Latest / Author Hour / The Venture Capital Alternative: How Matt Moyers Is Fighting for America's Inventors

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The Venture Capital Alternative: How Matt Moyers Is Fighting for America's Inventors · Author Hour

• speaker-0: And I basically had the first draft of the book done before I got a hold of Scribe. And I did, I mean, I reached out to a whole bunch of different publishers, thought about self-publishing, talked to a couple of different authors. And ultimately, I, you know, I wanted something that would look like it was done by one of the big publishing firms. I and because I didn't want to do it by myself. And so ultimately, you know, Scribe offered the the best. hybrid solution for what I wanted to put together. And I've you know, I really wanted to make sure that I had a decent editor and Scribe's editor came through and I thought he was really good. So I that was really important to me. speaker-1: Matt, I first wanna just thank you for being here. speaker-0: Appreciate it. Appreciate being here. Thanks for having me. speaker-1: Course. Before we get into the the book and your business specifically, do you mind just giving us a little bit of your broad background? speaker-0: Yeah, so I am a twenty seven year expert at the intersection of intellectual property and finance, which is a fairly unique and nuanced business. I started out and got i in the finance world as an investment banker, and after the Enron crisis in two thousand three, when Arthur Anderson collapsed, there was a very large legislative change that made intangible assets and intellectual property more important to businesses financial statements. And so I got into the world of valuing and transacting intellectual property assets. So I've been doing that now for a pretty long time. speaker-1: That's super interesting. And and is it that most people kind of in the IP world just don't come in with any sort of financial they come in with kind of a legal understanding, but not the financial aspect? speaker-0: Yeah, so ⁓ well, you know, intellectual property is a three-legged stool, right? There is the legal aspect, which is the biggest aspect that people think about. But then then there's the engineering aspect and the innovation aspect, which is a a piece that I I you know, I don't have an engineering degree, but ⁓ then there's the third leg, which is the finance. And so I work with the legal and the engineering, the innovators to kind of come up with, hey, what's the value? How do you transact? How do you make money from? How do you save on your taxes from owning intellectual property? speaker-1: Amazing. And so what was the w what what kind of form did this take throughout your career? Did you work at a firm for a while? Did you set up your own independent business immediately? Like wh how did the what have you been doing for these twenty seven years? So speaker-0: ⁓ my first nearly 10 years was in the space of accounting. So I was at a big four accounting firm, Pricewaterhouse Cooper's, and I did intangible asset analysis and valuation of an accounting for the better part of that time across ⁓ all kinds of different reasons, whether it was for tax or accounting and compliance or even ⁓ MA. So that's where I started was in the world of the accounting. And then Around 2011, I got specifically into the space of of intellectual property, but focusing on legally protected assets such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, right? The the really strong forms of intellectual property that companies seek, you know, assistance from the government and protecting. So there's a lot of different forms of IP and intellectual property, but the government-backed ones are kind of where I moved into around two thousand eleven, specifically around patents. speaker-1: Yeah, super interesting. And so when did the d glimmer in your eye start to write a book? speaker-0: So so there was a very large legislative change in two thousand eleven called the American Invents Act, which really changed how the patent system works in the United States of America. And that was about the time that I was transitioning from the accounting world into the like true IP world. And we did some really large cases in involved with bankruptcy and intellectual property. One of them was a company Nortel Networks, which was a hundred billion dollar company out of Canada, basically the ATT of Canada. And that company went bankrupt in 2000, I think it was eight, nine, ten. And then they had to sell all their assets off. It was a full blown liquidation of one of the largest companies in the world. And the patents were sold. And those patents went through a stalking horse bid. And initially Google offered to buy those patents for three hundred and fourteen million dollars. Right. And that was the studding bid. And then a few months later, when they actually opened it up to the entire universe of potential buyers, a consortium ended up buying it with Apple and and another group of companies for four point five billion dollars. So it was, you know, 14 times higher than the original price. And a team of mine was called in to, you know, allocate the value of that transaction to all of the investors. And and so my idea for a book came shortly after that project because the complexities and difficulties around valuing the IP was so challenging in a bankruptcy setting that it seemed like a book needed to be written about. about how to value and and how to make the IP system better, particularly on the finance end. So I sat on that idea for, you know, the better part of a decade before I actually started doing something with it. speaker-1: Yeah, that's not uncommon, you know. I think the delta between first idea and ⁓ this idea is irresistible now and this is the time in my life to do it is often really long for people. But you did it and that's what counts. speaker-0: Right, you know, and I did I would look at it, I'd think about it, I'd write an outline, and then I'd put it down on the sh you know, just put it in the back and then not think about it again. But yeah, finally in in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, I was like, Okay, now is the time. It's it's really important that a book like this gets out there, that people kind of look at intellectual property through the lens of finance in a in a way that will Make the system better, right? And that was the goal that I w that with which I wrote the book. So speaker-1: What made that the time? Was it was it personal circumstance for you? Was there something in the the environment or the industry that changed? speaker-0: There were there were yeah, it was it was a combination of the two. I had gone through some really difficult times with various different clients who have had their intellectual property used without authorization by very large tech companies. So that was one. The other was the change in presidential administration in 2024, which changed from a ⁓ you know a presidential administration that is in favor of intellectual property protections to from the previous one which was in favor of weaker intellectual property protection, right? So, you know, depending on if you're blue or you're red will will kind of dictate whether or not you want weak or strong intellectual property protection. speaker-1: That's interesting. I didn't realize that was sort of a an issue that was split along party lines. speaker-0: I I mean it usually isn't and it isn't always. It kind of goes with the waves and the flows. And because of that American events act that Kate that was passed in 2011, and it had overwhelming bipartisan support. But now that we've been seeing what that that legislation has done, which has decimated small companies and individual inventors for the benefit of the largest companies in the world, right? Now we're seeing a split between the reds and the blues on How to protect IP. So speaker-1: Got it. Okay. I I imagine you could have written, you know, many different books, right? I mean, you you've lived a lot of lives in this, you've you've seen a lot of different things, experience these hardships that your clients had and and sort of come into this industry through an interesting path. ⁓ how did you decide on this particular scope of your book? How did you decide, you know, which of the thousand books you could write that this was the one you wanted to do? speaker-0: I have a deep affinity for inventors. I actually was born on December seventeenth, which was the day that the or the Wright brothers flew flew their first airplane. And so from a very young age, I've had this, you know, connection to invention and the idea of inventors. And then my career through serendipity has has introduced me to literally thousands, if not tens of thousands, of inventors. From the guy who invented something in his basement to the, you know, the corporate engineer who has hundreds of patents in his name for like IBM or General Electric or Google or whoever. Right. And so I've met these people and I know what they've gone through. And I started working quite often with small individual inventors and they just and this recurring thing kept happening. I made my invention. I tried to commercialize it. Big tech came in, they entered the market, they came with a competing product that is using my inventions, and now I don't know what to do. Right. And so I would help these companies figure out what to do, which often resulted in, you know, patent litigation against those big companies. And then those big companies would crush them. So after seeing it so many times and and having a couple of very specific customers that I work with who are really got the short end of the stick. I was like, I I gotta just write these stories, right? I gotta I gotta tell what has happened, what I am seeing and and at the same time offer a solution for for how to make it better. So that's what the book does is it goes through those stories of those individual inventors and then and then offers a solution to make it better. speaker-1: So your target audience for this is that that inventor who wants to commercialize and protect their IP and w get the value out of it, you know, get get paid what they're worth by the market. speaker-0: Yeah, that is I so there's kind of three different there's the inventor, there's small inventors, there's the finance people, right? The investment bankers, the venture capital people, the people who are actually putting money into early stage companies and expecting them to grow and have meaningful exits. Right. And what I have found in my research is that most of these early stage companies that are are funded by VCs or funded by you know private equity, most of them end up having a bad outcome, right? You hear about the ones that that are unicorns and do great returns, but a lot of them end up failing. And in my business, right, as an appraiser, as a as someone who works with IP people and early stage companies, I was the one that would get the call. Like, what do I do next? Right. And so It's for those investors as well. And it's also for, you know, politicians and regulators that oversee intellectual property administration and operations, right? It is a mess right now. The IP system in America is a mess. Patents are just the canary in the coal mine of of what needs to be fixed. And you know, you even see it in the copyright space and AI. And so, you know, there could be a lot of big important improvement changes that that need to happen to the system. So my audience kind of covers all of those people, or at least I hope it does. speaker-1: Yeah, interesting. I mean I'm definitely in the in the target market for this as a as a early stage investor who wants to, you know, understand wh where where the protections are for what inventions and how to be sure that you're laying a strong strong foundation, you know, for the company that you want to build. speaker-0: Yeah, that's right. That's right. speaker-1: So what was your I I always tell people you need a you need a selfish reason and you need a selfless reason to want to write the book because it's you know, you you've gotta be motivated to give something to the reader and you also, you know, it's hard and it's a big investment and it takes time and it takes effort. And so I I coach people to have a selfish reason for writing the book. Did you have a a like a selfish reason? Was this built into y the building of your business or something associated with I mean you're serving your clients, so I imagine You know, your your future clients are the ones who's sort of in the target audience for this book. I speaker-0: I mean, my selfish reason is, you know, obviously I'd like to make some money from the book, whether it be from selling the book or from getting new clients. I also would like it for the selfish reason just is that, you know, I'd like to see have opportunities to make money alongside some of the customers that I'm working with, particularly the ones that have really amazing inventive technology. that ends up being poached by some of the largest companies. And so, you know, my unselfish reason, I'd like to not see those people get screwed. And my selfish reason is I'd like to make money alongside them and they should be treated appropriately when they come up with these ideas. Cause I, you know, I think that inventors are one of the most important professions in in society. So speaker-1: Yeah, I I couldn't agree more. And I think it's for how important it is, it's very interesting that, you know, there's nobody showing up at the job fair for them. There's no career counselor slot for it. There's no, you know, you could be an engineer, you can be an entrepreneur, you can but the things like invention and innovation are sort of they feel like traits rather than roles. But I think, you know, the ⁓ the more The more the the sort of rote tasks are automated by, you know, robotics or software or AI, the more of us as humans should shift towards generating new things, whether it's art or, you know, ⁓ a service ⁓ as an entrepreneur or a scientist as a knowledge or an innovator, an inventor. So I I I think this is actually a very important sort of field to advance and expand and explain to people that, you know, you can be an inventor when you grow up. They're all over the place. It's just rare that you see it as a job title on LinkedIn. speaker-0: Right, right. That's exactly right. Right. And an inventor is kind of a stepping stone to an entrepreneur anyway. Right. Like people who are super creative in terms of like technical innovation, engineers, scientists, those types of things, you know, a lot of times they come up with these ideas and then they want to turn them into businesses and they wanna turn you know and they wanna build a new market. And the invention is just a single stepping stone, right? And And you can see that even with, you know, the people that you've written about, like Elon Musk, right? He he's a he was an inventor first, and then he was a software coder, and then he was an entrepreneur and a businessman, right? Like it all it all c connects together. And invention is just one of those really important tasks that unfortunately has a very low batting average for success, right? Like your inventions, if you can't commercialize it. The likelihood that your patented invention is worth a lot of money is pretty low. You know, probably 85, 90% of most patented inventions don't carry much market value at all. But when they do carry market value, they carry a lot of market value. So it's a unique space and it makes it very contentious. So and you know, ⁓ part of the reason that I wrote the book is to try to bring some of the contentiousness down and that. you know, just recognize what people are doing and and get through this, you know, financially in a smart and wise way. And everyone can make money, right? Everyone can do well. It doesn't always have to be a fight. Right. So speaker-1: Yeah. Well and and I I don't know the details of your your sort of offering or services ⁓ alignment, but I imagine, you know, as an inventor, you you spend a lot of time and money and and effort inventing this thing, and then as soon as you have it, you're you're sort of in this dangerous spot where until you do the legal work to protect it, you're vulnerable. Until you take it to market, you're not getting any profit on it. But once you take it to market, you're more you know, your risk of being knocked off is is higher. And so you to sort of shell out these huge costs, not just the engineering and invention cost ⁓ of all the experimentation you have to do, but also, you know, the legal protections and the go-to-market effort of of marketing and production and all these things. So is is your you know, the book is titled The Venture Capital Alternative, is the is the solution here, you know, some sort of shared equity for, you know, people that that have an invention but don't necessarily have the the cash to pay for, you know, all of these services up front to take something to market. speaker-0: Yeah, it is. I mean, it's it's it's intellectual property finance and intellectual property capital and IP debt and IP equity, right? So funding early stage companies using IP assets, particularly patents, but potentially trademarks and copyrights or contracts and and those types of things where the investment directly into the IP. sustains it and makes it more tangible, if you will. And because right now, the way that intellectual property is, I mean, it it can, it can just disappear. It can just disappear into the ether if not protected. And then all of a sudden, anyone and everyone who can think of it can use it. And that, you know, and so that's why stronger intellectual property protection is important for these early stage companies because companies can come in and take it. A great example is Thonos, the speaker maker, right? They started in the early 2000s. They were one of the first companies to really build out wireless speakers so that you can put them all over your house and not have to have cords everywhere. And they built a really nice business. And then around 2015, 2016, both Google and Amazon decided. We're gonna enter the the home speaker market as well and we're gonna add all in all these things. And they came in at a like nearly eighty dollar per for an equivalent speaker cheaper, right? And they can subsidize that with all of the earnings that they have from all their other businesses, and they can undercut a company like Sonos, and it and it really caused Sonos quite a bit of problems. ⁓ Sonos ended up having to sue Google. The litigation back and forth over many years caused all kinds of problems. Sonos ultimately took their eye off the ball and and their entire product went sideways and their CEO had to leave the company. Right. And all of that started because of patent infringement. Right. So that you know, these are kind of the stories that I hear on a regular basis. So speaker-1: Yeah. Is there w one moment or one event accomplishment, achievement, or something that you're you're dramatically you know that you're looking forward to as your your moment of celebration of like this book's success? As we record this, we're only a few months out from launch. So so we're looking forward a little bit. What was your your champagne moment? speaker-0: So it's coming. ⁓ in the book, I tell the story of two different inventors. And the second one, Satoshi Nado from Japan, has been going through very significant patent litigation with some of a a couple of trillion dollar companies. And so the you know, the champagne moment will be when the litigation outcomes are in their favor and they're being awarded. you know, a hundred million dollars plus for the inventions that they made, right? Like that's that's the champagne moment. And and even for smaller inventors, right? You know, even if it's a a 10 or 20 million dollar outcome on their invention to get those kind of licensing fees or to raise that type of capital or to be able to launch their company, like those are all champagne moments for me. And and and I've unfortunately have the opposite of that where I get calls from the inventors and it's, you know, we're shutting down. We're this is a really difficult situation. So so I'm looking for that flip. Part of the reason I wrote the book is so that I can see that flip move the other way. And instead of having people calling crying, having people calling with joy. So speaker-1: Yeah. Well that's a that's a terrible setup for my next question, which is what what are some of the unexpected good things that have happened as a result of your book? I'm glad the phone is ringing, but I'm sorry the people on the other end are crying. ⁓ do most of ⁓ do many of your engagements start with a you know, a tearful phone call? speaker-0: I mean, it's it's probably about one in five that are like that that I'm in a really bad spot. The other side is I do get a lot of calls from the guys who are like, I I just got this patent. I I'm in the process of my proof of concept on this ⁓ on launching this product. I need I need funding to, you know, build this business. And those are Those are fun. They're challenging. It's hard to find investors ⁓ unless they have really good traction. And so and a lot of times I get calls from these types of group these types of companies, these types of inventors, and they're outside of the venture capital world, right? Like they're they're a guy in Iowa or a guy in in Florida and they're not anywhere close to silicon, any tech hubs, and they're like, I've got this thing. What what can I do? Right. And so I'm hoping that the book will bring more investors to the table that are w are willing to look into these types of situations with these early stage companies and and help them build lasting and meaningful businesses. So speaker-1: Cool. Is is as an asset class, is is investing in IP kind of like ⁓ is it a power law thing like venture where you invest in ten and one ten X's and the rest go to zero? Or is this more you can actually specifically underwrite cash flows and you know it's more like lending on future cash flow? speaker-0: I mean so v lending on future clash flow is something that is happening in Europe and in Southeast Asia. So IP financing is happening in London at a at a group called Ingot and Mat West. But in the US, it's almost non existent for IP financing. ⁓ they say there's some here and there, but it's very few and far between. And there's not any real organizations in the US that are just focused on IP financing. Right. Maybe it's a something we'll do if it's one if it's a one off y type situation. Whereas in Europe they're they're legitimately trying to create programs around it. speaker-1: Yeah. Well it's an interesting alternative to, you know, pure pure startup investing because there's there's collateral, right? If if the the if the underlying IP has value, you know, right ⁓ lending against that IP with that as collateral, you should be able to get, you know, loan like terms rather than sell equity in the upside. Of course you're risking your IP, but yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the flip side of that is the what the companies that are long in the tooth that tried to commercialize and didn't, and all they have left is their patents and IP. There's a whole world called ⁓ litigation funding and the patent space is a big a big opportunity. So there are and it does follow the power law distributions, right? That that o only a handful of patents make up the majority of the value. And when you go and insert those against really large infringers, you can have outsized returns on just a handful of patents. So that that exists in inside the patent and IP space as well. speaker-1: Okay. Okay. Sorry, I feel I I I am probably digging too much into like this is a fascinating like thing for me. So I just keep kind of poking at it. But how how did you decide w once you decided you wanted to write a book, ⁓ what was the path from there to to actually choosing scribe? Did you start writing first? Did you look for a a path, find a publisher, somebody to help you write it? What was that? speaker-0: Hey, it was an it was an interesting path. And I, you know, I started out kind of on my own writing. And I basically had the first draft of the book done before I got a hold of Scribe. And I did, I mean, I reached out to a whole bunch of different publishers, thought about self-publishing, talked to a couple of different authors. And ultimately, I, you know, I wanted something that would look like it was done by one of the big publishing firms. I and because I didn't want to do it by myself. And so ultimately, you know, Scribe offered the the best hybrid solution for what I wanted to put together. And I and I spoke with your editors and I and I you know, I really wanted to make sure that I had a decent editor and Scribe's editor came through and I thought he was really good. So I that was really important to me. speaker-1: Awesome. Tell me more about the writing process. Did you ⁓ how did you get that first draft created? What was your what was your routine? What was your habit? What can we learn? speaker-0: So I found this guy through Instagram who was like, I'll help you write your book in thirty days. I think his name was Josh Sprague or something like that. And so I signed up for his course to write my book in thirty days. And I, you know, it was fine. And and I po I I actually pumped out the first draft of the book in about sixty days using his method. And then I spent another eighteen months editing it. ⁓ yeah, for right. speaker-1: You can always shift that ratio around. It's real easy to get a first draft, but you're gonna pay that bill on the speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. So you know, I was like throwing th you know, and I ended up I got done with the first draft and I reread it and I was like, Holy crap, this is like three books. So I, you know, I I tore it apart, I put a whole bunch into kind of, you know, on the shelf. I it it made me realize I've probably got three or four more books inside of me. And so now that this one's out, I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna pull those up, that other stuff out. And kind of just kinda keep work working it, right? Like I think this is gonna be a thing now. So speaker-1: Awesome. Yeah. It's it's a really helpful thought exercise. And man, does it help? ⁓ it makes it so much easier to edit when you, you know, you flip that switch of like, I'm not killing this. I'm not it's not dead. It's just going on the shelf for for the next book is raw material and I'm just gonna save. It just doesn't belong inside this particular, you know, picture or book or puzzle. What was the what was the method briefly that got you, you know, a draft in sixty days? Are you dictating? Are you just are you setting a word quote for ⁓ quoted? For the day. Like what how did you get that? speaker-0: bit of both I did a combination of dictating and then a combination I forget the met the it's some Japanese method where I was just like you know brain dumped for 30 minutes right and I would do I try to do that every single day or I would be like okay I'm gonna set two hours aside and I'm just gonna go back and edit right and so it kind of shifted from you know the the Kaizen I think is called 30 minute writing sessions I do that two or three times a day. into like two hour editing sessions and I did a lot of walking, right? Like because I did I found that I needed to think a lot, right? So I my dog was walked like crazy just because I would be thinking so much. Right. So it was a very it was unlike any work process that I ever had in the past, right? Because of how much just thinking I was doing because it was I was basically taking a ⁓ the summation of my twenty four year career and like trying to distill it down into a book. It was it was a lot. It was mentally taxing. speaker-1: Yeah. The I mean, incredible realization and epiphany for you, I think, to to understand that that that downtime to allow the ideas to bubble up or to just let your subconscious feed you or, you know, to to move and clear your mind, walking in particular, I think is so massively underrated. And you see a lot of the great like creative minds of history have Patterns like this. David Ogilvie would like take a break and he would go he would literally go live with the Amish and just like do farm work for like two weeks a year and he would come up with all these new ideas. And I'd think I think it was Aaron Sorkin who talked about like when he's writing a screenplay, he takes like five showers a day. Like as soon as he slows down or feels feels gassed, he goes and takes a shower and that kind of like gets his blood flowing again and clears his brain. And so yeah, you know, get get a dog and you know, get ready to walk. I think is truly excellent writing advice. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found I w in the morning I would write the best in the morning. I'd usually be my best thirty minutes writing was kind of right when I woke up and then a couple of walking sessions in the day, filled in between with, you know, normal working events and whatnot. And then and then another writing session late at night. So the mornings and the nights was where I did most of my work. speaker-1: Yeah, it's interesting. I like I like the double session. Like if you you know, you get get your fresh energy out in the morning and then kind of allow the day to to bring up new ideas and let it marinate and and you know, crank again. A half hour is not an onerous like that's not en long enough to feel like, ⁓ my god, get me out of this chair. You know. So it or s or if you have a word, you know, goal that you're going for, you can you know, you can hit a thousand words in thirty minutes qu easy, especially if you're dictating. speaker-0: Yep, yep. That's exact that's exactly right. The the bigger the harder part is it what I found was then, okay, I've word vomited all over the page. Now I need to clean it up to make it nice, right? So speaker-1: Yeah, the editing the editing definitely comes due. And as a man who's I've spent thousands of hours editing transcripts. Editing transcripts is is work. AI makes it a little easier. You know, there's better tools for it. And the transcriptions are better than they used to be. But damn, it it's funny to see how many words you skip over with your ears that you don't with your eyes. It's just a different thing. Amazing. Okay. What advice do you have, Matt, for authors who are maybe where you were is it maybe four three years ago now and you're kind of twenty twenty three, you maybe just having that epiphany that, ⁓ this is the right time. There's the either, you know, personal circumstances changed. I have the time, or, you know, something happened in the environment that makes this this now is the moment to to write this book and kind of plant my flag for, you know, the rest of my career or for this era in my industry or whatever it is. speaker-0: My biggest ⁓ challenge was like fully committing and you know finally being like, okay, I'm going to, you know, buy into this idea that I can write the book in 30 days and use this kind of very gimmicky style of doing it to just get me to go was like, okay, just this this works, right? Like this pushed me off the edge. And and so, you know, I I think the the the biggest thing that I did, you know, if I had to do it over again, I went once I committed, I went head down, very n focused and didn't really look around the corner too much. So, you know, I I need to think about my marketing, right? Like I have not really done a a significant amount of marketing yet. And so I've got to work through that still. And I wish I had started it a little bit earlier. But I ⁓ my book thankfully is very time and what I believe is very timeless. Like it's some of the the principles in it will will matter today or in ten years from now. And so I kind of like I can start marketing whenever I want to start marketing and that's fine. So speaker-1: Yeah, and it I would I I find people often have an easier time thinking about it in terms of how you use your book rather than how to market your book. Right. When you frame it as marketing, you're kind of like, ⁓ what are the book marketing tactics? All right, buy Amazon ads, P IRPR firm, whatever. And when I talk to authors, almost always the the most beneficial thing for their life is not a book marketing tactic that is kind of like one of the first three things you think of. It's Some way that they integrate the book into their into their routine, into their business, whether it's you know, I keep a trunk full of them and I hand them out, you know, anytime I have you know, for people that are meeting people physically running around, whether it's people who are like liter every time they have a a meeting with somebody, you know, the last minute is like, Hey, give me your address. I'd love to send you, you know, a copy. We talked about this. That's actually chapter two of my book. I'll flag it for you and and send you a copy. You can flip through it and I'm happy to answer any questions you have after you've read it. And they're and they're just You know, they're shipping two hundred books a month 'cause they're having two hundred meetings. And and those little things, a lot of times for books like this, it's not it's not about marketing it so much as it is just involving it in your routine. speaker-0: Yes. That's and that's probably the the better yeah, that's a great way of phrasing it. 'Cause I'm not you know, I don't expect to become a a a a best seller all the time on this, but I do expect, you know, the the clients that I meet and the investors that I meet will be interested and so you're yeah, you're exactly right. speaker-1: Hundred percent. Yeah. Try find the, you know, the five events in your industry and be sure that the event organizers have a copy of it. You know, find the five podcasters who are relevant and and you know you know reach out to them. So that kind of stuff that's really yeah, it's it's it's simple, but it's ⁓ it does take that reframe of like, don't worry about marketing a book. Just just worry about you know using it. Yeah, especially when, you know, it'd be nice to make money from it, but you know, w w you really want to just start that word of mouth ball rolling. and and you know get those first couple hundred copies or couple thousand copies in people's hands because they're the ones that are gonna be recomm recommending it. So ⁓ cool. I'm glad you I'm glad you brought that up actually because I think that's a really generalizable thing that that I hear a lot of people get stuck on. Okay, amazing. So yeah, your advice is just go go all in, go heads down, structure it, make it a make it a good make it a real work project and and and treat it like that. speaker-0: Yeah, that's right. speaker-1: get a routine around it. And I think that, you know, your point around whatever, gimmicky or not, there's a wrong way to do it. Right. Just like if get enough skin in the game that you you're like, Well, I have to keep going now. You know, just to start that momentum. Yeah. speaker-0: The outline was a really big ⁓ right. I mean, I think one of the hardest parts was just coming in out r outline for the book, a framing a context of, you know, these are the sections, these are the chapters, these are the topics, right? All of that I think, you know, once I got past that, then I knew I was on to something. So speaker-1: Yeah. Awesome. Okay, Matt, where would you send people to learn more about you, more about the book, to follow along and speaker-0: Yeah, so the book has a the the book has a website, the vcalternative dot com. It's available in all the places. It's a an audible book now as well. And so yeah, the my website is probably the best place to start, but you can also get it on on Amazon or wherever. So speaker-1: Okay, and you post anywhere regularly like LinkedIn or Twitter? speaker-0: LinkedIn and sub substacked and X all under my name. Yep. speaker-1: Okay, Matt Moyers, ⁓ O Y E E R S and the book is the Venture Capital Alternative. ⁓ Thank you so much, Matt, for for taking the time, for writing the book and for sharing some of your advice with us today. Appreciate it. speaker-0: Right. Thanks a lot, Eric. I appreciate the time.