100 years old and needed more business. So this is really the economy we see. When we look at the internet or look at the political challenges in the United States and all the issues and all the sniping, what we see is, when people selforganize, they use the internet to connect with each other and they work with each other. Then the economy works. Great. So i think people can envision transformation when it affects them and they have a hard time when it doesnt. People in d. C. Understand the transforming political effect of being able to raise money on line. In a recent conference, we had travis from uber. People can understand uber. The Maker Movement, many people in big servicesector cities like this have a hard time taking seriously why should the Maker Movement what is it and why should it be taken seriously . How many of you have heard of the home brew computer club. Great. So it was a group that met in the bay area in the 70s and it was a group of people who traded supplies and tips and they were basically making Computers Home brew computer club. People who went to that meeting included people like steve jobs and steve wozniak. I know it was kind of a subculture. If you were outside of that subculture, you would look at it and think it was somewhat trivial. You know they were doing phone freaking and all kinds of hacker stuff. It was a little bit of a fringe movement. But that was really the seed of the personal computing revolution. What were seeing today is that there are literally tens of thousands of home brew computer clubs, called etsy teams selforganized groups of sellers who meet together in communities all around the world. That i do things very much like the home brew computer club. They trade tips. From the outside it may look like a hobby, but when you look at the stories that i told you, were seeing that its emerging as, you know a real vocation and a real way for people to make money. Anything that looks like a hobby in the beginning often turns into a bigger movement. And i think thats what were seeing. And theres the craft brew movement, the home brewing movement, which became a yen win business became a genuine business. Youve written about the etsy economy on your site. If things go the way you hope they would, what would the etsy look like and mean . Our mission is to build a more fulfilling and lasting world. Its not just about the buying and selling of things. Its about bringing that personal connection back to commerce. When you look at the broader landscape and the traditional retail landscape, its all about price and convenience and nextday delivery and many of the companies who are successful in that ecosystem are all about squeezing suppliers, going to the lowest cost labor, that sort of thing. The etsy economy that we see is really about creating an com i where everyone an economy where everyone wins at every step of the way. The way etsy works, were obviously an internet platform. But when you sell something on etsy etsys cut is 3. 5 . The artists cut is 96 . All the money is going back to communities everywhere. Theres not like a sucking sound to bentonville arkansas, for example. Not to name names. And we really see this, you know our 3. 5 , as etsy has become more successful, we havent that fee has not been raised, really since the company started. So the etsy economy is a really fair economy. Its also getting into offline retail. So i mentioned sarah from milk and honey luxuries. Weve also built a wholesale program. So boutiques and retailers are now buying from etsy sellers. Were brokering the wholesale deal, again 3. 5 . The etsy economy is really about, instead of looking at the economy in sort of a zero sum way, like how can i win, how can etsy win its how can etsy do well, how can our suppliers do well, how can the retailers do well and everybody take a fair cut. Then everyone does well. Its just a different view. Youve also written about the ways in which the Virtual Communications of internet age can facility real human connections between people. Tell us about how you think that can work. I mentioned briefly etsy teams. The thing to understand about etsy is its real people on the ground, you know. In new york there are dozens of these etsy teams who meet. To give you a visual sense of kind of how pervasive etsy sellers are, there are actually more etsy sellers in the five boroughs in new york than there are yellow cans. So a lot, lot of people. Weve done things you know i think a lot of Internet Companies out there are kind of fighting regulation, fighting the government. Its very adversarial. We really look at government as another opportunity to partner, again, that fulfilling and lasting world. We worked with local civic organizations, local government, in a program that we call craft entrepreneurship where were working with our etsy teams, again the etsy sellers on the ground, to teach disadvantaged communities how to start businesses on etsy. And those classes again, being taught by the sellers in our community, not by etsy. Theyre meeting in places like the dallas public library. So were an Internet Company that cares about libraries. And civic institutions. And i think, to the early question about etsy economy, thats really what we envision and what were seeing happen. And we think its possible. And its a great alternative to things like cable news and politics. So i have to ask you one other policy question before some more transdental ones. When businesses are growing like yours, their view to the government is either they want the government somehow to support them, somehow to stop oppressing or hindering them or to get out of their way. Right. What is your view towards government in general, of those three . Its a little bit of each. Ill add a fourth option. I think its more a plea for understanding. We want government and the media and everyone to understand that the work the work that these, largely women are doing 88 of sellers on etsy are women. Its legitimate. Not just a hobby. These are real businesses. Everything from highway how you support business with internet taxation like free trade. We have sellers shipping all over the world. I think its, in our minds, its less about thinking, how can we lure, you know a thousand factories to the United States which is still important, but how do we support these small entrepreneurs and help them be successful in all of these policy areas . Its more about shifting the sort of understanding. So lets talk about culture. Youve work, you say, a lot in the bay area during the sort of glory days of the dot comes. Youre working in brooklyn. How would you both compare the new york and california startup cultures and derive lessons from the two of them to other parts of the country . Even d. C. So this is more my personal point of view. In my intro, you heard i was an english lit major. I focused on shakespeare. I went to work at the Raleigh News Observer in 1993, the first daily newspaper on the web in the United States. There i got interested in the internet and taught myself how to code. Just on a personal level, you know, i think coding is really important. But also liberal arts. And, you know, taking a big step back when i think about sort of lasting ideas in the world, the programming languages that people were learning in 1993 are mostly forgotten. Mcbeth is still remembered. So [applause] so i think that thank you. So what does this have to do with new york Silicon Valley culture . I personally enjoy new york, because i think its more of a balanced culture. I dont believe that technology and software is going to solve all of the worlds problems. I think it can solve a lot of problems and its very much an enabler. So working in a Creative Company like etsy that serves creative people, i think working in a place where you have everything from theater to art to the opera to amazing authors i think the cultural environment in new york is really second to none. And for that reason i really prefer building a company like etsy in a place like new york. I think, you know, Silicon Valley is a oneindustry town but its a big, big industry. Sort of like d. C. Yes. On a personal revel, i this level, i think its better to build in new york. So just to ask the underside of that, both for all of their strengths, both new york, especially brooklyn and the bay area, theyre seen as fostering and rewarding a certain class of people at the expense of many others. How will your Company Build an embracing thick middle class economy . How does that factor into your concerns . In we we look at etsy the platform is all about bringing opportunity to a Diverse Group of people. The proof is in the pudding. Were seeing, in the cities that i mentioned, our entrepreneurship program, we have our local teams supporting people in those communities with urban wood goods, for example, we have our sellers as they scale up. Theyre making money and doing well but also submitting orders to smaller manufacturers in their area, which is creating jobs. I really think everything we do is because it is based on that principle of fairness that i talked about, everything we do is intended to build a really healthy economy. And, again, is the mission about more fulfilling and lasting world, were not saying etsy is the place to sell more stuff. We want all of the mechanisms in the company to make the world better, not in the trite Silicon Valley make the world better, because i think that can be overused. But making things, selling things promoting community. Those are things that really do make the world better. In the work you do and the technology you put together, what is the part of it thats difficult that nobody from the outside fully appreciates . You know, every job has something thats harder than anybody on the outside knows. What is it for you . I think in talent. Theres so much happening. You know, a new app launches every day, like dozens of apps, hundreds. And there are people building those things. So assembling a company when everyone is looking for the same talent and running that company is really difficult. I think because my background was in technology, and i know how the internet works and all that kind of thing, there are some days i wake up and im surprised that the internet actually works. [laughter] because in some ways, its very patched together. So i think the hard part of the job is just every day 24 7, making the company work, technologywise and talentwise. We have one minute left. Were here in d. C. Weve heard about all the things difficult here. If you were plummeted into some Governmental Organization now and could apply what you have learned to making things function better here, what would it be . I have to pause for a moment, even though we have a minute. I think its really to for me, its really about addressing fear. I think theres a fear of technology in washington what ive seen. Theres kind of a superstructure of Government Contractors and all this sort of thing. What i would do is really change the way software is built in the government, to be more like what were doing in new york, more like Silicon Valley. I think its notable to me that, you know i hate to bring up healthcare. Gov but when you look at healthcare. Gov, it took a group of Silicon Valley people top technologists to come in and fix it. Lets build things the right way so people dont have to come in and fix it. With those encouraging words please join me in thanking chad dickerson. Next, a Washington Ideas Forum discussion with mike. He talks about the latest trends in mobile technology and the evolution of the flip board app which provides customized news and information feed. This is about 15 minutes. [applause] so weve been told if theres time at the end, we each have to do 20 pushups in front of you. The bar is pretty high. Mike is one of the most successful serial founders in Silicon Valley. I want to go to the founding of flip board. So the ipad launched in 2010. Flip board launched not after. The experiment at the creation of flip board, it was a really interesting one. As i understand it, it was if the web was washed away and you had to rebuild it from scratch start the web from scratch what would you do . That was the experiment behind flip board. Can you talk about the conclusions, the convictions that that thought experiment led you to and that played eut in out in flip board . Yes. This all happened, when your writing an email, great email. Youve got everything right. Youre about to hit send and the computer crashes. You lose the email. And youve got to write it again. But when you write it the second time its better. You know, you realize, well, i probably could have done this a little bit better, could have been more concise here. And it is something better. That was the thinking around how i approached my next venture. I wasnt even sure i was going to start a company. I was just doing what i loved following pickens advice, just doing what i loved, Building Products thinking about, you know technology. And, you know, the big thing for me was i felt that content stories were being lost on the web. When you flip through the atlantic or national geographic, you have a narrative. Theres a sense of pacing. Theres a beauty to it. You have beautiful photography beautiful, you know, typography. There are inset maps, things that kind of guide you along. You dont have any of that on the web. Increasingly over time, its Getting Better. But back when we were starting flip board, five years ago, four years ago, the web looked like it was frozen in the mid90s. And so we wanted to say, well look, you know, if you were going to build a new web today if you were going to build the web today, you would optimize it for these mobile touch screen devices. That was one of the key things we wanted to do. The reason why magazines are so beautiful, in part, is they dont have to have lots of controls. You dont have to have a menu bar and navigation bar. You just have great content and you use your finger to flip through pages of that content. That was something we really wanted, that beautiful presentation. With a touch screen device, you can have that kind of beauty. The other really important thing is the power of people. You know, people know how to tell a story. People know what makes a great story. And we wanted to leverage social, the idea that the web is becoming a not just a connection of an article to another article, which is a very powerful thing but now its a person to an article. Its a person to another person. A person to a group of people. So you have this new curated web that i dont think we, as an industry, have even begun to grasp how powerful it is. So the things are visual and social essentially navigation of content. Its almost five years since the launch of flip board. What do you know now that you didnt know when you were imagining what the web should be, almost five years ago . Probably the biggest thing is the importance of people and machines interwoven together to create great content. And the second thing would be the importance of structure to content. What i mean by that is, today you know you have social media. Theres just this ongoing stream. Its an infinite stream, people posting things endorsing content. Thats very powerful. However, you know, Great Stories help influence people, Great Stories move the world forward. Great stories have an end. Theres a beginning, middle and end. And in this world of infinite streams, there is no end. When is the end . You have a sense of timelessness when everything is always realtime. How do you allow people to step back and think about things and have that context to understand what really matters . And so thats something that we really believe in. And i really want to try and figure out how to enable that to happen. Again, you have that in print. You just dont have that in social media. So that sense of, you know, people cricketing content contributing content but in a way that can have more of a narrative form to it, i think is really important. So you have an interesting aggregate view on some really kind of fundamental questions. The most fundamental is, how do people spend their free time . How do people spend their waking hours . Because you see people using your app you actually know when theyre awake and when theyre reading and across the world you see patterns of things. So what are some of the most interesting and surprising takeaways about how human beings use their free time or at the very least, what their Reading Habits look like . One of the most shocking things is how much people use their phone to read. People spend a lot of time on their phone reading. It can be a 50page article and theyll read it, tb its a good if its a good article. The other thing thats been encouraging has been the amount of great longform journalism that people want to read. You know, the problem is, its a little too hard to filter out the noise. You get distracted by other noise before you get to that great content. But people do want to be able to read that. Those are two observations. People will read journalism on the phone if its presented well. Thats tricky to do, but if you can do that, i think thats a pretty big deal. Whats your watch strategy . Ha ha will people read longform journalism on an apple watch or the samsung watches . Are you thinking about presenting content on watches . Not so much presenting content but perhaps presenting moments when you might want to look at content on your phone more contextual moments. Theres a variety of things there. Theres the obvious like, okay, theres breaking news. You might want to know about that and read it. But also the not so obvious. You might be in a location, standing near the white house. And you might get a notification that, you know, theres something really interesting about this right now, this place that you should know about. So it comes into your watch and leads you to your phone . To your phone. Theyre very much linked together. I think theres a tremendous amount of linkage between the phone and watch that i think is going to be critical. We should talk for a second about tablets. So flip board was essentially launched with the ipad. Whats really interesting is that ipad sales at least are falling. So in the last quar