Danae Ringelmann at Startup School SV 2014

First of all, this is totally awesome. Um, I want everybody to actually take a minute, a moment of silence, and appreciate the fact that you're here. Um, and appreciate the fact that your whole life has been leading to this point. You might all be thinking that I'm about to embark on this journey of Startup Ville and entrepreneurship, but there's a reason you're sitting in this room, and your story has already started.

So, I'm going to share my story with you, and what I hope you realize is that, um, there's bigger meaning behind you just wanting to learn a couple tips and tricks of how to be a great entrepreneur. There's a bigger mission behind all of that in you, and I hope you all take a moment after today to think through that and appreciate that it's already there.

So, I'm going to talk today about building what matters. Um, I'm one of the founders of Indiegogo. My journey started pretty much when I was a kid, and I'll talk about that in a second. Um, but we launched Indiegogo back in January of 2008, my two co-founders and I, and today we're now the largest global online funding platform in the world, helping entrepreneurs, artists, causes, activists, you name it; you want to raise money for it, people are using it in every country, um, every industry to go after their dreams and make it happen.

Um, but like I said, my story didn't start in January 2008 when I decided to start a company. My story started actually when I was a kid, um, which is why I want you guys all to reflect on your own stories and where you've come from and why you're sitting here today.

Um, I was the daughter of two small business owners in San Francisco. They were running a brick-and-mortar business, and for 30 years they struggled. Uh, because they could never get an outside loan, they could never get access to capital. No one would actually give them a loan from a bank or whatever to help grow their business. And so they technically bootstrapped for 30 years, which sounds like hell, um, in the venture capital world, but that's what they did.

Their story is like every other small business owner out there trying to make it happen every day. But in watching them persevere and figure it out, and you know, cut their salaries when the economy crashed and September 11th happened, all that kind of stuff, watching all that, I actually grew very aware of a very big problem. And that problem was access to capital.

Um, why was it so hard, um, to find money and raise money and go do what you wanted to do in the world? Um, so that actually led, that awareness led me to Wall Street. I got my first job in New York City, super excited, um, in corporate finance investment banking. How many people have done that life? Yeah, raise your hand, proud! Yeah, I've been there. Um, great training ground, but um, it was one of those weeks where I was working 100 hours a week and I got invited to this event called “Where Hollywood Meets Wall Street.”

I was working in the Entertainment Group, so because the word “Wall Street” was in the title, I thought I could justify it to my boss to go, um, but really it was just an excuse to get out of the office. Um, and at this event, “Where Hollywood Meets Wall Street” was happening, I was—what I was expecting to happen was meeting a sea of, you know, Hollywood producers talking to these Wall Street bankers, and I'd be this fly on the wall listening to what they're actually saying and actually learning how this business works.

But the exact opposite happened. Um, when I got there, I was about a room this big, full like it is today, and I literally was the most popular girl at the party. Why? It was a sea of emerging artists all hoping to meet their next angel, and I was the one naive person from a bank that decided to show up. Um, and I was 22.

Um, but what hit me though is I was a little kind of overwhelmed, but it what hit me was two days later when one of the filmmakers that had met that night went through the effort and actually paid $15 to FedEx me his script. And in his script he said, “It was wonderful to meet you, J. I look forward to you financing my next film.”

And that's when my heart sank because h...