Southeast VC

North Carolina Entrepreneurs & VCs Gather at TJS Deck Party

I went to the TechJournal South Deck Party last night in Durham, NC held at Bright Leaf Square. The event was packed with hundreds of entrepreneurs and some investors attending. I think I heard 650 pre-registered and they had to shut it down after that.

The event was free to attend. Executives from many of our portfolio companies were there including 8-10 people from ChannelAdvisor and Mike Doernberg was there from eMinor.

I saw a lot of new faces meeting some new companies that weren't on our radar screen. Thanks to Eric Gregg, Scott Hedrick and the rest of the crew from TechJournal South for putting on such a strong event.    

ATDC Hosts Calling All Atlanta Entrepreneurs - Recap

When David Jones & I were down in Atlanta last week, we had our "Calling All Atlanta Entrepreneurs" event at the ATDC. A big thanks to Charles Ross and Lance Weatherby for allowing us to use the board room there.

Anyway, I was going to do a full post about it, but Allan Maurer from TechJournal South interviewed David & I about our event and the story ran today.

Southeast Venture Capital Rises - Led by NC

I attended the PricewaterhouseCoopers Shaking the MoneyTree breakfast here in NC this morning. The breakfast is exclusively for investors and entrepreneurs. I'm really not a fan of drawing too many conclusions from one quarter's worth of data so here is the full presentation so you can look at longer term trends: Download pwc_may_rtp_presentation.ppt Thanks to PWC for letting me post this. I am running off to a meeting, but here are some quick highlights for the most recent quarter:

National: $7.1 billion was invested into 853 companies during Q1. This is the highest level for both since 2001.

Southeast: For Q1, the Southeast represented 8.2% of venture capital dollars raised. That is 100% growth over a year ago.  Here is a breakdown over the last year:

• Q1 '06 4.1%
• Q2 4.3%
• Q3 5.1%
• Q4 6.1%
• Q1 '07 8.2%

North Carolina: Two deals (InnerPulse and Motricity) in NC totaling $100 million had a very dramatic effect on the stats for the past quarter. The result is that North Carolina was #6 on the list of top 10 states grabbing venture funds in Q1 '07 with 16 deals totaling almost $225 million! That was the highest number for NC since Q1 2001. NC was really close to being ahead of NY this past quarter and was in front of PA, FL, IL and NJ.

UPDATE: Thanks to PWC in Atlanta for forwarding me their presentation for Q1: Download pwc_may_atlanta_presentation.ppt

Atlanta Entrepreneurs and Investors Embrace Capital Connection

David & I attended StartupLounge.com's Capital Connection in Atlanta on Wednesday night and it was a great event. The goal was to put entrepreneurs and investors together. It was the first time Michael Blake and Scott Burkett tried this, but the event was incredibly impressive. From an attendance standpoint, the event was way above expectations and they had to switch venues twice to accommodate everyone. Almost 200 people attended and the event was open solely to Georgia-based entrepreneurs and investors (from all over). 

Scott, Michael and a few others chipped in some $$$ to sponsor it personally and it was free for to attend. The format worked really well. It was very informal and many of the entrepreneurs that came were prepared & brought laptops or presentation materials. Some, just talked about their company or idea and that worked fine too! And there were a lot of tables and separate rooms to break out a little to be at least a little more private. I think my voice started to go by the end of the night and for those that know me, that's rare. :)

Anyway, I really wanted to make sure I publicly thanked Michael and Scott for all their hard work to put this together and for their intros before, during and after the event. Its great to see people that get real active in trying to positively impact the entrepreneurial community. I don't think they started with the idea until 7 weeks ago. It was very nicely done and the entrepreneurs that I talked to raved about it. I know they're talking now about making it quarterly which should be welcomed by the Atlanta entrepreneurial community.

MAVA Capital Connection '07 - List of Presenting Companies

MAVA posted the list of 40 presenting companies at their Capital Connection '07 conference, which will be held later this month in Baltimore. A good mix of familiar names as well as ones that we haven't heard of before.

David and I are both looking forward to attending. If you're going and want to meet up, let me know.

StartupLounge.com Launches Capital Connection in Atlanta & We Will Be There

The StartupLounge.com's first quarterly Capital Connections event is May 16th from 6-9pm. Thanks to co-founder Scott Burkett for inviting us to attend! Scott is incredibly well-connected in Atlanta and has been great about plugging us in.

This event is a fantastic opportunity for Georgia-based entrepreneurs to connect with each other and also for VCs like us to meet entrepreneurs. The event is free.

I need to stress: the event is invitation only and is only for investors and entrepreneurs.

So, I think Scott told me at last count, they are up to 100 entrepreneurs and 30 investors. If you're going and want to chat, make sure you find David Jones or me!

Triangle Job Fair -- Tomorrow!

Just a reminder that Broadwick is hosting the Triangle Job Fair tomorrow at their office in Durham. Other participating companies include Preation, Lulu.com, InCentric Solutions, Peak 10 and ChannelAdvisor. The job fair will run from 4-7pm, is free to attend and open to everyone.

ChannelAdvisor is one of our portfolio companies and you may have seen they they announced closing on $30 million today, led by NEA. Anyway, they have a bunch of open positions available. Here is a full list: Download open_positions_at_channeladvisor.pdf 

This would be a great way to meet some folks at ChannelAdvisor and several other local companies.