If Ries gets the go-ahead from the SEC, he will face what may turn out to be his biggest challenge: persuading a company to be first to list on LTSE. Since it could be years before the LTSE gets SEC approval, Ries isn't courting Uber, Airbnb or its peers. Instead he’s connecting with mid-size startup founders, some of whom have invested in the LTSE. In the next few years, Ries hopes a handful of these companies will emerge as strong IPO candidates. If he’s lucky, one will be confident enough to be a pioneer. “There’s a real collective action problem here,” he said. “As an industry, we all want to see these changes happen, but there’s always a little bit of an incentive for any individual actor to say, this isn’t my fight – I’ll wait and let somebody else take it on. I don’t begrudge those people. But if everyone does that, change doesn’t happen.”

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