In 2015, Joe Cecala, Founder, and CEO of Dream Exchange began to formulate ideas for legislation based upon the U.S. Treasury Department’s task force on IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) to address the decade-long declining IPO marketplace. His research found that a significant reason for the IPO market decline was the development of high-frequency, electronic, trading which made small IPOs less profitable for large investment banks and stock exchanges. The solution to this problem was to create legislation to alter the stock exchange market structure and invent a new type of stock exchange. These new exchanges are specifically designed for small-to-mid-sized businesses and are called venture exchanges. In 2018, Mr. Cecala started the Dream Exchange with the goal of becoming the first company to operate a venture exchange. The Dream Exchange research also showed that many underserved entrepreneurial communities do not have access to public capital markets. To help address this lack of representation, in 2019, Mr. Cecala expanded the direction of the Dream Exchange to not only create the first venture stock exchange but also to start a national market system exchange in partnership with a minority-led capital group, making Dream Exchange the first majority black-owned stock exchange in the history of the United States. The Dream Exchange plans to open both stock exchanges during the coming year.

The genesis of the Dream Exchange includes an aggregate of experiences from Mr. Cecala’s career. Those experiences include serving as a U.S. Army Cavalry Officer, a civil rights lawyer, securities lawyer, and CPA. A significant influence on the Dream Exchange comes from the 1990s when Mr. Cecala was legal counsel for the team that created Archipelago, the first company to carry electronic securities trading over the internet. Archipelago grew to eventually become the electronic infrastructure of the NYSE and is known today as NYSE-Archa Exchange, the second-largest stock exchange in the US. Also, during his career, Mr. Cecala has helped conduct over 100 successful capital events, working closely with small entrepreneurial business owners. Combining these experiences, most recently, he contributed significant authorship for the Main Street Growth Act, the legislation creating venture exchanges, and his research has been submitted for the Congressional Record on the need for venture stock exchanges. The Main Street Growth Act is pending in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, and it has previously garnered unanimous support in Congress multiple times from 2018 to 2021. The Dream Exchange has been created from more than 30 years of continuous progress to help US capital markets become a fair marketplace where all communities and people come to achieve the goal of making the world a better place by funding the future of great ideas and inventions.