 feels like yesterday my wife called me on the second day of slush and she told me the water broke yeah great timing so my son was born and now it's been a year he walks he talks he's the chief happiness officer of slush making people happen at the office however becoming a dad I'm scared I'm scared because things need to change and nothing normal ever changed a damn thing right that's true nothing normal ever change a damn thing but that's why we're here today right just challenge the status quo welcome to slush 2017 this is the culmination of the year of slush today after having organized 75 slush gatherings all around the world that have brought together more than 40,000 people all brings us here today with the help of 2,300 volunteers give it up for the volunteers it had taken us at least over a thousand years of man years of labor to create this event and also lots of pink led lights as much that we ran out of it in Europe so if you're going Christmas shopping for pink led lights you're gonna have a hard time finding them I'm Marianne and I'm Nikki and we're the main organizer of slush there's a couple other records also broken for us this year we're heading 10,000 investor start-up meetings in the meeting area we have more than a thousand and 500 investors joining more than 2,600 start-up companies joining so it's an honor that each and every one of you are here tonight and today