 Hi everybody. How you doing this morning? Good. All right. It's actually really special for me to be here because my whole beginning of my life essentially in social entrepreneurship began with SoCAP. It actually began with Good Capital and Kevin Jones. He hired me, thankfully to be an intern for a couple months. And so it's actually really cool to kind of be back in the world and be speaking up here today. So I'm excited to talk to you today about about social funding. A lot of people call it crowdfunding. I actually think it's a terrible word for the industry, but we can talk about that later. But what I want to talk about today is how we're actually changing finance for good. And this is both permanently and for the better. Double entendre, totally intended. But to give you some background, you know, many of you guys have heard and you go go, we're now at it. We're like old news, you know, we're in every country. We're distributing millions of dollars every single week. To every industry, entrepreneurs, artists, causes, you name it. If you have an idea, you can use IndieGoGo to raise money. And where IndieGoGo came from was this place of wanting to democratize access to capital. My co-founders and I saw ideas going unborn every single day, not for lack of heart and hustle, not even for lack of an audience, but simply because they didn't know the right people. And so we wanted to blow that model up and make you not have to be dependent on knowing the right people. And that's why we created IndieGoGo. And what actually IndieGoGo became in the early days was this incredible alternative form of finance. I would actually like to say that when the credit crisis hit back in 2008 and 2009, that actually helped IndieGoGo. Because it forced people to look outside of banks, look outside of VCs, look outside of the traditional financial systems to see where else can I get money to get my ideas off the ground. But then when the crisis subsided, I actually started to get a little worried. Are we a counter-cyclical company? Are we going to die when the economy comes back? And actually the exact opposite happened. That's when really things started to flourish. And the reason is, is that IndieGoGo isn't just addressing the most obvious risk, which is financing risk, when you're an entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur trying to get your idea off the ground. What we've actually found is that IndieGoGo also addresses the two other major risks that you face when you're trying to birth an idea. And that's market risk and execution risk. And it's exciting because this is why I think IndieGoGo is here to stay. And why social funding is going to be part of the entire fabric of finance and actually make finance a lot more sustainable. So what do I mean by market risk? What am I actually saying? So a great example of this is gravity light. There's a light that these designers out of London had actually created a light where 30 seconds of lifting creates 30 minutes of energy. They saw it as an alternative to kerosene in the developing world. A lot safer and a lot cheaper. They couldn't get a venture capitalist to call them back. So what did they do? They did an IndieGoGo campaign and they raised $300,000 and in the process basically validated that they had a market. Kitepatch, same thing. What they did is they actually had raised some money, but they used IndieGoGo not just to launch the product but actually to build a brand. They ended up raising over $500,000. It's a kitepatch that if you put on your arm it emits the signal, it makes you invisible to mosquitoes. Much better than mosquito nets. But they used IndieGoGo not just to launch a product and raise the money but actually to build that brand to reduce that market risk. Same thing with Kinoma Create. This actually was an idea which is a JavaScript toolbox where it was created by Marvell, which is a $5 billion company. But they used IndieGoGo as a way to kind of build a community around the product before they actually launched. So thereby creating that market before they launched. Same thing for Lavame, a mobile shower for the homeless. When they launched their IndieGoGo campaign they actually proved that this was something that could stick. And a whole bunch of cities started calling them saying, when can you come? When can you bring your mobile showers to my city? And Solar Roadways. A lot of people have heard of this one. Too young, too young, yes, young. People in the middle of their life, inventors out of Idaho, were passionate about saving the world. They believed that if we could actually make all the roads across the world solar powered and cover them with solar panels, we could actually reduce the carbon emissions by 85%. And make the roads a lot safer at the same time. So they ended up using IndieGoGo. No, it's going to cost trillion. No, it's not going to. They used IndieGoGo to raise $2 million and no, it's not going to just cost $2 million to change all roads across America and the world. But it was basically the beginning and it actually put their idea on the map and actually earned them the respect. From the press, from the media, from partners, from people who are actually now focusing on trying to make this idea happen. So those are examples of how these campaigns have used IndieGoGo, not just to raise the money, some of them didn't actually even need the money, but actually to build, to create that market and thereby reduce the market risk, prove that they have an idea that is worth coming to life in the world. On the execution risk side, sorry for the blue line here, we have plenty of people who are now using IndieGoGo, again they have the money or maybe they don't have the money, but what they're doing is they're using it as a way to get smarter faster, to really test all of their assumptions and therefore refine their product market fit before they actually launch their idea. Skybell here is a perfect example, it's a smart doorbell, video doorbell. This guy had a whole road map of the features he wanted to launch and based on his IndieGoGo campaign and based on the feedback from his funders, he completely switched a lot of the prioritization of which features he needed to launch. Same thing with Cooley Cooley, which is a super food snack, these young girls discover Moringa, which is a very special element that can actually, it's very healthy and cheap. They were launching these new bars, they used IndieGoGo to raise the $52,000, but they actually in the process learned who their early adopter segments were, it was yoga moms shopping at Whole Foods, which was an hypothesis, but their campaign actually confirmed it. Same thing with Nick's underwear, this is high tech underwear out of Canada, women come ask me what that means later, it's awesome. This woman was super excited about launching her underwear line and she had three versions of her underwear and she was convinced one was going to be a best seller, but she threw in a third just because she thought it was cool and sexy, guess which one became the most funded perk on her campaign? It was the third one that she thought of as an afterthought. So she actually completely discovered who her customers were and actually the customer mix and she reshuffled her whole production schedule based on the demand proven in her IndieGoGo campaign. Same thing with Jibo, this is the world's first family robot, they've raised almost $2 million. Dr. Cynthia Brazil out of MIT launched the IndieGoGo campaign simply because she wanted to learn who her customers are and what they wanted to use this family robot for. In her mind she thought it would be like the personal assistant for the whole family, what she learned is actually most of her funders are dudes and most of them don't know how to cook. And so they're going to use this robot to learn how to cook and that's why, and they wanted someone to talk to them and tell them what to do, how to follow the recipes. She had no concept that that was going to be the use case, but she learned that all through launching this idea, letting people fund it and tell her what they wanted to do. Same thing with Misfit Shine, these guys are actually here from the Bay Area, they launched an activity tracker and the whole point of it was to have an elegant solution to tracking your calories and your workouts and all this kind of stuff. So it was going to hide in your clothes and totally be hidden. In the process he actually learned when he launched his IndieGoGo campaign he actually offered his shine in different colors and actually learned that people were willing to fund the black version way more than the silver version, actually willing to pay $50 more for the black than the silver, he learned this all by swapping perks in and out and seeing what people funded and what they didn't. And also in the process his funder said, you know, he said, what else would you guys like? And he said, we really want bracelets and necklaces. And he started to fight with them saying, well the whole point of this is to hide in your clothes, why would you want to wear it? And then he realized he was fighting with his customers, which as an entrepreneur, you know, that's a very bad thing. So he said, okay, I'm going to get humble for a second, let's prove it. And so he threw up a perk mid campaign of bracelets and necklaces and it got claimed overnight. And he completely unlocked a whole new revenue stream and accessory line, et cetera, that he never knew existed. All because he ran this campaign in a matter of weeks. So he likes to say, Indiegogo made me so much smarter, faster. No matter how much money I raise, I'm always going to do an Indiegogo campaign to launch a product. And this is one of my favorites. This is Miss Possible. This is a recent campaign actually out of two young entrepreneurs just graduated college. They totally believe that like dolls are awesome, but we need more options than just Barbie. And if we want to get more girls into STEM, why don't we make dolls that look like Marie Curie or Jane Goodall or Rosalind Franklin. And so they've launched an Indiegogo campaign. They raise money to launch their first doll, which is modeled after Marie Curie. But they've turned to their funders to decide what's next, who are the future products. So all of us are now voting, voting with our dollar on which dolls are coming next. It's a great way to market test. So as you can see, when you create a campaign and you invite the world to be part of the ideation and creation process and you allow them to vote with their dollar, literally what products, what features, what colors, at what price. You don't just raise money and reduce financing risk, which is incredibly important and valuable. You actually reduce the market risk, which is the risk that you're making something that nobody cares about or not enough people care about. And you're also reducing execution risk, which is maybe you're solving a real problem in the right way. You're just not getting the product market fit right. You're charging too much. You're including too many features. What have you? And so Indiegogo has become this really flexible and open and quick and easy and fun and intense way to learn all of this in just a matter of weeks. And so what are the benefits of this then? It's more than just, you know, what are the benefits of having less risk in the system? Clearly that's a positive. So what we're seeing now is we're seeing these campaigns actually using Indiegogo as a way to attract investment capital. When you reduce your marketing execution risk, you actually make yourself look better to the venture capitalists, to the banks of the world. Gravity Light and this possible both got an investor interest out of their Indiegogo campaigns. Lava May got a $100,000 grant from Google and Scannadu actually, which I haven't talked about, which is like this doctor in your pocket medical tricorder, which is literally from Star Trek days, but they made it a reality. They used Indiegogo to raise $1.6 million and right after that they actually were able to close a $10.3 million series A route. But it's also being used not just to attract a traditional capital, but actually to close the capital. So I actually met Tinkerbots, which is a robots for kids in Germany. And the guys behind that were actually able to close a million dollar venture round because they had written Indiegogo into their roadmap. And the venture investors were not willing to put the money into their company unless they knew they were going to do an Indiegogo campaign to product test before they launched. Same thing with Jibo. Their investment was partially contingent as well. So attract investment capital, close investment capital. The third is actually to make you spend your investment capital more wisely. So like I said with Kitepatch, they had raised money from the Gates Foundation. Misfit Shine had raised money from actually a venture capital, $7 million venture capital. And Konoma Crate came from a $5 billion semiconductor company. They used Indiegogo to really understand what products they need to build, what features they need to build, what pricing they need to do. So they actually are spending whatever capital they already have in a much more efficient and smart manner. And lastly, I'm running off out of time here, is it's also a way to stay independent. So we're now actually starting to see people completely bypass the traditional financial system. We have NYX that went right, got picked up for distribution out of her campaign in Hudson Bay, which is like the North Streams of Canada. This was a first time entrepreneur maker. She got her product through her first Indiegogo campaign right into this big retailer, which is like the dream when you're a clothing manufacturer. Cooley Cooley got right into Whole Foods, and Sky about completely passed the venture role completely. Apple came calling to them saying, we want you in our home get store when we launch. So the question is, does this mean traditional financiers are going away? What's their role? Is this their future? Don't get nervous guys, if you're an investor, this is what I like to say, who's an investor and no one raises their hand. No, I don't think so, and this is why. I'll hold you in suspense for a little bit longer. What's happened is what Indiegogo is actually proving is that cash is becoming a commodity. So whether you can get cash from the crowd or from an investor, cash is cash. It doesn't really matter. And so what matters then is what else can the sources of cash bring you? So clearly the crowd can lower your execution and your market risk. So what must the traditional financier bring? And they do bring relationships. They bring expertise. Indiegogo took traditional venture capital. I know it is definitely beneficial. So the key is what we see is the two types of capital, whether it's the crowd capital or traditional capital, actually working hand in hand together. And the way we see that doing is in two ways. One is Indiegogo being an incubation platform, and two is Indiegogo being a market testing platform. What I mean by incubation platform is that what we're seeing is because traditional venture investors, governments, et cetera, are looking at Indiegogo to try to find ideas that are market validated, they're bubbling up to the top, and they're actually using Indiegogo as a sourcing and a discovery platform. So that's why Indiegogo is literally in a merit-based fashion bubbling up ideas to traditional capital so that they can have better ideas to actually invest in. And the same thing on the market testing platform. We're now seeing companies, like I said, venture capitalists requiring that when they make the investment that their portfolio company actually run an Indiegogo campaign before they launch, that they're actually launching a product. The world wants, not just a product, they think the world wants. So the new role for traditional financiers then is one of amplifiers. So we used to like to say that traditional finance and finance is broken because it's inefficient, and it's inefficient because it's riddled with gatekeepers, and gatekeepers are just inefficient ways of allocating capital. But what we're doing now is we're actually turning traditional financiers into amplifiers. So when they're discovering ideas and putting money into them off of ideas that have already been community validated, they're bringing them out to the world. And they're, what I like to say, they used to have two jobs. One is to bet right, and one is to amplify. It's the betting part that makes their job really risky, and it's the betting part that makes them want to say no more than they say yes. And so because we reduce a lot of the risk from the equation, we get to allow them to say yes more than they say no, and then they actually get to do the job which they probably wanted. The amplification job is the job that is the thing that probably attracted them to become an investor from the beginning, as they want to say yes, they want to help companies launch and thrive and grow. So overall what's happening is we're creating a more healthier financial ecosystem because we're getting more ideas going. We're enabling faster failure, which is actually, we all know is a very good thing. If you can't raise money within a few weeks, if you can't prove that there's a demand for your idea, if you can't, your product market fit right, then maybe you're not ready, or maybe that idea isn't something the world actually wants, and so you can move on to the next thing and not waste the next few years of your life, and all your life savings on something that was never going to see the light of day. And then the ones that get through, the ones that the world is actually funding, are the ideas that the world wants. The ideas are better that are coming to life, and the way they're coming up, the way they're bubbling up is in a much more merit-based fashion. It's based on true market needs. It's not based on what a few people, traditional investors or gatekeepers, think the world wants. It's actually based on what the world wants because the world is actually involved in voting. And as a result, then we're going to have less waste because a lot of on the physical side, the products that are coming out are the ones that are actually wanted. And when you do an integrated campaign, you completely mitigate the risk of overproduction and underproduction. So you actually produce exactly the amount that people want. So in the end, this is how I think Indiegogo is changing finance for good. It's both permanently making it more sustainable by reducing risk and for the better, which is allowing more ideas in a merit-based fashion to bubble up to the top and exist. And that's all I got for you. Thank you.