 It's my pleasure and my privilege to introduce our next speaker, one who came here to soak out as a mere babe, about 23 or 24 years old and full of excitement and full of ideas and full of energy and over the last eight or nine years has taken those ideas and energy and enthusiasm and built one of the most amazing entrepreneur networks in the country and probably even the world. Over that time, Ross has become a dear friend and he's become a father, so be sure when you see him out and about to show him the pictures of Jack and Jen, his wife and his adorable baby. But right now, he's going to come out and continue this powerful conversation about why is it that we're here and what it is we're going to do next. Please welcome from Village Capital, Ross Baird. Morning everybody. I don't have any breakfast cereal for you and I can't match what Jed just did, so I'm not even going to try. What I do want to talk about, how can we do better is the theme of the morning and I wasn't at the first soak up, but I was at the second one, I've been at everyone since and I think if you talked to the group that was here in 2009 and you said what is Socap 2017 going to be talking about, devastating forest fires and entire islands that don't have electricity and inequality at an all time high is probably not what people were hoping was going to happen eight years later. So there is an amazing amount of energy and a lot is going right and a lot in this room is going right, but in the big picture I think, I don't think things are going in the right direction necessarily and I'd argue that we have everything we need. We have wonderful organizations, we have terrific people, but we do have blind spots and these blind spots are maybe the things that if we fix we can do and create what we want to create. I wrote a book called the innovation blind spot that tells the story of what I do and where the blind spots are, that's actually not what I'm going to talk about today though if you wanted to buy the book I wouldn't hate it, but that's actually, I'm going to talk about the biggest thing I've learned as I over the last year have tried to figure out what some of my and our own blind spots would be. So how many of you have been to a McDonald's in the last week? Alright, not a lot of McDonald's eaters here, let's see one in the back. We at Village Capital we invest in companies across the country and across the world that are building a more sustainable society whether it's agriculture, energy or water management or are helping people gain access to financial services or education or help, things that can mitigate income inequality give people social mobility and we don't do a lot of work in places like San Francisco and New York we do work in places like Paducah Kentucky which is in southern Kentucky where we've got an investment in a company called Fingormay and what Fingormay does is they catch Asian carp which is a horribly invasive species if you're an environmentalist they chop it up, they rebrand it Kentucky Blue Snapper, sell it to high-end restaurants, you can get Kentucky Blue Snapper here in San Francisco and they've created dozens of living wage jobs in one of the poorest counties in the country so great business, great impact, very creative. If you go to Paducah, what I do when I travel to places like Paducah is I'll typically have breakfast or off coffee at McDonald's and McDonald's for probably the bottom 50% of the income bracket markets themselves as the place where the community comes together so if you go to the Paducah McDonald's on a Monday morning from 7 to 9 and get a $1 unlimited refill a cup of coffee you'll probably meet 30 different people coming out and they're not going to be like who are you why are you here like like people just sit around and talk so basically I started recognizing that we are here in San Francisco and we're trying to save the world but there's a huge divide between the people in this room and the people that we are supposedly trying to innovate for in most cases and I don't want to over generalize and so I realized if we're trying to help people who don't have bank accounts I have a bank account that works just fine if we're trying to help people who don't have jobs I have a job that I love maybe there are blind spots that we can close so I set a goal about a year ago of saying every Monday no matter where I am whether it's San Francisco or Paducah Kentucky I'm going to go and have breakfast at McDonald's and it hasn't happened every Monday but it's happened most money is a game I've played with myself I called it McDonald's Mondays not for I don't know why but I gave it a name and I was in Orange Virginia one Monday and I was talking to McDonald's right down time you've probably been there Stephanie is in McDonald's right downtown these people are like what do you do and I was like invest in small businesses and they're like small businesses that's really all we've got this is a shot from Main Street Orange and they're like you know when these three businesses when the lows open 20 miles away it shut down these three when the target open 20 miles that way it shut down these three like we don't really have anything but small business and so we start talking about what's going on in orange and so I talked to this guy and like all right we invest $50,000 in companies what would you do if you had $50,000 he's like I would start a coffee shop because you know what we sit here in this crappy McDonald's and this chair has been broken for a year and the people in New York don't care that the chair is broken and I just like to sit in a comfortable chair and drink not crappy coffee and there's something really really very beautiful about that I think that a lot of the conversation and a lot of the blind spots we have are around scale as optimization Wall Street wants it Silicon Valley wants it a lot of the conversation is how do we get to scale but when we when we obsess over scale what it means is lows makes a ton of money and Target makes a ton of money and Main Street Orange is completely wiped out and like what are we left with we're left with people who want 50 grand to start coffee shops corporate consolidation mergers and acquisitions the exits that everyone at this conference really wants have on average cost the average family $14,000 a year that's more than automation that's more than offshoring that's more than all the things you see in the newspaper so maybe we're thinking differently or maybe one of our biggest blind spots is thinking about this mythical unicorn of scale maybe what we need to do to prevent forest fires and to address climate is actually much smaller and much more in our backyard so this is thank you this is my baby Jack I don't know he's three months old and I just like pictures of him so but I think what when Jack what Jack wants to be when he grows up I don't know what he'll want to be but when I was a kid I wanted to be an inventor Thomas Edison was a here of mine etc and working with entrepreneurs I get to do more or less that I'm sure that Jack doesn't want to when he's eight he's not gonna say hey I want to make a ton of money on Wall Street and completely hollow out towns across America that sounds really great but sometime between so think of like what you wanted to be when you were a kid and sometime between that and where we are now a lot of people had different things change and so that I think is the biggest blind spot of all we're obsessed with scale we're obsessed with goals we don't understand the collateral damage between here and then so if I want to say one thing I've learned from going to McDonald's every Monday every place I go there's somebody who wants to start a coffee shop it needs $50,000 or someone who's you know a stressed out teacher who you know I teach at University of Virginia and they say oh you teach at UVA like what do you do that I can learn from like everybody's looking to do what they can with what they have with where they are and so so much of the goals of the capital markets are completely inaccessible to where you are right now and I'd say don't go for that figure out what do you have in your power to do today the way you figure out what you can do and what you can do better is by asking other people one of the most transformative things about going to McDonald's every Monday is nobody at McDonald's Mondays yet has ever heard of the social capital markets or ever heard of entrepreneurship when I say the word start up I was in Austin Texas for South by Southwest no one at McDonald's had heard that South by Southwest was even happening 100,000 people coming to Austin McDonald's two miles away they're like why are all the traffic people there's a weird conference good for you asking people how am I doing what am I doing what could I doing better and asking people whether it's in McDonald's or the person sitting next to you that's how you eliminate your blind spots the amazing thing about blind spots is you can't see them yourself but the great thing about SoCAP is you are surrounded by people who unlike 51 weeks a year understand what you do how many of you can explain to your families what you do for a living certainly not me but people here get what you do people here are not competitive with you people here are rooting for you so if you say here's what I'm doing what am I missing if you're a funder or an investor pretty much every day there's a power dynamic where people who don't have money will tell you what you want to hear because they want your money and you probably feel that I working for an investment firm that's part of the deal if you say listen just let's take a step back here's what we're doing at our foundation or here's what we're doing with our investment firm what are we missing what feedback do we have you might be able to see blind spots things you don't understand and you can do this whether you run an investment firm or whether you're a volunteer at SoCAP one of the things I wrote this book the innovation blind spot that again you should buy it's really wonderful I've done about 20 conversations over the last month and it's been amazing but you can write a book but also been robo on my team spent hours editing the book and making it great Dustin on my team organizes events and make sure they run on time Rachel on my team got the sweater that I left at one event and brought it there raise your hand if you're a SoCAP volunteer big round of applause for the SoCAP volunteers you guys are making the change in the capital markets happen as much as me or Jed Emerson or whoever speaking speaking up on stage so I'm out of time but the main thing I would say is we've got blind spots and they're very easy to solve one what can I do with what I have to turn to the person next to you whether it's here at McDonald's say here's what I'm doing what am I missing what can I do better so you can't stop forest fires I wish you could but you can do better with what you have and that's what I've learned over the last year thanks very much