Be hearing from some actual Business Owners and organizers organizations interested to talk about when the start up a economy does and does not need from washington. It is my great pleasure to introduce senator jerry moran will provide some introductory mar remarks remarks. Both in the senate and then before 2010, and during seven terms in the house. He successfully led opposition with senator biden to defeat the protect ip act. That was the Senate Version of sopa. He has encouraged congress to develop a spectrum policy as well. Senator moran is the author of the start pact. These are bills that the seat to unleash the jobcreating power of entrepreneurs to grow the economy. Please welcome senator moran his first ces. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you for the introduction and our panelists. I am anxious to get your instructions and hear your direction as what we should be attempting to accomplish. This should be an issue that does not divide us but brings us together. I hope that is the case in 2013. I very much appreciate the Consumer Electronics association hosting this tremendous trade show. I have been able to wander the floor this morning looking at the latest ideas and examples and innovation. It strikes me this is the area of the economy that has the grid greatest potential of growing and has the most to offer as far as job creation and it is the part of the country the economy that is least likely to be regulated by what happens in washington, d. C. It is clear to me the evidence is that with Less Government intervention, the likelihood of innovation and economic success only increases. That is a concept that i think needs to garner greater support across the country. I got interested in to this issue of entrepreneurship as a frustrated member of the senate. Only a short time into my time in washington as a senator, it became clear we were accomplishing so little. One of the motivating factors for my interest in seeking office and continuing in Public Service was a belief that the fiscal condition of our country is very challenging, the circumstances in which our kids have less of an opportunity to pursue the American Dream they would otherwise have. I saw no success on doing anything in regard to revenue or reductions in spending. There is a litany of things that would show that was not taking place from the president s budget to the raising of the debt ceiling and creating the select committee, no evidence we were able to achieve something. While i have not walked away from those issues, i did see the conclusion, maybe there is a different approach to getting our country out of the fiscal condition it is aimed, growing the economy, job creation. At about that time, a report from kansas city is devoted to entrepreneurship. That landed on my desk with recommendations about what washington might do in order to enhance the chances that the United States is and would remain a country of entrepreneurs. We took those ideas and began the process of drafting legislation. At about that time, senator wide and introduced himself and said i have an issue that might be of interest to you. Would you care to team up with me . We spent a short amount of time analyzing the issues of sopa and pipa and realizing much of the job growth and the additional revenues to the treasury or occurring because of the innovation of the technology sector. Certainly start of companies can be from the person that decides it wants to open a dry cleaners to the latest in technology that originates and we see here at this trade show. Where the greatest success seem to be was in the innovation arena, that technology arena, and it appeared to me that government was about to make a decision that was going to limit the opportunity that innovation would have for the economy. And did not expect to have much success, the allies, they were on the other side of the issue. Significant players, both in congress and outside. If he was in the room, i would give him full credit for the success. The reality as it was the community the decided they were going to participate in making their position known and felt in washington, d. C. As a result, what was unexpected became the outcome, the unexpected outcome of stopping sopa and pipa was the success we had as a result of citizen participation. I hope that at victory is felt that democracy is still alive and well. A persons. Of you can be heard and make a difference. That outcome was the expectation was a different one than what we had. That lent itself to another aspect of innovation, but my interest in the topic really was a belief that technology is a great opportunity for us to grow the economy. I happen to serve on the Appropriations Committee in the senate that has the fccs budget. About that time, spectrum issues arose. We began to understand the value of additional spectrum. It was one more piece of the puzzle as to growing entrepreneurship in the technology world. It was no grand design about my arrival in the United States senate, but they believe we should grow the economy that resulted in reading the report from the foundation, listening to the center, and realizing that spectrum was an important issue. Because of my position, i had an opportunity to influence the decisions the fcc would make in my colleagues would pursue. In that position, on the same subcommittee, we got interested in the jobs . It is discouraging to see so little has come from that legislation. It is discouraging because it is an example of where we came together, passed a piece of legislation that has significant potential to grow the economy and to raise the capital necessary for startup businesses. We have been unable so far, and that would be front and center, a conversation for me. I expect to be on the same subcommittee. As a result in the election i will not be a chairman but will be the ranking republican where we hope to influence and to make decisions that are beneficial to raising the capital necessary. Let me highlight the startup act, now called the start up to. Zero 2. 0. Our first choice for a colleague was senator mark warner of virginia. We made the case for this kind of legislation and we work out differences between what he thought the bill should say and what i thought they should say and we reach an agreement and then we wanted to broaden its support and reached out to marco rubio, who had introduced legislation regan related to Business Issues and we brought some of their ideas in an expanded our group to four. We are at a point in which this legislation, we need to get off the diamond we need to make certain it is a top agenda item for 2013 in washington, d. C. This legislation deals with access to capital, again with the regulatory environment, perhaps most important, it deals with the issue of the battle for talent and our insane policy in this country of educating individuals that have great talent and intellect and then telling them they have no opportunity to pursue careers in the United States. Also to recognize that many firstreneurs, are generation americans or early arrivals in our country. There are visa provisions that allow for an increase in the number of stem visas but also for those that are foreign born but that one to create business and the United States. In addition to that, we believe that having some Competition Among states through information and knowledge will increase the opportunity for entrepreneurs to decide where they can start with a new idea and beginning company. Begin a company. I hope what we learn from a communitys efforts in regard to sopa and pipa with a demonstrated they have the ability to stop legislation, i would love to see the circumstance in which they have the ability to promote legislation to see that in his past. We are taking the approach that this legislation is not perfect. Seeking input from you and others, i have been to south by southwest, and Silicon Valley, increasing the level of information by those who can help us. But ultimately the goal is to have those people buy into legislation and to use the same techniques that demonstrated the political power of the internet to stop the bad legislation to demonstrate there is political power in the internet to promote positive legislation. Just to try to summarize, this matters because we are losing the battle for entrepreneurship. It was sad to me to have a business person tell me the American Dream is alive and well around the globe but that the American Dream is more likely to be pursued outside of the United States. In fact, in the two years i have been a member of the senate, seven countries have changed their laws where we have not, to try to create a circumstance in which they are more likely to attract new business. Including in the global battle for talent. That list of seven countries, one of them is chile. 20 of the companies they promote our u. S. Companies who decided it is better and to pursue that business there and then in their home country. This is the basics of what we should be doing and creating environment in which those that want to pursue that idea with the hope of success have the ability to do that and are not damaged by doing that in the United States. In some instances we hope they will be rewarded by doing it in the United States. I am very interested in seeing what the panelists say that the 2013 agenda should be for the new congress and pledged to the start of community and others unwillingness on my part to be educated and to learn and listen and to try to make certain decisions that i make in washington promote the ibm of a freemarket system that allows all americans to pursue the American Dream in the United States. Thank you for joining us and for your interest in this topic. [applause] that was a great introduction. The senator is going to stay with us and listen. What i have asked the panel is to deal is to give us a brief introduction of who they are and what organization they represent. From there we have a number of topics we want to cover. Some overlap and some are unique. Let me start with you, christian. Thank you. I am from the internet. We all use the internet every day but i get to say that he and my team actually created a pocket of it. We are all entrepreneurs. I am not a start up. What i do enables the startups and gives them a platform on which to build their dreams and generate the economy. My company is called servint and we have been around 17 years. Web hosting is a part of the infrastructure community. We have a trade association of which i am a part. Data talking about centers, claude providers, the notes and bolts of the internet that sit on top of the infrastructure. There are 30,000 Companies Like cars worldwide. We are mostly small to medium businesses. Most people think the internet is amazon. Com and google, microsoft, abel, those are the exceptions. Rule is small businesses. Small businesses that are in power in smallbusiness is. Empower small businesses. That is why were here. How is everybody doing today . I am from detroit and i run a couple of startups. I spent most of my day working on a university. What we do is help startups to be able to Leverage Technology to tell their stories online. This to give you some background, i have the opportunity to be a part of being in the Silicon Valley. But there really is, it opened my eyes to this whole ecosystem and how the world works. The perspective by want to bring is how do cities and states change their minds from an investor perspective . Im from detroit and if you look at detroit, detroit is changing. How does a town that has been a factory town reinvent itself . How does it disintegrated tried to create high growth and jobs and a place where now we have to get the local government and we have to get the Community Working together . I think he now did on the head when he talked about leaders. Talking about how entrepreneurs are going to lead the movement. But we need to have an infrastructure, whether that is government and universities working together so we can create an eco system and make sure that it is sustainable. An excited about meeting with you today. I look forward to the conversation. Smallcompany is called hippidy. We are based in san francisco. We are one of the Small Companies christian mentioned. We are only six employees right now. Our company does a lot of pork with national retailers, services, aggregating data and Building Technologies in terms of when sales happen, algorithms in terms of selling at two different parties. One of the areas of concern for a company like ours is access to talent. My parents are immigrants. It is something close to me personally. Many of my family members have gone through this process. Being able to work at a Smaller Company that has the ability to do that in the u. S. , that is a topic of interest to me and some of the others. I look forward to chatting with you about it. I am also from detroit. We get apps on to your smartphone safely. I started my business in 2008 with a fresh set of Business Card and started giving them out trying to figure out what i wanted to do. Five years later we have 20 jobs in detroit and we work with major companies. Which is great. I usually keep my head down and i try to avoid anything that does not involve closing deals. But i have a lot of struggles when it comes to hiring. I am happy to talk about that. I have also been through the ranks with angel financing. So i have been through it and i and stem the challenges and businesses go through because i have been there. I definitely keep my head down when it comes to washington and focus on things that mattered to making payroll. First of, thank you, senator for opening this up. Been jobs act is a remarkable piece of legislation enacting making sure this community can support the work youre doing, i think is critical to Capital Raising for a lot of startups. I am part of the start of the american network. Ive lost my First Company 1 i was 19 and have raised capital in a variety of ways. We are really focused on what we can do within the washington, d. C. A ecosystem to relieve bridge the gap between a startupled innovation and a lot of the expertise and connections that exist within washington, d. C. The first aspect of it is important but there is a broader view that one of the biggest opportunities for innovation our country is looking at is how do we reinvent the way we educate our kids . Or provide health to our citizens . Or manage transportation . These are big issues and issues in which we have a significant amount of opportunity to disrupt and innovate. The leadership is going to come from startups. They need to be able to understand how to actually connect in these environments to drive that innovation. That is a lot of the stuff were doing, focused on creating a community. Theets get into some of topics. We heard yesterday and today about some of the immigration, patent reform, but lets talk about it from the standpoint of people who are in the trenches. Christian, give us a sense of a framework using startups would like when washington thinks about regulating or not regulating. Order some of the Guiding Principles that should be included . I made you guys a short list. First i want to basically say that, well, remember when that guy columbus discovered that the continent . The internet is kind of the biggest thing since then. We need to realize that old ways of approaching legislation are not going to work. The first thing we need to do is to get congress to acknowledge nobody knows owns the internet. Attempts to do it are going to generally fail. People do not understand how vast the internet is. It is not like telephone lines. No group will have a singular perspective to understand it enough to legislate it. There are existing methods to shape the internet. Groups like wwc, ift, they take aspects of the internet and they bring stakeholders to the table with different perspectives, and a price, governments, content creators, users, internet providers like me, all come to the table and a hash out the differing perspectives. Basically, you need to do work to be able to Pay Attention to. What the government can control, they need to understand it is very limited. Ultimately, i will go ahead and read my lips. We want, any regulation should be placed with specialized expertise in the area sought to be regulated. For instance, the s ftc had some experience and they listen to us. We may want to talk with them. They have dealt with sakharov. Yes, we do not want an internet agency. We do not want in internet czar. The government should reinforce than working with entities, or considering legislation or activity that would undermine it, like the domain name creatures. That really hurts us. We do not want people to stick to failed negotiations, like the ttp. We want support for the Communications Decency act. We do not want blacklists and what lists. And regulation should continue to be Technology Neutral and any regulation should expressly and brought the preempt state regulation. Right now we have the swiss cheese mess that is impossible to go through. We also need to use language that is explicit and easy to follow. That is another problem with a lot of these bills. We just do not understand what is your talking about. If we do not understand what youre talking about, we cannot tell you whether we are pro or con. At dinner that they come here is what you need to realize. On copyright, privacy, security, the u. S. Is not the only game in town. I lose business everyday to overseas. Right now, our industry represents a trade surplus. More people are coming to do hosting in the United States to build their businesses, then the reverse. But we still lose it because people outside of this country use, for instance, the patriot act against