Building Bridges: Why We Took Our Vision to New Orleans
Building Bridges: Why We Took Our Vision to New Orleans
When we walked into the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Conference in New Orleans this week, we carried more than presentation slides. We brought a conviction that the next breakthrough in sustainable energy, medical devices, or transportation technology might come from an engineer sitting in that room who simply needs the right capital structure to scale their innovation.
The Engineering-Capital Connection
The data reveals a troubling trend. Small company IPOs raising under $50 million have largely vanished from American capital markets, according to U.S. Treasury Department research. These smaller offerings dominated the landscape in the 1990s but began a steep decline following the introduction of high-frequency electronic trading in 1997 and regulatory changes including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002.
This collapse has created a funding desert for precisely the type of companies that engineers often build: technically sophisticated, innovation-driven businesses that require patient capital to reach their full potential.
At Dream Exchange, we see this as fundamentally an engineering problem that requires an engineering solution. Traditional exchanges have adapted to an era of larger, established companies. They cannot efficiently serve the capital formation needs of emerging businesses led by technical founders who are solving real-world problems.
Why NSBE Matters
The NSBE has spent decades developing technical talent that drives innovation across every sector of the economy. From renewable energy systems to bio-medical breakthroughs, NSBE members are building technologies that improve lives. Yet many of these innovators face the same capital access challenges that have plagued small companies for decades.
During our presentation, we discussed how the venture exchange model can address these barriers. Unlike traditional public markets that require extensive regulatory compliance costs, our proposed structure will enable smaller companies to access public capital without prohibitive listing requirements. This creates opportunities for engineering-led businesses to secure growth funding while maintaining focus on product development and technical excellence.
The Path Forward
Our Form 1 Application sits before the Securities and Exchange Commission, representing years of development work. When approved, Dream Exchange will become the first minority-controlled licensed stock exchange in United States history. More importantly, it will provide a new pathway for companies that have been overlooked by traditional capital markets.
The venture exchange component represents the second phase of our development timeline. This market will specifically serve early-stage companies that need public capital but cannot justify the costs and complexity of traditional exchange listings. For engineers building the next generation of technological advances, this structure could make the difference between remaining a prototype and becoming a scalable business.
Looking Beyond New Orleans
Our conversations at NSBE reinforced something we have believed from the beginning: access to capital is not just about financing business operations. It is about enabling technical talent to focus on solving problems rather than fundraising. When engineers can access appropriate capital structures, they spend more time developing solutions and less time managing investor relations.
The decline in small company public offerings has coincided with a concentration of innovation funding in fewer hands and fewer geographic regions. By creating new pathways for companies to access public markets, we can democratize not just capital access but innovation itself. Technical talent exists everywhere, but capital formation opportunities do not.
The Bigger Picture
At its core, this is about creating systems that work for the people who build them. Engineers understand complex systems, optimization problems, and the importance of robust infrastructure. They also understand that broken systems require fundamental redesign, not incremental improvements.
The current capital markets system works well for large, established companies but fails emerging businesses that drive technical innovation. Rather than accepting this limitation, we are building new infrastructure that serves the full spectrum of American enterprise.
Our time in New Orleans reminded us that this work extends beyond finance. It connects to a broader mission of creating economic systems that reward innovation, support technical excellence, and enable talented people to build businesses that benefit society.
The engineers we met at NSBE are solving the problems our society desperately needs solutions for. Our job is to ensure that capital access does not become the limiting factor in their ability to scale these solutions.
When the Dream Exchange begins operations, it will serve as more than a capital formation mechanism. It will represent a commitment to supporting the technical talent that drives progress and ensuring that good ideas receive the resources they need to reach their full potential.
