Years that ive learned that there was a process you are supposed to follow. I just went out and keep bugging people until they give you as much dollars as you needed. You have commoditized it for small companies. We get on average a couple of hundred emails a year that say hey, i have got a great idea. How do i get started . That touches on one of the key problems we saw that exist today. If you are out there raising capital, what are you not doing . Youre not talking to your users or your customers. We are not building your product or services. Fundraising becomes a huge process, a huge effort. It is a process. To break it down and make it real for you and give you a sense, while youre barely keeping your head above water as it is, you are also willing to meet with groups such as angel groups or pitchign to vc firms, where you sit in a room and they ask questions and you say thank you very much. You have a little side conversation. You get all of the checks together. If youre lucky, you are able to wrap it up and keep going. Clearly, that is not how founders would design the experience. I started a couple of companies. I have raised 30 million of Venture Capital. It really opened my eyes to the good and the bad that was out there. There was a takeaway. To a certain extent, im an angel investor. A lot of people come to me and say, will you invest in the company . I know i want to invest in this person. I like the idea. I will invest x if you get a certain number. If you get half of the order filled, i will take the next 10 . I do not know how else to get a deal on my own. I think what you guys do is make that process. You do a lot of the vetting work for us. I went on to become a startup investor with my cofounders. His core initial issue was knowing what to invest in and understanding how to do Due Diligence on these opportunities can be complicated. What is quite shocking is in this country today, there are 10 million credit investors. These are people who have high net worths and are legally allowed to invest in startups. If you are not high net worth, if youre not a million, you cannoot legally invest in startups, but that is for another panel and topic. Of the 10 Million People, only 250,000 of them, Something Like 5 , invest in startups the reasons are partly for what you are talking about. We are trying to increase the level of transparency and lower the bar and review opportunities and understand and have a group that is not reliant just on your own ability to vet a deal. I also think as an investor, one of the things that you do, if i want an investment, i have to go through a private equity firm. I have to select a private equity firm and i have to trust their selections. From that point, go forward and make a decision. I can do that through your site. What is the minimum . I will address what you are saying. The Venture Capital industry as a whole is a quite humbling fact on average, vc funds do not return capital to investors. Are you allowed to say that . Im happy to share the facts. Because of that, clearly they are being paid. A lot of people are asking, hey, if i am paying capital and theyre not making a return on my capital, maybe i should deploy it myself. It is sort of in the way there are investors who pick certain strategies or even specific stocks in the public markets. We make that possible. That is a very dramatic difference. Another reason there are so few Angel Investors or investors to invest in startups is the minimums to invest are really high. It is like 25,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 at the seed stage. If youre putting 50k in one company for one year, it is probably not a sound or diversified portfolio strategy. How can we slice and dice that so there is an entity that can be the investor who is deploying a large amount of capital, but where individuals can provide a figure at a time. You see so many companies. You have invested in 50 or 60 companies. 51. That is only last summer. Talk about some of the deals you have seen at early stages that makes this whole exercise really exciting for you. Sure. The reason we created this in the first place is because we truly believe that there is so much potential out there in the world for people to get involved and start new things. There really isnt as much capital out there to support efforts as there could be. Only 5 of people who could start startups, if you could get enter entrepreneurs to try if it would be half a trillion in the u. S. A year. We do not pick favorites. They are all wonderful. Some are more interesting. There is a company that is revolutionizing gesture motion input. The mouse and touchscreen and keyboard, they have created a device that you wear and it reads your muscle signals. It knows before you even move your hand moves what youre going to do with your fingers. That is what i need. [laughter] riding around and looking like [laughter] ideas like that are making accounting more understandable that plugs into all of your banking systems, checking accounts, savings accounts, etc. And rather than working with quickbooks it gives your updated Balance Sheet everything in between. In order to change and transition an industry, you have to be transparent and make their products available to a lot more people. It sounds to me this idea that american investors, consumer investors and even credit investors, have the strive for mediocrity. We are happy with average because we do not lose. It supports everything we have said about the returns. Is what you are doing going to change that entire approach to investing in startups . It does not necessarily hey, im doing this or taking a free shot. I truly think so. On the check size front, when you used to be deploying 50,000, that is a gamble. Still pick and choose, but diversify. Spread across just like professional investor professionals have portfolios. Once you start to enable diversification, you are able to mitigate risk. Were not proposing that people spend their life savings. Because of that, it is more for diversification. Define highrisk . You could lose all of your money. [laughter] where are you going . What is the statistical chance . There are at least 4000 startups in the u. S. Seeking capital. There is no way that 4000 merits that capital within that time. As an investor, you have to be careful of where you are putting your money to work. The aggregate trends say it is Something Like one in 10 will eventually be there 10 years later. It do Something Like that. It is a fraction. Is this the new frontier . When i got to chicago in 1980, the new frontier was the markets exploding because we had all of the derivative marketplaces. That was the new frontier. Is this the new frontier . Are the new frontier startups able to acquire capital and make it more mechanical than it has been for the last four or five years . I should point out that my first advice to entrepreneurs is not to raise money if you dont have to. Get Product Market set before you go out there. My advice is exactly the opposite. Take as much money as you can get if anyone is willing to give it to you. [laughter] because when you need money, you can get it. When you dont need money, Everyone Wants to give you money. You shouldve taken the money. Always. The way i think it is the new frontier is it is not like the new wild west and it is such fun. It brings the concept of startups investing and creating more of a dialogue. There are people here. Theyre trying to change the system. You are bringing 10 Million People in the u. S. Alone who have never been able to invest to be able to, but how many of those do . That remains to be seen. It is raising the profile around this entire group of companies. The individual investor does not have an opportunity anymore to really invest in companies when they are first starting out like twitter or facebook. We were growing up in the same era. We could invest in apple. And the ipo is sort of high growth. And facebook with their ipo that would have been unheard of 10 years ago. The changes that have occurred are creating this pressure from regular investors who used to be able to participate in that innovation and Value Creation on the public market. There are not many mechanisms to participate in what they used to be able to. Alex has built an incredible company. It is an awesome site. Fundersclub. Com. You should check it out. Thanks. [applause] i will need that sometime. All right. Coming up next, we have two amazing women that i have had the pleasure of working side by side with for the last decade. First up is christie. The cfo of a company. They asked me to recommend some people in finance and technology. I did not go further than our own backyard. Christie is now the ceo of dough. Com. She will introduce to you the next generation of finance on the local platform. Hey. Hey. [applause] thank you. Thank you for coming out. As tom said, i am the ceo of dough. In my background, i came from sink or swim. I have 20 years of experience in and around the trading industry. I would say that these last two years, i have been in financial media. I have learned a lot. What we have done now is that we have pulled together all of our experience from sink or swim and we have rolled it into a Company Called dough. Right now, we believe that the industry is ripe for innovation. We have let me just get my slides here one of the things that we truly believe is that banks and Brokerage Firms and Wealth Managers have an opportunity to tap into the Younger Generation. We think there needs to be a new approach, but with a new visual and with a new design. And we need to go to that Younger Generation with how they use technology today. They are highly mobile. They have they really they want information to come to them. I want to introduce to you a sneak preview of dough. We will be launching dough in a few weeks. It combines trading and an engagement platform for the Younger Generation. I will show you a quick video. [video clip] one of the things that we have done is going back to the thing that adam said. It is simplifying and trying to roll this into one platform that simplifies having problems with the clicker. Sorry. I want to talk about the Younger Generation in general. They expect everything to come to them. There is a Big Convenience and easy access and everything to be mobile. There is 10 of the u. S. Population that already uses mobile devices just access their bank accounts. Of that 10 , you have 54 of that are accessing the checking and savings accounts. You go further into 36 of their credit cards. 28 of those for the investment accounts. We know that this environment is ripe. Theres also the expected growth of 30 per year for the next three years. One of the things that we did at sink or swim is that we were at the forefront of the Technology Area for online trading. We have been at the forefront of the content era, really. The amount of content that gets consumed through video every year is enormous. We need to make sure that the content is relevant and entertaining. But what is important is to make sure that the technology that is provided is pushing the content to the customer or has the ability to curate the content to make sure it is organized and easy to find. On top of that, make sure that video or that data is all on demand. They want it now. They expect it. The younger demographic expects that it is all easy access wherever they are. Also, that it is free and shareable. Thinking beyond mobile access to your bank account, taking it one step further, something that is simple. Something that Brokerage Firms do today. You can get your debit card. You can write checks. You have access to more options. It is really important. You need a flexible alternative than just a bank account alone. It is time to think differently. Our approach is a different approach for that younger demographic. Providing not only an entrance through gaming and entertainment, but also with content and access directly to their trading accounts. It is time to think differently. Creating a culture within we take that startup mentality and we need to place that inside a larger organization. Tom will pull me off stage. [laughter] the one thing we need to think about is taking that startup mentality and placing it within larger organizations. Give them the chief innovators hat and start to create a culture of innovation. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Next up is nicole. Nicole and i first met when a Company Acquired sink or swim. She now runs the largest trader group and Trader Technology in the world. They do over 3 billion of transactional business every hour. When you think about las vegas, they do about 2. 3 billion of transactional business every year. Just showing you how huge that segment is. Nicole. That is a lot of benjamins. A lot of benjamins. [applause] great. Like tom said, i used to work for him. When he went to start his new media company, he plopped off all of the smartest people and left me behind. It is great to be here. I want to talk about some of the things that our firm has been focused on from a problem solving perspective. I have been spending a lot of time recently studying generational migration trends. Riveting, right . If you think about it, im responsible for the growth of the trading business at Td Ameritrade. When i looked down the road, im concerned about what will happen with future generations. If you look at this graph, were looking at the census from 2010. In the green, baby boomers. As we look a few years down the road, 2020, that population is going to drop down below 20 . The millennials will be at 19 of the population. Pretty much everyone in Financial Services have always been talking to the baby boomers. But a few years down the road, we will be targeting a different individual investor. I have been studying these individuals. Some themes emerge that has me concerned. 11 believe the stock market is the best way to prepare for retirement. That is not many. If you look at generation z, 40 believe a savings account is the best way to save for retirement. That is concerning. As we all know, the best way to build wealth over time is through the stock market. We teamed up with two guys who are millennials themselves. They have a Small Company out of kentucky. They are great with social and finance. The genesis of the problem that we gave them was how do we get in front of young kids and keep them teach them to think differently about the stock market . How do we get them less concerned about the risk of the stock market and get them to cultivate a genuine interest . What youre looking at on the screen is a graphic that we found in the huffington post. That is the genesis for the idea. The 10 publicly traded companies are the top 10 companies in this diversified foods sector. Most people know that nestle crunch is owned by nestle. They may not know about nespresso. Young people have an amazing sense of brands and labels. They are genuinely interested in brands. They know a lot about them. We thought what if we could get young people today to think about products they interact with not just from perspective of i brush my teeth with crest and i got a Pumpkin Spice latte. What if they could think in terms of having a different way . That the products that they interact with and talk about on a regular basis roll up to publicly traded companies. If they invest in those companies, they could potentially make some money. That is the genesis of the idea. It is a new site. What it does is it comes through all of your social interactions. It looks at all of the tweets surface the companies that you and your friends are talking about the most. It is not just the companies, but at a product level as well. If you say you are enjoying a Pumpkin Spice latte, you know that the publicly traded company are talking about is starbucks. It is an amazing database. You can see one of the investors, his likefolio is up how it plays out, you can see a 12 month Price Performance chart of yelp. The different bubbles will show you what your friends have to say about that particular stock. My hair salon mentions if you go on to yelp and do a review, they will give you 15 off of your haircut. Wow. They want people to get on yelp. My friend jason miller says spread the good word. As soon as i saw that, yelp is a verb. That is a Product Developers dream. That investment is now worth 2600. It is a different way for young people to think about the stock market. One other thing i want to mention quickly in the interest of time, another thing we are building is Td Ameritrade u. What we are doing with Td Ameritrade u is taking our paper Trading Software and putting it in colleges and universities completely free of charge to allow young people who are learning about the stock market the ability to trade and see how one another are performing. It is basically a virtual environment for them to kick the tires and see how they would do in a trading environment. What you can see here is a professor, dr. Smith. He is teaching four classes and he is running competitions in his classes. He can see exactly how the students are taking in the insights and concepts they are learning in class. Angela livingston is trading on the platform and can see how her traits are performing and also how her friends are performing as well. Here you can see angela is ranked seventh in the paper trading competition versus matt maguire who is in first place. You can click on matts name and see what he is doing to outperform her. There is a learning curve. There are challenges were facing in how young people are thinking about the markets and of Innovative Solutions that can help them think about things differently. Thank you. Good stuff. [applause] i have got a couple of minutes where i get to throw some notsosoftball