Southeast VC

Free Event: Founding Engineer from Mint.com Speaks at NCSU

I have enjoyed getting to know Poornima Vijayashanker over the past couple of months. She is the founding engineer at Mint.com, which was acquired by Intuit 4 years ago for $170 million. 

I got introduced to her by the folks at Andreessen Horowitz months before she moved here for a position as an Adjunct Instructor at Duke.

Since I met her, I sucked her in. I introduced her to some of our companies and lined her up to speak at Internet Summit and Startup Summit next month. I also asked her to speak to students at NC State next week and NC State agreed to open up the event (for free) to the entrepreneurial community. 

I think it will be good to hear her story for a couple of reasons. First, I always think it is important for entrepreneurs to hear successful stories from folks outside of our region. Second and unfortunately, a woman in the engineering world is rare. I hope listening to her story is inspiring to others.

Here are the details:

• Monday, October 21st, 6p
• Engineering Building II (EBII)
• Room 1231

Parking is free on campus after 6p. So you can park in nearby lots or the parking garage. 

Hope to see you then.

Internet Summit 2013

Sign up now for Internet Summit November 12 - 14 in Raleigh, NC. The popularity of the conference grows each year. I bet 2,000 will attend in November.

If you sign up now and use the code "CAPLAIN" you will save $50. 

Check out the lineup and definitely come to Startup Summit, which is part of the conference. 

I look forward to seeing everyone there.

Can You Build a Successful Company Outside of Silicon Valley?

I enjoyed spending time this morning with Tim Huntley. 

He and I were talking about the regional startup scene and he pointed me to his blog post 'Can You Build a Successful Company Outside of Silicon Valley.'

A good post with some valuable stats. I will keep pointing to this one for a while.

Thanks for putting it together Tim.

Paradoxos 2013

David and I will be at Paradoxos 2013 next week in Durham. 

This is a 2 day festival with pitches from entrepreneurs and technology panels. And they are keeping it fun highlighting regional bands, beer and food.

Thanks to all the sponsors, including ChannelAdvisor, for sponsoring and putting this together.

 

 

 

SEVC - Quick Recap

David and I spent the last 2 days at the Southeast Venture Conference. The 7th annual conference was in Charlotte for the first time. 

The conference was completely sold out and I was told there was a long waiting list. Anyone that attended yesterday's lunch and listened to the keynote by Bill McDermott, CEO at SAP can talk about how packed it was.

I was impressed with both the quality of the companies that presented and the number of investors there. I also liked the mix of investors. Lots of angels, but also VCs and PE from all over the country.

I met a bunch of new entrepreneurs at SEVC. This pulled out a number of Charlotte entrepreneurs that I haven't met yet. And of course, it was good to see a lot of familiar faces.

So, big thanks to Eric and Scott and the team at Tech Media for pulling it all together. I know these things take a lot of effort.

Southeast Venture Conference - Charlotte

We're looking forward to the 2 day Southeast Venture Conference, which will be held next week in  Charlotte. It is the first time Charlotte has hosted SEVC. I was in Charlotte yesterday for a few hours and there is definitely a good buzz going around about it.

If you haven't been to SEVC before, check out the agenda and speaker lineup. We've been active in trying to help out, inviting over 15 of the panelists.

This is one of my favorite conferences of the year and the guys at Tech Media always do a great job.

And if you're an entrepreneur and want to connect there next week, email me jason AT southcap.com.

Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Intel and Grotech Coming to Raleigh for Entrepreneurs' Series

Join us for Entrepreneurs' Series: Venture Outlook in Raleigh the morning of January 30th. 

Check out the lineup and to register here. 

Panelists include:

• Jed Carlson, President and Co-Founder, ReverbNation
• Brian Carney, Principal, Harbert
• Andy Dreyfuss, Piedmont Angel Network
• Mark Friedman, RTP Capital
• Collin Gutman, Partner, Acceleprise
• Dayna Grayson, Partner, NEA
• Scott Kupor, Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
• Mark McDowell, Partner and Co-Founder, Acta Wireless
• Don Rainey, General Partner, Grotech Ventures
• Mark Rostick, Director, Intel Capital

David and I have hosted Entrepreneurs' Series for years now. Topics have varied and we continue to get great feedback from attendees, so we keep doing them. 

If you have questions you think we should ask the panelists, let me know here in the comments section. 

Startup Summit

If you haven't registered for Startup Summit downtown Raleigh next week, this post will save you a little bit of money.

It is $95 to go and if you use "eseries", you will save 20%. 

Check out the list of speakers here. It is a loaded 2 day program with out of town national VCs, angel investors and successful entrepreneurs. 

This is the first year of Startup Summit. It is on the front end and in the same location of the well known Internet Summit which is also worth signing up for and attending. Internet Summit was definitely built to have a national feel. Meet and network at Internet Summit this year with 120+ speakers from companies like Microsoft, Twitter, Adobe, Google, ExactTarget, Cars.com and AOL. 

And some of our own portfolio companies are involved including ChannelAdvisor, BrightContext and ReverbNation.

I hope to see you at both Startup Summit and Internet Summit next week! It will be a fun week here in Raleigh.

WeddingWire Raises $25 Million

Congratulations to the team at WeddingWire. Two days ago, WeddingWire announced they raised $25 million from Spectrum Equity. 

We met Tim Chi CEO of WeddingWire at one of our Entrepreneurs' Breakfasts in Reston Virginia over 5 years ago now. We kept up a great relationship over the years and finally invested a little over a year ago. 

Recently they were named to the Inc 500 list.

The company is in Bethesda Maryland and their 150+ employees are moving by the end of the year into new space in Chevy Chase. 

And the company continues to hire. Check out their open positions here.

BrightContext

We announced our investment in Arlington, Va-based BrightContext. They provide a cloud based platform to filter and perform calculations on streams of data in-flight and they power real time data communication in apps. This is our third seed investment from Fund II and our fourth investment in the Mid-Atlantic region.

We've known John Funge and Leo Scott the two co-founders of BrightContext for over 5 years. John and Leo built two successful technology companies, both being acquired by larger public companies.

We originally met John at one of our Enrtrepreneurs' Breakfasts at Panera in Reston, Va. My partner David stayed close to John after that. Maybe even glued to him. Interestingly enough, it was the same breakfast we met Tim Chi, CEO of WeddingWire, another SCV portfolio company.

The company stayed in stealth mode for a bit, but launched at TechCrunch Disrupt last week in San Francisco. Check them out here.

 

 

 

So, congratulations to the team at BrightContext. We are a very proud investor.