Hi and welcome to the A16Z podcast. In this episode, General Partner Jeff Jordan, who has written and shared his experiences with IPOs, managing growth, and more,

interviews Adina Friedman, CEO of NASDAQ, the financial services company that also owns and operates the NASDAQ stock exchange.

The conversation took place at our most recent annual summit event in November 2017,

and the discussion covers everything from IPOs and trends in passive versus active investing

to NASDAQ, the company, and tech innovation, including the blockchain.

A lot of people hear NASDAQ and they think about a company that runs an equity exchange

in the United States, but I believe this vision is fairly dated. Can you give us a little elaboration on what is

NASDAQ today? You're right. Our brand is very associated with our equities markets. It's the

foundation of who we are and what we do, but we've been able to use that to grow a lot.

NASDAQ is a global technology company that serves the capital markets. We also provide that

technology to 90 other exchanges around the world. Broker dealer clients use our trade surveillance

technology, corporate clients, use us for their IR intelligence and their board and leadership

tools. And then we have a whole plethora of data that we provide out to millions of people

to help them interact with the capital markets. It certainly appears to be a very dynamic time in

markets in the United States with a lot of interesting macro trends. The number of listed companies in

the U.S. has about halved in, I think, the past 20 years. Yes, that's right. Even in the last 10 years, the number of

public companies has dropped by 1,000. And what's driving it? On the one hand, there's obviously a lot

more access to private capital. So the private route is more abundant. It's more competitive.

Therefore, companies have other choices. The second thing is the Jobs Act did change some of the rules that

made it easier to stay private longer because they allow you to have 2,000 non-employee shareholders.

And then the third thing is that the public markets have become more and more challenging in terms

of the obligations that are placed on companies and the way the disclosure obligations, the proxy

...