Fortune Staff

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

Fortune 500

Key Financials (Last Fiscal Year)

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

Earnings Per Share (Last Fiscal Year)

Earnings Per Share ($)

EPS % Change (from 2020)

EPS % Change (5 year annual rate)

EPS % Change (10 year annual rate)

Total Return

Total Return to Investors (2021)

Total Return to Investors (5 year, annualized)

Total Return to Investors (10 year, annualized)

Toro Company Profile, News, Rankings | Fortune

legacy

Toro

toro

Chris Morris

A.I.-powered robotic lawnmowers help you reclaim your summer days

/2022/07/19/a-i-powered-robotic-lawnmowers-toro-landroid-husqvarna/

Thanks to Toro and other companies, the monotonous task of mowing your lawn every week may be a thing of the past.

Autonomous lawn mowers are giving homeowners their weekends back

Tech

Autonomous mowers are giving homeowners their weekends back

Mhm. Some people love cutting their grass and they are never going to be interested in a robotic lawnmower versus the complete opposite side, which is the perfect robotic lawnmower owner which they want their saturday back with their family. They don't like to, you know, bring out their push mower or they're riding mower and just want someone else to kind of take care of it. And that's what makes a robotic lawnmower perfect for those people. Mhm. Mhm. When looking at lawnmowers in general, probably robotic lawnmowers account for about 2% the entire lawn mower market. But it's definitely a growing category and continues to see growth year over year in Sweden 25 30 years ago. When we started with this, it was of course the early adopters because you had to see it to believe it. And I guess that's where you are in the States today because nobody has seen this actually working. But now in in Sweden this is mainstream. It's uh if you buy a new mower, you would buy a robotic lawnmower. We are working on a constant maintenance mode rather than a cut download. That means that we run every day or every other day whatever you want as a customer. But that means that it can cut down very little every time with that. You can reduce the power energy needed. And that also makes the product much safer because the small pivoting blades, they will only fold away. So if you hit an object in your garden, they will fold away. But then also we have a lot of other safety measures like clips, sensors, collision sensors so that you should never even be able to come in contact with the blade even though they are low energy. We have launched now a system called Baltimore intelligent mapping. It collects a lot of data and through all of that data up in the cloud and then the cloud does some processing of that data and then back it throws much better maps than you could have generated down in the mower. The robots are opened so that you can connect your ultimo er to I. F. T. T. T. To google. You can connect it to Alexa so that you can control it by them and you can also have the data read out in those. So so we are opening up to integrate the product into other networks and into other clusters. Lan droid is our robotic lawnmower. It comes in a few different sizes depending on your lawn size. It will go out every single day to cut a little bit off the top of your lawn so it's perfectly manicured pretty much 24 7 it comes with a charging station and then the boundary wire it's something that you have to install around the perimeter of your lawn. So it creates this entire loop and then land droid knows to stay within that boundary. The foundation of the innovation is really the three D. Proprietary vision technology, our advanced R. And D. Team looked at emerging technologies. We looked at a wide range when you look at GPS technology, GPS technology works great and wide open. The problem is along a lot of properties whether it's trees or buildings or houses, you don't always have consistent GPS. And so what the three D vision system does is it reduces the reliance on any sort of like physical boundary wire or boundary and it reduces any need to have any sort of GPS signal or consistent signal And ultimately uses Vision Technology which is a 3D view of the world to know where it is and it moves about the property. Everything we're doing is really designed around future ready technology. This system, for example is designed that it's future proof and how the software is designed to navigate the property, how it's designed to understand the three D. View of the world around it. It learns that property over time. So it learns where the more complex areas where the areas where it might be more steep even to the point where it can back into a property in an area that smoked. So then drive out more efficiently as we improve the algorithm. As we get more data. We continue to make the machine more efficient and able to handle a lot more complex properties. There's a wide range of people that are interested in robotic lawnmowers anywhere from, you know, younger millennials who just really like technology and like the next best thing to older people who you know, might have trouble actually mowing their lawn. It really comes down to the person who wants to save time. The best part of this is you can just enjoy your property and not have to think about the day to day maintenance. Just have a beautiful always. But you have it and you see it, you realize it's so much more than just not having to do the lawn mowing. It's it's not that it takes too much time to cut normally. That is not the problem. It's just that you have to cap it when the lawn wants you to cut it, not when you have the time to cut it, right? So it's more decent mind after a while and the perfect cutting results that you actually do get when you have a long robotic lawnmower, it gives you the perfect results every day. Not only one day, you will

[MUSIC PLAYING] LEIGH GALLAGHER: Almost from the start, this has gotten a little bit of pushback from privacy critics who are saying, "This is Google. This is too much. How are residents going to be able to opt out? There is no opting out," et cetera. How do you respond to that? Actually, I want to read Jim Balsillie, the former CEO of Research in Motion, wrote on op-ed in the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago that had some choice words. I'll just read from it and I'd like you to respond to it. He called the project a "Enlightened urban partnership with a foreign company whose business model is built exclusively on the principle of mass surveillance." He said, "Sidewalk Toronto is not a smart city. It is a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism." I know you have made some changes since then, but comment on that if you would. DAN DOCTOROFF: Well, first of all, without commenting specifically on sort of what his motives might be, he made that comment before we actually said what are our policies toward privacy and responsible data use were actually going to be, which we did announce this week and had been planning to do this for a while. And there's four basic principles to it that fundamentally respond to any concern, I think, that he would have. The first is that we believe that urban data, data garnered in the public realm that could potentially have personally identifiable information is actually a public asset. Second is we proposed a pretty revolutionary idea which is an urban data trust that would be an independent body to decide what to actually do with that data. Third, we said we should be subject to exactly the same rules as anybody else. So that to the extent that we or anyone else want to use that data, you'd have to go through and get approval of this independent body. And then, we said fourth, is that all of the systems and services that are constructed to underlie this place need to be open. So the infrastructure systems, et cetera should be open. I don't think anybody would ever expect a company like us to actually propose something like this. It's a pretty radical approach, but one we think is necessary to protect the public interest. And yes, while data is important to this, it's not the main driver. At the end of the day, what we're trying to do is make a place where people want to live because it's going to improve their lives, where we can actually find ways to solve the problem that is bedeviling this city and so many others of affordable housing, where we can actually find ways to move people around more efficiently and with less difficulty, where we can actually create the first climate-positive community essentially anywhere on earth. We think it's possible. Yeah, data is a piece of it. But at the end of the day, there are many, many other initiatives that will, I think, be ultimately more important. LEIGH GALLAGHER: So do you think that this proposal, this new plan that you put forth on Monday will quell some of the criticism? DAN DOCTOROFF: I think, it should. I think, for all, but the most extreme advocates, it should answer the vast majority of questions. Now, it's a proposal. There's lots of details to be worked out. We acknowledge that, but that's part of what the discourse actually should be. 

Insights: Sidewalk Labs' CEO Responds to Criticism

Uncategorized

Dan Doctoroff discusses critiques of Toronto test.

Sidewalk Labs' CEO Responds to Criticism

wait. Almost from the start, this has gotten a little bit of pushback from privacy. Critics were saying, you know, this is, uh, Google. This is too much. How How are residents gonna be able to opt out there? There is no opting out, et cetera. How do you respond to that? Actually want to read? Jim Balsillie v, former CEO of Research in Motion, wrote a op ed in the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago that had some choice words just read from it, and I'd like you to respond to it. He called the project a quote, enlightened urban partnership with a foreign company. His business model is built exclusively on the principle of mass surveillance, he said. Sidewalk Toronto is not a smart city. It is a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism. I know you have made some changes since then, but come in on that. If he was well, first of all, without commenting specifically on sort of what his motives might be, Hey, made that comment before we actually said What are policies toward privacy and date responsible data use were actually going to be, which we did announced this week and had been planning to do this for a while, and there's there's four basic principle to it that fundamentally respond to any concern. I think that that he would have the first is is that we believe that urban data, you know, data gain garnered in the public realm that could potentially have personally identifiable information is actually a public asset. Second is we proposed a pretty revolutionary idea, which is an urban data trust that would be an independent body to decide what actually do with that data. Third, we said we should be subject to exactly the same rules a cz, anybody else so that to the extent that we or anyone else want to use that data, you'd have to go through and get approval of this independent body. And then we said four is that all of the systems and service is, you know, that are constructed to underlie this play. I need to be open so the infrastructure systems, et cetera, should be open. Um, I don't think any whatever anybody would ever expect, you know, a company, um, like, actually propose something like this. It's a pretty radical approach, but one we think is necessary to protect the public interest. And, yes, while data is important to this, it's not the main driver. At the end of the day, what we're trying to do make a place where people want to live because it's going to improve their lives where we can actually find ways to solve the problem that is bedeviling this city and so many others of affordable housing where we can actually find ways to move people around more efficiently and less and less with less difficulty where we can actually create the first climate positive community, essentially anywhere on earth. We think it's possible. Yeah, data is a piece of it, But the end of the day there's many, many other, um, initiative will, I think, be ultimately more important. So do you think that this proposal, this new plan that you put forth on Monday will quell some of the criticism? I think it should, I think, for all but the most extreme, um, advocates. It should answer the vast majority of questions. Now it's a proposal. There's lots of details to be worked out. We acknowledge that, but that's part of what the discourse actually should be.

Cities are growing very quickly. And cities are experiencing major challenges, challenges around our climate, how to build our cities more sustainably. challenges around mobility, how to reduce congestion make it easier for people to get around. Challenges around affordability. At Sidewalk Labs, when we think about smart cities, we think about how do we use new design, new policy and new technologies to actually address some of these major challenges? How can we build Build our buildings in a way that is different. That allows us to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make them more affordable for people. How do we actually change the way we design and think about streets so that it can really improve people's mobility? [ MUSIC ] Keysight is our flagship project. It's a 3. 2 million square foot project on the waterfront in Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario. Where we will demonstrate how many of the hypothesis we have about the future of urbanism, and how innovation can make the quality of life better will be deployed for the first time. Sidewalk Labs will create a test bed for new technologies in Key Side. Technologies that will help us build smarter, greener, more inclusive cities, which we hope to see scale across Toronto's Eastern waterfront and eventually, in other parts of Canada and around the world. [ MUSIC ] Some of the really exciting innovations that are proposed in this project are entirely new ways of constructing buildings in the city. Steel and concrete are some of the most significant creators of greenhouse gas emissions. It's now possible to build tall buildings, we're talking up to 35 storeys, entirely out of wood. Those buildings can be safe, they can be resistant to fire and it's a far far more sustainable process. So it's used in a renewable resource. Capture [ UNKNOWN ] and they can actually be beautiful by having that would expose to people inside the buildings. This project would be the first neighborhood built entirely out of tall timber construction. We've reconceived that the way we think about space in buildings. We've invested for example, in a company with IKEA that uses robotic furniture to make A 700 square foot apartment feel like 850 square feet. So you're looking at as a model of key side. So this is along the eastern part of the waterfront that is expanding rapidly today. And so you have right here queens key which is the kind of waterfront neighborhood mainstream here in Toronto. You see a lot of different innovations around Expanding the bi cleans, improving the paving systems, you'd have new light rail transit. One of the things we are really interested in is how do you incorporate climate date into your building design process from the beginning. So studying the wind patterns, studying actually the micro climates on block to block basis, and start to think about the fasads and shapes of the buildings, to make it, so that the buildings actually help to make the outdoor spaces. As usable across the seasons as possible, and of course to be beautiful architecture. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] We're still evaluating a bunch of technologies, like will freight be delivered through tunnels? How do we manage stormwater? And how do we ensure that recycling actually can be done in multifamily buildings where it's Typically not done effectively. All of those we use data, typically anonymized data in order to kind of make the process of living in a place and operating a place much more efficient. For this project, we've only proposed to collect any data when it's Absolutely necessary to achieving some really critical public outcome. So for example around reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there's the idea there's a collection of data around energy use in the neighborhood to make sure we can really have the most efficient energy use. Is possible. There's no collection of information about people's movements kind of tracking people. It's really about the kind of key elements of urban infrastructure. That you know in the past we've had a little bit of data about now we can know much more and we can make them much more efficient to help address things like climate change. [ MUSIC ] I'd feel it's privacy. Nobody really [ INAUDIBLE ] privacy in anyway. I think privacy doesn't really matter if it comes into the world being in a better place. Yeah. There's some concerns about that, but I feel that with it going through the city and they've got a lot of people with knowledge. A balanced view, I'm I'm not too concerned. I have concerns about the privacy issues, but perhaps less so when it only relates to 12 acres as an experiment. with certain issues, I think it would be okay. The best answer for how to give people comfort is actually to have the data manage By government, and that's where we have ended up with the governments in Toronto and in Canada. We believe government should actually take responsibility for the management of the process of Data governance and are willing to abide by anything that the government actually says it wants to do. A lot of the conversation around sidewalk labs ans sidewalk toronto has been about data and privacy. And that's when Sort of one element of this project, but infrastructure is really an area that is under discussed. Block Sidewalk is trying to build civic capacity to participate in policy and to participate in what do we do with this project that's going on, how do you get people to engage in it? The fundamental issue here is that if governments are selling the opportunity for a corporation to shape how we live, that's a problem. Full stop. We don't have laws, policies, rules, informed by the public to set sort of the stage of the terms for smart cities. And so it's our opinion that it shouldn't happen, we set those rules, and then you can procure. And then you can invite vendors, and then you can invite- there's lots of different stakeholders that will take part in the project like that this .>> I think overwhelmingly that people [ INAUDIBLE ] in favor of this based what they know thus far, But yeah, no matter what you do, they're always going to be critics. The key to moving forward and being successful is to listen, getting the parties to listen to each other. We have been quite diligent in doing that in Toronto. I think we've presented to 21, 000 People over the course of about a year and a half period. We haven't always listened as well as we should. But the fact that we are moving forward with the enthusiastic support of the three levels of government plus the waterfront, Toronto staff and board is a testament to the fact that we can adapt too. And find the right way to move forward. There was never a chance for the residents of Toronto to say no to this. There was no moment of consent. You've got the government's and sidewalk labs, co authoring a plan. If you and I were to co author a plan, are we going to turn around and rejected? Probably not. So this is being designed to be approved. So there never was an off ramp. And I think that it's fundamentally problematic in a democratic society. Part of one of their proposals, probably the larger proposal was to kind of pay up front for some transit and I'm not sure that that's the way to go. Because the city will be on the hook for it anyway, I'm a proponent of public transit paid for by the public through taxation etc, rather than by a private company. I really don't believe that they should have that much control. And I mean, let's face it, you know, this is its industrial land that's now vacant And 50 years from now, or 80 years from now, or 100 years from now Google may not exist anymore. When you devote so much land to one developer, to one owner, you're kinda looking for trouble. It's fundamentally important to understand that if have vendors designing [ UNKNOWN ] they do it so that they can be continually engaged in the operations of that infrastructure. If you look at the last 20 years of the technologies that governments have purchased, they have been paying maintenance fees on those things and the large bulk of hundreds of millions of dollars is going to maintaining systems. Not even anything new. Do we need this? What's the marginal value of making this more complicated if you have these technologies, who's paying for them? Is the city paying for them? Are residents paying for them? What's the, you know, what's the longer term impact? Alphabet believes that with it Capital, particularly patient capital. It's a ray of technologies that exist within the Alphabet sort of umbrella that it can make a contribution to solving some of the big problems that the world faces. One of the big problems the world faces is how to make our cities more inclusive and sustainable. They believe, we believe that technology carefully applied focused on solving the problems can help to solve that problem. If you start to privatize governance, if you start to let companies dictate the future of cities because they're productizing things and showing up and saying do this, this is great, this is the future. You lose public control. And this is exactly when we need to have more public control. And local government is where this stuff is landing. It's not national, it's not regional. It's at the city level. So it is fundamental that as this power plays get made on local government. The public really needs to stand up and say how do we maintain control and build power? Because we need to define the future of cities for every person living in the city and that's only going to come out of that sort of spirit of social contract and public infrastructure. So right now we're actually on the key side side and when you can see behind me here is the towers of downtown Toronto, the financial district So in the next couple of years we should be able to begin breaking ground on the first buildings which would likely be sort of on the western side of the site, close to the buildings you see there in the distance. Progressively moving over the course of about five years through the rest of the neighborhood to the buildings directly on the lake itself. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ]

Upgrade, Interrupted: Inside Sidewalk Labs’ city of the future

Magazine

How a smart city is built, and the challenges it faces.

Alphabet-owned Sidewalk Labs’ city of the future 

And the challenges it faces moving forward.

Watch: A look at Sidewalk Labs’ city of the future

'Dragon's Den' Alum Michele Romanow: How I Made it

Leadership

The co-founder and president of Clearbanc joins Fortune’s MPW International Summit.

okay. Michelle welcomed unfortunate, powerful women. Thank you. Like your, um So, like, there you're taking shoes. Oh, my gosh. So I want to get I want to get your back story because you have actually entrepreneurial roots in Canada. So tell us where you grew up and what your family was like that led you to this place you are at today. Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's a great question. I grew up in Calgary and so, you know, had parents in the resource industry and felt like a group in a really entrepreneurial place. My parents told me I could study anything I wanted. Thio, as long as it started with engineering, had a lot of choices. Um, and that ended up, you know, serving the incredibly well. I did an MBA right after, and by the time I had graduated, figured out that worldwide supply of caviar of all products was down by 95% because we had over fished the Caspian Sea. Crazy enough to say no to all of my job offers. Move out to the east Coast and build a fishery from scratch. This is everything. It sounds like. Boats, fishermen. My hands knee deep in fish, like the hopeful five yards. And, you know, our thesis is cracked. Couldn't find the products that we had no problem selling the product. Problem was, we went into the biggest recession of the last 70 years, the year after I started with. So I'm 21 years old, selling the world's most superfluous luxury product and quickly figuring out I'm probably not gonna make it. And I think having early failure at the beginning of your career is is just so important. You just have this incredible realization, the world of you. Absolutely nothing. And so, from there and it up, getting to take a job as a director of strategy from a big retailer, I thought Commerce blow up and started commerce company. The big retailer was tears. Yeah, uh, that's correct. Another and, you know, always be grateful for that opportunity because I got to mean they gave me as a 22 year old. It was the director, that baby, you know, uh, in the commerce area. Yeah, and so So I got to leave my own e commerce company. Um, we were self funded for five years. I couldn't raise any money has figured out how to grow just by low cost customer acquisition, which then became a your team in kind the rest of my career. That story ended up pretty well. We just tapped going. At one point, we had six competitors that raised more than $10 million that company was called Utopia. And is that the company you sold Thio Group on? No, that was That was a little bit later way. We figured out too many to count way figured out. You know, this the e commerce. If we could attract customers for low enough cost, we could keep growing on. Dhe then started an app called Snap Save the digitized coupons with CPD space. That company got sold to group on, and after that was asked to join the cast of Dragons in I'm on the show. And that was five years ago, five years ago, five years ago. And how many of you? I mean, I know we don't have a lot of Canadians in the audience. How many people watch dragons? Wow, a lot. I know I said the Michelle backstage. I said, Now well, the Canadian women know you is this a really popular show. It is a very popular show. I think it it is popular because, you know, everyone has a dream, and there's a natural tension between investors that have money and people that have dreams. So the show has really shown that, and it's shown it in, I mean seven minute segments of of these different businesses. And so it circles back really nicely because I'm on the show. One of the things that most people don't know about is that we film 250 pitches in 17 days back to back. So I sit in that chair and I see 10 pitches a day. Um, it's a lot of things start to clarify when you see 10 pitches today and what I kept seeing. Waas. You know all of these commerce entrepreneurs air coming on the show and remember these guys they had made those wooden iPhone case and they're like it's a father son team so memorable for me. They did a $1,000,000 in sales, which is pretty good for entrepreneurs on the show, and they were like, Look, we have great unit economics. We make each case for 10 bucks cost $10 on Facebook ads, Ben and we sell them for 50 bucks, and we're here on the show looking for $100,000 for 20% of her. And I just remember sitting back thinking this is a bad deal for both. Like, this company isn't gonna sell to Apple 10 times multiple. Uh, these guys really need the money, and they're gonna be really resentful when I own 20 or 25% of the company. And if they take $100,000 in investment Facebook ads, they're going to make $4000 of feels pretty good for them. And so this is You know, four years ago on the show, I was like, Okay, guys were throwing out a distant deal type. I'll give you $100,000. I'm not gonna take any equity in your company. I want 5% of your revenue until you pay me back. $106,000. We'll charge. You said this on the air on the air and, uh, and really not thinking anything of it. Just kind of brainstorming with these guys needed. And I said, This isn't alone. There's no personal guarantees fixed payment timeline. There's no compounding interest. You use my capital to grow. I could pay back a little bit faster. I'm happy. And if your business slows down, awaited out for the journey. And even the entrepreneurs were like throat. It's the only thing I wanted to see with Facebook ad because I knew I'd look at Facebook campaigns for e commerce companies. I would know if they had a really good return on there, and that became kind of effectively was the first clear bank deal, and I never would have guessed that would have become so big. So here Michelle joins Dragon Stone five years ago. There's this moment and you're thinking You okay, so the cameras go off and you make you fund this company wouldn't nice phone case, father and son team, and you think to yourself immediately or later. Wow, Maybe I should start an alternative startup funding company and call it clear back. Oh, this is like, you know, it takes two years of hop, skip and jump to actually get to the right place and seeing if you think that. But how did you get from there to clear bank this company that by the end of 2019 will have funded to the tune of a $1,000,000,000.2000 companies. How do you get from there to here? A lot of things, Not working. That's the first thing. So So when we started Clear Bank, we kind of I could see that. Like, you know, the future of work was changing. We started a couple of different products. We had done this one experiment, and I think what struck a chord is that 40% of all VC dollars today go into cos they're spent directly on Google. That means that entrepreneurs are spending the most expensive capital to do something that by definition, should be repeatable, scaleable. That's what the magic of the digital platforms, where you knew if you injected a dollar, you could get $4 in sales out. And so we can just give entrepreneurs a cheaper way to fund that and a faster way to fund that. We created something called the 20 minute term sheet. I thought it was a cute name because typically it takes you 6 to 8 weeks on the road to get a single term sheet. So in 20 minutes. We could tell you we can give you this much capital on on these terms. At least you had another option in your back pocket. When the how does the 20 minute term sheep she work? And how does it possibly, uh, provide adequate screening for companies? Really good. Really good. Uh, really a question. So what you know typically happened in the old world Waas a bank would look at a company that was small, and they would say, we have no idea if you're gonna pay our money back, so we'll take a personal guarantee where we could go off your personal assets if we don't pay. It was it was the catchall for basically not having, you know, data that was easy enough to understand. Or that was in a no automated stream. That way I could look at and the other option was going to equity investors, and you'd have really smart Stanford MBA, you know, spend four weeks looking at your company and determining if this is good enough. And so what we saw is that there were all these new data sources today. You know, you could automatically connect two bank accounts two payment processors like striped the Facebook ad account, your commerce account And with all of that data, we could build automation. So, clear bank, there actually isn't anyone that looks at individual companies. It's all a eye on automation that we've built to be able to do this really quickly. And we're looking at data for more accurate, you know, system of record. So, you know, people can't lie when they give us their data, they have to connect the real account. Um and, uh and we can see what their return on ad spend is and what their unit economics are, which are far more indicative of if the company is going to be successful. That if not, and it takes out the gender bias it takes of the gender by the other night. Part of it looking at Data iss, is that you get rid of your bias. And so we've funded eight times more women, and I mean, it's very sincerely not by doing anything at the top of the funnel. And how what is this gender split between these 2000 companies that you have funded? Now I realize men tend to start Maur company Well, no, actually, no, That's not true, is it? Women start more companies. Yeah. So anyway, basic question. What's the gender split? So, Arjun, we funded eight times more women in the venture capital, right? Three average. So it's politically the vent. Traveling, traveling with 2%. So where? Anywhere between 16 and 20%. I Okay, who has a question? Turn up the life against See back here? Okay. Uh, yes, Cape. Reckon I'm curious. How did you raise the $1,000,000,000 that you actually funded? The companies with, uh, I got 450 knows how the heart Everyone on Wall Street thought I was completely crazy because they told me that, um, I think the line was I don't think you understand, Miss, this is not how you lend to Small. Um, and I was almost certain that using riel system of record data would be far more productive because they had run one of these companies and former accurate been doing what had historically been done, which is looking at personal credit score and adding personal guarantees. But it took us a long time. Our first funders were actually ex founders like us who had determined who had seen the problem cell. The second son was anchored by Jason Finger, who had started Seamless, folded to brew pub and deeply understood the problem that we were doing. And then eventually, as soon as you build up enough data, you can start going to larger and larger creditors. Two shins. But it took a long time, and I have an enormous amount of respect for kind of our early credit backers because that was, uh, that was not easy. And you just raised, what, 250 million for a new fund for any fine? Yeah, and, well, that's fun. Be any difference in its mission and intention from what you've been doing? No, it's see, it's the same thing. We just want to expand. We want to expand right now with service e commerce. Business is, we want to expand its different verticals. We want to expand it a different geography of this year. We're in Canada and the U. S. Marshal, the UK, and are looking at other places because if we think it's hard for founders in Canada and the U. S. To get capital to grow their business, it's even harder in international markets where the venture capital system is way less developed and the banks are even more conservative. And I think that you could do a lot when you empower every founder at every level, depending on what they're building. Yes. And the other questions Over here. Over here. Hi. My name is creamy. Someone can. The nun with our PC. My question for you is, uh, back to your roots. Where did you go for your engineering degree? Oh, I am. I went to Queens. My, uh you know, by second year I had figured out that I was gonna be much better at building businesses in building bridges. And so I started this little sustainable coffee shop on campus called the Tea Room. The still there 11 years later. And I credit the university for forgiving me that ability to be entrepreneurial in in kind of the early days. You know, people ask me all the time like, Well, why were you successful in like I just failed more started earlier. When you're 21 it's a lot easier to fail than being 31 on your How do you encourage young women and men do what you did because to start up that age is, um you think you need to have capital or you need to have backing you. How do you do that? Yeah, I think, um, you gotta remind young people today that it's easy to become an entrepreneur than it's ever been in the entire course of history. I mean, I always think of this like pets dot com example. You probably covered from a merely days. Well, I just Carolyn Iverson, who's one of the most senior executives that Facebook was part of that founding team recovered from that. And it wasn't It was that it was a $1,000,000 servers. It was a $1,000,000 to build that website. And, you know, $2 million get going. I mean, that entire process today cost you 100 bucks. You can get started with an online e commerce account. You can get going with AWS, and even better, you could do a Kickstarter and see if people actually want your product before you have to make any of it. And so I say this on dragons and all the time, like it literally cost you almost nothing to figure out if you have a good idea today and that envy Global Instant, Let it be globalist Lee. And so that should really reduce the risk of young people starting and seeing if they can figure this out. Because more founders we can create the more global problems I think we can solve. I mean, I personally look at, you know, the trillions of dollars that governments have invested in climate change, and the biggest difference that has been made in the U. S. Is the nest thermostat and the entrepreneur that built cars and trucks. People want to drive. And so if we want to look a real solutions for the future, I think that all comes in and backing entrepreneurs. And I think that that's part of my own personal mission, the McClure vanquishing That is an inspiring note to end on. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you so much for being here.

Toro

Company Information

Key Financials (Last Fiscal Year)

Profit Ratios

Earnings Per Share (Last Fiscal Year)

Total Return