and of course baritunde thurston who i said was a little fun-timidating, one of the most fun guys around but you really understand this world. for people who are watching this, before you change your channel because you don't know what south by southwest is or you don't care, why do we care that we're here? >> we used to think of the internet as a separate space, as a different place. as a culture, distinct from the rest of the world. it's too big for that now. the internet is not some other thing. it's in all of us. and so this festival, which began as geek culture, that's now mass culture. so to understand the future that we're charting, these tools we're making affect all of us. how we learn, how we spend money, how we find our mates, how we do our politics. so with the big picture of the whole world now, not something you can isolate as separate from the rest of us. >> that's a good point you make. if we can do our politics the way people make deals about technology and come up with ideas for social media, it would be -- decision-making would be faster and probably more effective. but, mario, give us the candy. the fact is there are gadgets here, there are things that will be uncovered here, apps for your phone that we're going to be using for years to come. >> absolutely for years to come. many of the things that you've talked about. so folks that are watching at home right now, you're using many of the apps that have been here before that you were like i don't care about this stuff. why does it mean anything relevant to me? apps are made relevant for our life, for education, for health care, for politics. but also we're starting to do more around people discovery and really learning more about the people around us. i call them ice breaker apps, if you will. so we're seeing that as a trend. but we're also seeing other trends for social, for good. i'm really excited about apps that are being developed around the nonprofit space or these hybrid models of profit and nonprofit coming together like cause world and a couple of other really interesting apps that bring in donations and momentum and movement and missions all at the same time. all of that's here. >> you're very big into this idea that this allows people to get access to better education, the digital world. but it's not just that. there are people here who have nothing to do with an app but they know this is a progressive-thinking community that knows how to change things. there are people here with causes who come here to link up with other people with causes, ideas and money. >> and when you think about what this festival is, it is music, film and interactive. it's art and technology coming together and there's magic. this idea of new ways to raise money and new ways to do politics, at its heart, it's about a redistribution of power in our society. the voices that we as individuals have, the ability to connect each other and form ad hoc communities and get more done for good, for change, that's amplified into the rest of the world which we're a part of. >> we're glad to be here and glad to have you guys kick off our show. stick around, we've got a lot going on here at the grill. let me tell you about the cnn grill, by the way. this is a place that took 35 hours to convert from the restaurant, the wine bar that it was, into the place that you're looking at right now. every table in the place has power running to it. there's a full menu here. the most popular item, i'm hoping to get one momentarily, is a chicken slider. we made 336 of them on the first day. i say we made them, like i had anything to do with it. unless it's made in a microwave, i don't generally have anything to do with it. all of this transition has created the cnn grill. we even replaced the sign outside the restaurant and here we have it. we're in here. it's a must-stop place at cnn. it's the place that all the movers and shakers come to. and i've got to tell you, at south by southwest, it's kind of a place where people do deals. they have ideas. they hope to find people to finance or market or distribute their ideas. and ultimately why do we care? well, those people will get rich. but ultimately why we care is because if people have great ideas, those could become jobs down the road. this is america, it's about entrepreneurship. but let's talk about jobs. another month and another strong jobs report in the united states. here's the breakdown of what we saw for february. we have -- we had the creation of 227,000 new jobs in the united states. 233,000 jobs were actually created in the private sector, which is where you want them to be created. 6,000 jobs were lost in government. so that's kind of -- that's the good story. that's 17 months in a row. i know a lot of you were worried about the fact the unemployment rate is still above 8%. don't worry so much about the unemployment rate, worry about actual jobs created. the unemployment rate will fluctuate for the next few months. as we keep on creating jobs like this, more people will go into the job force and start looking for jobs. the labor participation rate will increase. as a result, the unemployment rate may go up, may go down, but we're creating jobs. speaking about a guy who has created many jobs in his past, steve case is the co-founder of aol. he's the chairman and ceo of a company called revolution. he's the chairman of this start-up america partnership. he's also a member of president obama's jobs council and was responsible for what remains the biggest merger in the history of the business world with aol/time warner. steve, good to see you. >> good to see you. >> you made a speech recently where you said entrepreneurship can become the next american manufacturing. and that 100 years ago would have sounded great or 50 years ago. you meant it as a warning. >> i think it's a little bit of a wake-up call for our nation, particularly our leaders in washington, d.c., because america was built by entrepreneurs as you mentioned. they started companies and entire industries and that's how it became the leading economy in the world. but we're still great in some sectors like technology, digital media here you see a lot of momentum. but manufacturing, services, a lot of other regions in the country we don't have the same level of entrepreneurship. in fact start-ups are down 23% over the last five years. if they stayed at the time same level, we'd have two million more jobs. meanwhile other nations are stepping up their game. >> we seem to think this is the american do main, the thing people can't steal from us. >> i'd be careful about that. american entrepreneurship. other nations are recognizing the secret sauce that's driven america's economy has been entrepreneurship and they're putting policies in place to make it friendlier for entrepreneurs and for capital. we need to respond. now, the good news is people in washington recognize it. the president in starting this jobs council, we laid out some proposals in the fall to try to get entrepreneurship back on track. >> there's very specific things in there that you have advocated that will help entrepreneurships. for instance, a big tax credit if you invest in anything, if you create jobs. what are the other things? making it easier for people who are educated here but don't have visas to stay. >> some of it is the issue of winning the global battle on talent. to make sure we have immigration policies to encourage people to stay here. right now they come here, we kick them out and go back to their country and start a company there instead of sdaurgt a company here. last week the house passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, 390-23 something called the jobs act which allowed for crowd funding. so companies like this don't have to rely on venture capitalists. >> you mean the ability for companies to raise money not just from venture capitalists. >> exactly. >> but to go out and say i've got a great idea. anybody want to finance it? >> it creates democratization, more access to capital for startups, up to $10,000. but crowd funding can unleash a whole slew of new companies. the other thing in the jobs act was on-ramp for ipos. companies don't go public because it's so costly so they put an on-ramp in place so eventually all companies would be subject to -- >> but smaller companies have a different set of rules. >> just temporarily. >> a lot of small companies can't bring on the staff and th regulatory ability to ramp up. >> and that's the problem when you look at our unemployment rate. 90% of job creation happens after the companies go public, so we get more companies public -- if they don't go public, oftentimes their investors get tired and want to sell. when companies get sold, jobs decelerate and when they go public, they accelerate. last week we built momentum around this and this week the battle shifts if you will to the senate. senator reid will be introducing some legislation. hopefully he just takes the jobs act, puts it on the floor for a senate vote. i think it will pass and i think the president will sign it and that would be great for entrepreneurs, great for access to capital and ensure that we don't go the way of manufacturing, which 50 years ago was the core business and now we've lost some of that. entrepreneurship still is a core business for america. we can keep it but we need to act. >> all right, steve. we are talking about jobs here. take a look at this. christine romans is going to break down everything you need to know about the state of the jobs situation in this country in 90 seconds. christine? >> reporter: ali, by now everyone has seen the headlines. 227,000 jobs created in february, unemployment rate steady at 8.3%. let's go inside jobs and take a look at some important distinctions in this month's report. for example, look, 233,000 private sector jobs created. that's important. two years now of private sector job creation. take a look at this, 6,000 public sector jobs lost. that has been the drag on the labor market, quite frankly, but it's better than we saw last year. 22,000 jobs on average in the government lost every single month, so a little bit of an improvement there. i want to look quickly at the trajectory because this is something that you and i both know is so important on the campaign, right? this is the labor market under the last months of george w. bush. you can see the financial crisis taking hold. hundreds of thousands of jobs lost. this is the beginning of the obama presidency. a very terrible, terrible 2009. this is what a financial crisis and jobs crisis looks like. and here is a slow, slow plodding recovery that's gathering momentum by the end of this year and the beginning of 2012. this is the part of the chart that so many people are focusing on. will this mean the labor market can continue to gather some steam into the summer and can put some of those people who have lost their jobs here back to work? ali? >> what a great explanation, christine, thank you. small business. steve case just said this, small business is critical to add fuel for this recovery that christine was just talking about. i was talking -- talking to. south by southwest is so important for so many of these small tech companies which are trying to catch their break. how about if you've got a great idea. is starting your own business an option for you? we'll find out what makes a start-up successful and what ideas are doomed to fail next on a special "your money" live from the cnn grill at south by southwest. 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" we're at the cnn grill at south by southwest in austin which is why i'm eating. these are the chicken sliders we made -- perhaps eating on tv is not the wisest thing. we made 336 of these just yesterday. and they're going strong. but i do have to do some business here so i'll move on. south by southwest, for those of you who don't know what it's about, it's a launching pad for start-ups. foursquare launched here. twitter was out there but wasn't as big. south by southwest was the place to make it big. so we want to explore what it takes to create a successful start-up in this economy and what role start-ups could play in fixing america's job crisis. back with me is steve case. reid hoffman joins me now. he's the co-founder of linkedin, early stage investor in facebook in zyng achl. you worked for paypal. these guys know how to start companies. over on the end is my friend peter, chairman and founder of the x pride foundation co-author of abundance. the future is better than you. he's a co-founder of sing later university. -- singulairity university. these guys know about starting things up. steve, you and i talked about entrepreneurship facing the same fate as manufacturing in the united states. that's worrisome. reid, do you share the view that we have to make it easier for people to create businesses? what does my viewer need to know about the state of creating a startup in this country? >> i think one of the things that we have traditionally had a competitive edge in the u.s. is we're great at entrepreneurship. we're great at bringing people around the world to do it. we're great at trying new things. so i think bringing the network around you, advisers, financiers, employees, people that understand the industry and launching. how do you assemble a network in order to make your startup more successful? this is how we create the future. the world is changing in a faster and faster pace. being able to adapt and innovate is critical. >> peter, let me take a sip. peter, let's talk about you have been involved and you know people who just had little ideas. in fact i think you said that every day -- the day before something became a great invention, it was just another stupid idea. tell me what people need to know about creating ideas and getting them out there. >> having a real breakthrough requires taking risk. before it's a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea. so in large corporations and governments we don't take big risks because we're concerned about large public failure that say could hit a congressional investigation or stock price. really it's the entrepreneur, the small team that's willing to risk everything to go and make their dreams come true that drives real innovations. and the entrepreneur today has extraordinary resources at their fingertips. >> tell me about startup america. it really is a private sector effort to try to mobilize resource to help companies get started. go to s.co and get resources. over 70 companies have contributed things to help launch startups. there's local regions like startup texas. startup tennessee. as we said it takes network dense 270 help the entrepreneurs, and that's alongside what we talked about earlier. what the government needs to do around passing this jobs act to allow for crowd funding and ipo on-ramp. there's a role for the government. ultimately we rely as entrepreneurs to be -- as peter said, they're the attackers. they are disrupting the status quo. large companies are typically defenders. we need to unleash the attackers in this country so these companies and industries start and grow here and don't find themselves growing in other countries. >> do you still find those attackers at places like this? >> absolutely. one of the things that's great about south by southwest is it brings a large segment of media and innovation and austin is a very good center for design, which is one of the things that's important on the new web. one of the things that we see through investing across the u.s. is that we still -- we can still do it. we just need to apply ourselves and no longer take it that the future is for granted, we can coast. it's how do we invest in ourselves and how do we go forward. >> peter, your an eternal optimist. generally speaking, a place like south by southwest is populated by optimists because they have got great ideas to power the future. but you're a real optimist based on the fact that the name of your new book is "abundance." you think there's stuff out there that is going to make us work faster and better in the future. >> if you're an entrepreneur, you believe you can otherwise you wouldn't be doing it in the first place. that's half the battle. mindset is half the battle. for example, we just launched with qualcomm foundation the a device that can diagnose you better than a board certified doctor. there have 145 teams around the world that will do this so that will create an abundance of health care with better diagnostics than the best doctors today. >> i have a copy of peter here somewhere. i'm never eating on tv again. >> are you sure you don't want another bite? >> reid, you said something in a book that you have to think of yourself as a beta. >> yes. >> as being in permanent beta, which is you're never a finished product. how do i invest in myself and how do i play part of the next turn. if you think the world is changing, globalization, we're in production but we're not finished yet. >> i feel better about myself knowing that this is not the finished product. there's somewhere that we have to go from here. thanks to all of you. peter's book "abundance" is near the top of the new york times -- >> we hit number two on the new york times. >> that's excellent, i'm glad. people should read this book. i'm in the middle of yours right now. somebody is probably eating a slider and enjoying it right now. >> i don't have a book but i would tell people to use the hash tag jobs act and push the senate to pass this act next week and make sure entrepreneurs have the resources to succeed in this country. >> very good. good to see you all of you. this is going to be a great weekend. from facebook to google to twitter, the majority of the startups all share a familiar lead character, and it's usually a man. where are the women when it comes to leading the next generation of technology innovation? 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