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Date Posted: 7/18/2006
ASHEVILLE< N.C. - AdvantageWest’s Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council announced the Fourth Annual Carolina Connect Entrepreneur and Capital Conference will take place on September 14, 2006 at the Renaissance Hotel in Asheville. The Carolina Connect Conference is the only venture capital conference west of Raleigh in the state of North Carolina.
The conference will concentrate on helping entrepreneurs get more private investor capital, increase sales revenue and a new “boot camp for beginning entrepreneurs”. There will be four breakout sessions per topic on investment capital, sales and marketing, and the boot camp for beginning entrepreneurs.
We are pleased to announce the confirmation of the breakfast keynote speakers. The opening keynote will include a conversation between entrepreneur Jud Bowman, founder of Motricity, a wireless content provider based in RTP; lead investor Steve Nelson, Chairman of the Wakefield Fund and former Chairman of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development; and the moderator, Dr. Robert McMahan, Senior Advisor on Science and Technology for Governor Easley.
Jud Bowman is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Motricity, a RTP based content provider for mobile products. As chief technology officer of Motricity, Jud Bowman oversees the company’s infrastructure, technology and product strategy. Bowman is a founder and chief architect of one of the industry’s leading mobile content delivery platforms, Fuel, and has been named as one of the world’s “Top 100 Young Innovators” by MIT’s Technology Review.
Prior to being named chief technology officer of Motricity, Bowman was co-founder and chief executive officer of Pinpoint Networks, which merged with PowerByHand in 2004 to form Motricity. Bowman led Pinpoint to a leadership position in the mobile content market, providing software and services to mobile operators. Under his direction, Pinpoint raised $20 million in venture capital and established strong customer relationships with global mobile operators. Bowman was instrumental in leading the integration of PowerByHand and Pinpoint Networks and raising $60 million in venture capital for Motricity, and has helped grow Motricity to over 300 employees globally.
Motricity has earned several national and mobile industry accolades in the past year, including being named one of the top 100 technology firms in North America by Red Herring magazine, one of the top 15 global wireless startups by FierceWireless, an internationally recognized email newsletter covering the wireless and mobile Internet market, and Private Company of the Year by the North Carolina Technology Association.
Steve Nelson joined Wakefield Group in October 1999 as managing director and partner. He established the venture capital firm’s Research Triangle Park, NC, office. Nelson joined Wakefield after 19 years of executive and general management experience in technology, software and Internet-based businesses. During the last three years of his career before starting a venture capital career, Nelson was at Quokka Sports, a digital media company, in several executive capacities. Quokka raised over $140m in capital and successfully completed an IPO in July, 1999.
Nelson served as chief executive of a joint venture company between NBC Sports and Quokka Sports, NBC/Quokka Ventures, LLC. Prior to Quokka, Steve served as a vice president with Informix Software, based in Menlo Park, CA. His first business experience was 14-plus years at IBM, ultimately as vice president and general manager in San Francisco. Nelson is a member of the board of directors and chairman of the executive committee at Motricity and is also on the board of directors for APEX Analytix and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. He was a past chairman of North Carolina’s Council for Entrepreneurial Development, is co-founder of North Carolina’s Innovation Association and is a member of the Investment Advisory Committee for the State Treasurer’s office of North Carolina and its $70B investment portfolio. Nelson received his B.S. degree in Business from Wake Forest University.
Dr. McMahan is Senior Science and Technology Advisor to the State of North Carolina, and the Executive Director of the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology. In this role he acts as a Senior Advisor to the Governor, the Secretary of Commerce, the General Assembly, and the Boards of Science and Technology and Economic Development about science and technology matters and supports and advises the state government on science, technology, entrepreneurship and technology-based economic development. Prior to this he was a Senior Technology Strategist for In-Q-Tel, a private venture capital organization funded by the CIA and NIMA, where he was part of a team responsible for developing a technology investment strategy for the CIA, and then deriving, molding, and structuring individual investments and technologies within the portfolio.
BREC has lined up an impressive list of partner and sponsors for Carolina Connect, including:
Title Sponsor
• Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice – North Carolina’s largest corporate legal firm with offices in Asheville, N.C., Greenville, S.C., Atlanta, Ga., and through out the Southeast.
Program Sponsors
• Grant Thornton- Chicago, Ill.,-based accounting firm with offices in Charlotte and throughout North Carolina.
• Qualcomm – San Diego, CA based wireless communications company listed in the Fortune 500.
Breakout Sponsors
• KemperStrategy- Asheville based sales and marketing consulting firm.
BUILDERadius – Asheville based software company for the building construction and permit industries.
• BioNetwork BioBusiness Center- NCCCS BioNetwork is a statewide initiative that connects community colleges across North Carolina, providing specialized training, curricula and equipment, to develop a world-class workforce for the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and life sciences industries.
• North Carolina Biotechnology Center- The mission is to provide long-term economic and societal benefits to North Carolina through support of biotechnology research, business and education statewide.
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