stage again.
we'll see where we're at and we'll take that position.
but I have learned one thing about myself.
I'm not made for corporate America, so I am sure regardless of where
we are with big idea, I will be probably in a similar position.
I love being in the, high growth, startups wearing multiple hats.
and so that's, I know that's where I'll, I'll probably be in the next few
years, regardless of, where this goes.
Um,
I'm just excited about all the opportunity out there.
That is awesome.
This has been fantastic.
Thank you so much for making the time to talk to our audience.
It's a.
Something that they all ask about.
So I know this is going to be very exciting for them.
So once again, so it was big idea, platform.
com.
And if people want to connect with you, where can they find you?
you can email us directly at info at big idea, platform.
com hop on our website at big idea, platform.
com.
And through that website, you can find our contact information as well
as be able to launch the app that will get you right into our platform.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Thank you so
much.
Well, thank you.
Yeah,