 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. This is all about IPOs, exits, Series F, and what's next for the billion-dollar company. So, I want to kick off. We've got Jacob Dugir here from IZETL. This is a later-stage company. They're valued quite highly, definitely a unicorn, and we've got a venture capitalist and a dean of freedmen of the NASDAQ here. So, guys, what kind of advice would you give to a company like IZETL if they were looking to go public right now? Well, I would say I think that your company has done a spectacular job of building a base, having a great business plan, and you're at the stage where you have a lot more predictability into the future of your business. And at that point, it's time to start to look at how can you get access to permanent capital to continue to allow yourself to grow over the many, many years that you're going to be in existence as a great innovator in a fintech company. So, we would be welcome, we welcome the opportunity to have a conversation with you about how best to get access to that permanent capital, but also to make it so that your early-stage and mid-stage investors have a chance to have a great liquidity event as well. So, we look forward to having that conversation when the time is right. That's a great pitch. That's a great pitch. Thank you. You're welcome. I would say, in addition to choosing NASDAQ as probably the primary consideration, I would say the advice, I ran Goldman's internet business for 10 years before becoming a venture capitalist, and the advice we would always give great companies like Isettle is you don't go public when you can go public, you go public when you want to or when you're ready to go public. And a lot of people can make that mistake to say, oh boy, I can go public. It used to be a mistake more in the past. You want to basically wait as long as you feel necessary to wait. And the good news is there's a tremendous amount of capital available in the private markets that wasn't previously there, but being public is not such a bad thing so long as your company is ready for it. So, Jacob, are you thinking about going public at all anytime soon? Well, a lot of people are thinking about it, so I need to think about it as well. But what we have said so far is really that we're preparing the company, and obviously subject to all market conditions. But it's a lengthy process, so we have started that process. Interesting. And what does that mean getting the company ready? Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs here who might say, well, you know, in a few years, if I have a company big enough and I want to take it public, what does that mean? It means a lot of administration and a lot of preparations. But it also means actually that you get a good sort of second opinion of the state of your business, I would say. I mean, we need to run through all the different processes that we have, all our different sort of committees, but also looking at the fundamental core. Are we in a good place or not? So, it takes a lot of management time and involvement from all employees. Scott, you wrote a piece recently, or you're working on a piece around companies staying private for longer, and actually some of the issues that arise from that as well. Can you just lay out your thinking around what we've seen, the trends in that space, and what are some of the potential pitfalls? Yeah, absolutely. I would say to the point about a company being ready, the most important thing is predictable growth. Know your business well. Know that you can predict ideally quarter to quarter, because public investors, especially hedge funds, the institutional investors are ruthless when it comes to surprises. Your private investors are much more forgiving when it comes to surprises. So know your growth well, and most companies don't, and that's a hard kind of hurdle to get over. But what's fascinating, what's happening, as these companies are waiting much longer to go public, the lion's share of the kind of fundamental growth, let's call it alpha, is being captured by private investors. When you look at IPOs like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Amazon, if you bought, if you looked at Amazon value creation before and after the IPO, 1,000 times the value. So if there's a dollar value before the IPO, $1,000 were created for the public investors, Facebook, that numbers 2.8 or 3. Google, I think, is 30, stark difference. And so that's a real challenge of your retail investor that doesn't have access to private investing, to then be coming into the public markets and not see that alpha that's historically been available. Right. I mean, that's, I think, the biggest issue when we talk about how do we make the public markets more attractive to companies earlier in their life cycle, but still at a point where they do feel like they're ready. And I agree with you. You should go public when you want to go public, not just because you can. But at the same time, we talk a lot about the wealth disparity issues that are starting to be created, particularly in the United States. I would say it's more of an issue in the U.S. than it is in the Nordics. Just want to do a quick plug for the Nordics. We've had 100 new listings in the Nordics this year. It's been a record year raising 4 billion euros this year. And so the public markets in the Nordic region are actually quite vibrant for small to medium companies as well as more established companies. But in the U.S., what we're finding is that it is a big step to go into the public markets. And yet that means that retail investors are not getting access to great growth companies at that growth phase, which is going to increase the wealth disparity in the country. And also you find that that value creation is also coupled with job creation. So a lot of companies after they go public, about 76 percent of all job creation since 2000, has come after the companies have gone public because they do have access to permanent capital. So we do want to make it so that the public markets are more attractive to companies like yourself. So you shouldn't feel like it's this massive burden and this huge obligation to be a public company. So what can we do about that? Should we make it so we have semi-annual disclosure obligations instead of quarterly disclosure obligations so that you can have more of, you can have, be more growthy and a little less predictable quarter to quarter but still show that you're meeting your business plan? Should we make it so that the proxy access is raising the skin in the game for someone to have access to your proxy? There are a lot of things we can do, I think, to make the public markets more attractive. And Nasik's very focused on that. Jacob, is that something that you're thinking about about what could be done, what could be changed, what could be reformed in the public markets that wouldn't make it more attractive for a company like yours, not necessarily Isattel, but for these larger European startups that we have now? Your question to me was what kind of preparations were needed to potentially go public and I was just describing some of the processes. Then obviously there are some very clear benefits. I mean if a company like Isattel who wants to continue on a growth path, going public would mean that we could access capital to pursue that option. And I mean it comes with the visibility and the possibility of attracting new people to the company and so forth, new currency to acquire other companies. So there are lots of benefits but not really sure if the process could be that different. I mean still you need this sort of transparency, you need to have your ducks in the road to be a listed company. So probably a question for you how you could potentially sort of simplify the process, whether it could be simplified or not, I'm not sure. Yeah I think that's a great question because on the one hand when you're going public you're accessing that average retail investor. So you're averaging the mom and pop and they have they have a right to know information, you know have information and disclosures but in some areas of the world, particularly in the United States and I would say even here too, there are a lot of politically motivated disclosure obligations put on public companies as well that frankly aren't really relevant to making a proper investment decision. So one of the things we're trying to do is get rid of some of those but the other thing is can you know the financial advisors in the Nordics are actually particularly helpful in giving you the ability to kind of navigate you through the go public process. We do a lot of education around that but it is still a big undertaking. It's a and it is a distraction to the management team so it's a matter of making sure you feel like the business is in solid shape. It's going to continue to grow and do well while you're in that process and then it's just it's really a matter of making sure you have the right advisors to lead you through it. Jacob from your perspective as a European entrepreneur is there still a sense from European entrepreneurs that the US still looks like a more attractive place to list than the European markets? Wow that's a good question. I mean from my perspective we're in in the heart and so we're a Swedish company. We don't have any sort of US presence or revenues coming from the US so for us if we were to to to go public eventually I'm not really sure the US would be our sort of natural go to market. It would make much more sense to go to some European market where we actually have presence and sort of the market actually knows about the company. Yeah we actually have their vibrant markets in a lot of different countries but obviously the Swedish market is a fantastic market and we have had a lot of great successful companies come into the Swedish market but you're right if you are a global company with a global presence and you have global clients and you want to really promote a global brand that's when you start looking at the US and saying well perhaps I could get a different valuation but I'd like to hear from you Scott because you having been a banker and now a venture investor and guiding these companies as they grow how do you look at you've talked about the timing but also how do you look at the different capital markets and what's available to them. Well I actually in addition to those I was a section 16 officer of public company. Oh there we go. So back in the bubble. So you have to sign your life away. Yes exactly. So I got to live as a officer of a public company. I think you're dead on you go to the markets that know you best and as long as there's depth of liquidity and as you point out there's lots of alternative markets that's fine and you can always do an ADR in US if you find there's demand. You would know better than any of us in terms of the depth but the depth of the US market is still by far unique in the global landscape and so if you need to tap that you got to have a listing in the US but it's really a function of what you're looking for and how much you need to place. The thing that you mentioned that I thought was interesting about helping make IPO's easier. You're in exchange. You're not the SEC. You're not FINRA. You're not the you're not the largest hedge funds or mutual funds. So I mean your hands are tied just like our hands are tied to some degree. Well we're just players in this bigger game and and it's hard for me to see the public markets changing that much. It's hard to see maybe over time but it's hard to see the hedge funds the mutual funds the SEC changing overnight and yet I think you guys are in a really interesting position to help private companies perhaps have a gradual IPO. Think of it as like a gradual public offering as opposed to initial public offering and easing them into a secondary trading in a way where you don't get secondary prices in front of public prices like what happened in Facebook. Right. So I think there's a lot of room for innovation how we can just evolve this as opposed to being this stark binary like I'm public now. So I should I should just be handing you a little bit you know under the table here. So we have something called the Nasik private market that does allow private companies to have access to episodic liquidity and we basically facilitate tender offers and that's generally been very successful for early stage investors and and longer standing employees. So as a private company if you do stay private longer you do want to offer the ability for an employee to have some liquidity to buy that house to make sure that they can educate their kids as sexually as they want. And so we do have something called the Nasik private market and it is kind of in a way I wouldn't say it's an on ramp but it does allow you to have access to periodic liquidity and handing the liquidity to other private hands. Well and the sovereigns have what six trillion dollars. Right. Exactly. 60X if you look at sovereign investments it's a 60X increase. Sovereign investments in tech companies in like the last 10 years eight years it's incredible. So you map that six trillion to your private placement business and that gets very interesting. Yeah so we are we definitely are growing very fast and it's becoming a big part of that private journey is to basically use the tender offer process to allow for early liquidity and then move them over time into the public market. Guys I want to I want to change tech as well into a different part of the fundraising spectrum. Something that's arisen really really big in 2017 and that's the initial coin offering and what with that the rise of the cryptocurrencies this year as well into perhaps more mainstream acceptance. Jacob I want to start with you we've seen your US rival Square says it's experimenting with Bitcoin. Is that something you're looking at as well? Well the thought has crossed our mind a long time ago but we realize that still very few people tend to buy sort of coffee and things with Bitcoin. There are other currencies more frequently used so we focus on that. However I mean from the technology side of things I mean blockchain is something that we're sort of experimenting with both for internal and sort of external processes but no we haven't we haven't launched sort of Bitcoin offering to our merchants just yet. And Adina just in the last day or two you guys announced that you're going to offer a Bitcoin futures product. What's the thinking behind that why? So you convinced that Bitcoin is more than a fraud as Jamie Diamond says and actually something that's here to state. So we actually haven't announced anything and so really we're we're continuing to evaluate whether the Bitcoin can be an asset class that is subject to a more regulated market environment. We do believe that we're worried to look at bringing the Bitcoin into a regulated market environment that there are two ways to do that. There's the future and that allows for hedging and other other kind of trading strategies. There's also the ETF and the US has not yet allowed for ETFs Bitcoin ETFs to be listed but in the Nordics we have actually two exchange traded notes listed in the Nordic markets a sec denominated Bitcoin ETN as well as a Euro denominated Bitcoin ETN as well as an Ethereum ETN. So here in the Nordics they've actually been more open to looking at this as an asset class and allowing for investors to have access to that asset class through a regulated market. The US is still I would say still evaluating it in general. Could you give us a few more details? Are you actually planning to launch this? We've cited in our story on CNBC.com we've cited some officials saying that this this is in the works. Can you give us something a bit more concrete? I would just say that we've been having active dialogue with a lot of clients and with partners about what what might be possible over time. But you mentioned ICOs. Yeah, I want to shift to ICOs. That's what I was going to jump on because look you know there's a sucker born every minute right there's there's buyer beware and and when you look at some of these ICOs not all of them they are based on nothing other than an idea a concept that's loosely mapped to some company name and as we were talking about backstage yeah there's a very fundamental difference between these ICOs and and equity that you would buy in the public stock and that is equity you're not actually buying an asset an underlying ownership claim to that company and that gets really really sketchy and scary it's not to say there isn't a place for them though if you think about the success of crowdfunding you think about the success of getting people excited and interested in a company and access to a company before others might have access to it there is a place for it but I would be extremely thoughtful and careful if you're thinking about buying an ICO to say what am I actually getting here right beyond the hype beyond the excitement do you think there are fads Scott do you think they're just kind of going to disappear I don't know are they a genuine perhaps rival to VC funding even an IPO well let me put it this way if a founder is able to do an ICO and not end up in jail yes they should do that versus taking any other capital because it's free money there's no they're not giving up equity it's literally free money do I think it'll come crashing down probably not will there be a significant reset will the regulators get involved will there be a a complete blow-up I think you were commenting on one just recently or somebody was saying they've read about something recently where where the company didn't even exist and they can't find the people anymore they they skip town I couldn't find the CEO he doesn't exist so you know there there's going to be scams for sure and and so the retail investor has to be protected so yes I think there will be a reset a significant reset probably not unlike what we saw in the bubble where you had a lot of companies that were being marketed off of ideas and hand waving and there was a significant reset among investors and regulators yeah Jacob just want to jump back to your point as well very quickly on blockchain you said this is a promising technology something of course you guys are looking into as well what's the promise of this technology for a company like is that well actually right now what we're evaluating is whether we can use it for our actually for internal systems rather than anything that we're displaying to to our merchant base so the sort of the way it's structured and the the benefit it gives is also benefits to to us internally yeah guys just want to wrap up we're almost out of time so just give us your outlook a little bit Adina we've we've seen some stocks come to new companies come to market the likes of loads of them have listed this year but they've got off to a fairly sluggish start a lot of those stocks what are you what is your outlook for 2018 in terms of new entrants to the market well I would actually say a couple things for on the companies that have come and listed on nasdaq this year and we have had about a little over 60% of the companies that come to market in the US have listed on nasdaq the average return across those companies is 20% so far this year so the companies that have chosen nasdaq as their listing venue have actually had a really great experience a lot of them are these b2b software companies cyber security companies as well as some really great consumer companies and I think that that have leveraged the technology to be basically to create it almost like a subscription service and so we've actually had a lot of success with the companies that have chosen the the nasdaq we've had over 140 IPOs so far this year in the US but the real success story has been the Nordics and with a hundred new listings this year in the Nordics if you think about that in this relative to the size of the countries they're really punching above their weight in terms of bringing bringing getting access to the public markets in terms of 2018 I would say that we continue to see a really really strong pipeline of companies looking to go public and it's just a matter of them feeling like the environment is ready for them and that they're ready to to enter into the public markets got super quickly probably a question you can't answer but uber is of course a portfolio company Dara Koshoshahi the CEO said 2019 isn't in the works for an IPO can they hit that timeline given everything that's happened and do you think that's a realistic time frame yeah my co-founder chervin pitch of our night we're lucky enough to be in uber from the very early days the series be and we've watched that company grow up like no other company we've ever seen and that's backing Facebook and LinkedIn and Palantir a bunch of other companies in our careers frankly this company could go public whenever it wants to go public there's no question in terms of the underlying metrics it's just a function of when they decide and when they're ready great we're gonna have to wrap this up I'm afraid the nasdaq opening bell is next so guys thank you for joining us and thank you very much to our panelists thank you thanks