President Obama greets FirstBest Co-Founder & CEO John Belizaire at the White House, prior to signing the JOBS Act, April 5, 2012
Continuing on the subject of innovation… It is rare that one gets to participate in innovation at a national level. When I arrived to the White House yesterday, I thought I was just going to attend the signing of the JOBS Act. Well I did more than that! First, I was fortunate enough to be part of a select group of CEOs to attend a roundtable discussion with the architects of the bill to discuss how it will fuel innovation across the country. I met CEOs from all over the country, not just the venture hotbeds like Silicon Valley. This is what the law is about. It is putting in place game- changing pathways for entrepreneurs anywhere in the country to get access to capital to flew their dreams. From an organic snacks company in Ithaca NY to a Solar-Energy-as-a-Service provider in San Francisco, this law will drive innovation and job growth.
At the end of the roundtable discussion a small subset of the CEOs and I were asked to stick around for a “follow-up discussion”, and something amazing happened… The President himself entered the room to meet each one of us, thank us for being pioneers, and wish us the best of luck. He then invited us to join on the podium in the Rose Garden to sign the bill into law. It was surreal.
As I stood up there, I felt honored to part of such a historic occasion. I was thinking of FirstBest, my co-founders, our customers, our employees and our investors. What we’ve done together over the past five years has been no doubt innovative in the insurance industry. Now, we were part of innovating the country!
The JOBS Act will provide new pathways for new ventures to realize their visions by opening access to new private (crow-funding) and public (IPO-on-ramp) capital. With this law in place, who knows, (Nasdaq: FBST) may happen sooner than we think…
