Paul Singh and Chris Schultz of Voodoo Capital

Paul Singh was the original keynote speaker at the 2013 Paradoxos Conference for tech and startups in Durham, North Carolina. He is one of three cofounders of 500 Startups, easily one of the top accelerators in the world. He is on a current tour of more than 35 cities looking to invest $100,000 to $250,000 in startups in cities outside of Silicon Valley. Since 2009, he has invested in more than 1,500 startups.

In other words, he has credibility in the startup world. He was also in Wilmington, North Carolina, last week on his Results Junkies Tech Tour.

 When he said from the stage that “Wilmington entrepreneurs seem to be asking for permission to grow their startups” or that “there is more going on in Wilmington than the perception of only beach tourism and real estate,” people openly sensed a “Sea Change” in Wilmington—one that has been years in the making.

Early on in 2013/2014, NextGlass won a “Best Emerging Technology” award at the North Carolina Technology Association Awards in Durham in front of over 800 innovators at the annual awards banquet. Wilmington then won a few WRALTechWire Full Steam Awards. Both NextGlass and nCino got stage time at the CED Tech Venture Conference. A Wilmington startup won our first-ever NC IDEA grant. Even a Wilmington life sciences startup Surgilum got stage time at the CED Life Sciences Conference. Four out of the six startups in the NCTA Startup Showcase were from Wilmington this summer. Three of the top ten Startups to Watch Award winners next month at NCTA annual awards are from …. You guessed it, the 8th largest city in North Carolina and warm weather tourism destination.

Now there is more validation as some capital is beginning to follow the increased media attention spotlight. Since starting the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington in May of 2015, we have welcomed over 30 regional investors to speak at our monthly events at Ironclad Brewery. Recently my angel investor network, the Wilmington Angels for Local Entrepreneurs (WALE), made a small investment to finish the third round of a company called Ten8Tech.com. Cloud-based software to help police stations be 20% more efficient while handling small crimes where only a report is needed for insurance purposes instead of sending an officer to the scene. A recent addition to the product line and new nationwide partnerships are even more exciting.

Another Wilmington startup called Petrics helped us reach a new level of credibility but there is much more work to do. CEO and Founder Ed Hall was one of the first tenants when I ran the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UNCW. He is a military veteran of the Navy, a UNCW graduate, went through our three-month Bootcamp for Startups, managed the local Elite Innovations Makerspace and then went full-time on his Internet of Things product for multi-pet households. One of our WALE members chose to make an investment. Among more than 230 applicants, Petrics was chosen to be the only non-Triad startup for the new Winston-Salem accelerator program and won a $50,000 investment.

But the biggest story has not yet been told, as a Wilmington entrepreneur has struggled for five years to get her medical device for sleeping, snoring and sleep apnea enough funding for a prototype to get to clinical trials. After Polly Harman of Pursuit Enterprises LLC made the effort to attend one of my Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW) events, she was introduced around the Triangle innovation resources we had on stage that night. She met Cindy Whitehead (Sprout Pharmaceuticals) through a direct introduction from NEW when I was first in line to meet Cindy at the CED Life Sciences Conference. Cindy’s new investment company Pink Ceiling has just made an investment to get the device through prototype stage.

Yes, I know none of that matters if these investments don’t add up to an exit event such as an acquisition or an IPO. If nothing else, I believe in these entrepreneurs in Wilmington and sometimes I believe in them before they believe in themselves when they ask for assistance and introductions to capital sources. I am simply a connector of people to available resources they were unaware of. When I introduce these entrepreneurs, their ideas and signs of early progress, the outsider influencers are willing to bring more than their suntan lotion to Wilmington.

 We are just beginning to see a return of some of the brainpower that has traditionally left Wilmington after high school and college. During last week’s three-day event, we heard from four Wilmington natives on stage who have recently returned to our coast from bigger cities to start their next entrepreneurial venture.

 And this brain gain trend is a reason for optimism and after this recent rude uninvited tourist, Hurricane Matthew, we could use some.

The post Wilmington Startup Scene Experiencing Sea Change appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Silicon Valley Writer and Co-Producer Insults the CED startup audience …and then gives the entrepreneurs a bigger compliment

On day 2 of the CED Tech Venture Conference in Raleigh, a writer of co-producer of the HBO hit “Silicon Valley” insulted the audience—and then gave the entrepreneurs in attendance a bigger compliment.

“We write the show to make fun of you…But we can’t do what you do as entrepreneurs and can’t imagine how you face the risk of failure every day,” explained Dan Lyons, who is also the author of “Disrupted.” Here’s what else is happening at CED Tech Venture.

If you are going to do Equity Crowdfunding , get a Lawyer and buy some aspirin

North Carolina recently fixed a problem and created new equity crowdfunding legislation with the NC PACES law. This was through the hard work of fine people like investor Mark Easley, the entrepreneurs behind Malartu Funds, John Hardin of the NC Dept of Commerce and lawyer Benji Smith of Smith Anderson Law, among many others. In this panel hosted by the North Carolina secretary of state’s office, it was very clear very quickly that you need to hire a lawyer to understand the complexities of the new law in North Carolina.

To be clear, equity crowdfunding is not the same as the reward-based crowdfunding where you can get the first produced version of the product if you prepay for the product on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, created by Danae Ringelmann, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill MBA grad.

I have been in the room when experienced angel investors and venture capitalists argue against pro-equity crowdfunding legislation because the startups will need later rounds of capital and the cap table gets a little funky to deal with around the challenge of a long list of unqualified or unsophisticated investors.

While I doubt you only want to read about the legal aspects discussed on this panel, I did also learn a few tips about the marketing of crowdfunding campaigns. First, the company needs to create a contest or giveaway before the fundraising begins to help collect email addresses for a successful targeted email campaign. Second, the company needs to have a compelling story with a video on the landing page of their web site about the new innovative product that makes the viewer wonder how in the world they have lived this long without the cooler that also has a blender attached.

A Legend Returns but Delivers a Warning

As I wrote in my summary of Day 1, the second day would include true rockstar entrepreneur and UNC Chapel Hill Professor / Innovator Dr. Joseph DeSimone, who wowed the crowd with innovative technology but also gave our state a reality check with a reaction to controversial North Carolina legislation.

See, Dr. DeSimone is the CEO and founder of Carbon 3D, the most advanced 3-D printing product on the market. Need proof? Sequoia Capital invested and former Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Ellen Kullman, former Dupont chair and CEO are on the board of directors.

While DeSimone and the company have moved to northern California, the company is going to need an East Coast manufacturing facility soon with 300 – 400 available jobs. But HB2 legislation will prevent them from expanding to North Carolina as Google Ventures has announced they will not invest in North Carolina until the law is repealed. This is a real problem since Gov. Pat McCrory has made trips specifically to California to attract more out-of-state capital to North Carolina opportunities.

With that political statement said, DeSimone also impressed the audience of investors, startup entrepreneurs and professional service providers with the videos of this promising technology. He admitted that his technology reminded people of the movie “Terminator,” where the evil character seems to be produced and formed by a liquid-like technology.

One of the books that I recommend to my young entrepreneurs is the classic, “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore. According to DeSimone, 3-D printing is currently stuck in the chasm because the technology is currently being used to produce prototypes and has not yet achieved the full potential of using 3-D printing in the full manufacturing process. The chasm is this dangerous gap of new technology adoption between when the early adopters who are people who buy the product before the mainstream population known as the early majority.

The difference between the current $3 – $4 billion output of 3-D printing for prototyping in the current early adopter phase and the potential when 3-D printing hits the mainstream manufacturing phase could be a $300+ billion impact on the economy. DeSimone discussed huge opportunities with the automotive, aerospace and footwear industries but is most excited about the potential of medical industry for 3-D printing.

Silicon Valley veterans bring a casual and humorous feel to the starched investor conference

I have been attending this conference for over a decade, back when we all got our suits pressed and shoes shined. Today, the suits are replaced by T-shirts, jeans and even hats. Yes, even the investors. Anthony Pompliano is a new generation of venture capitalist with his new fund Full Tilt Capital. Pomp, as he is known to his friends, is a no-nonsense, direct communicator who has a goal of making 100 investments of $100,000 very quickly. Pompliano just recently announced this new three-month-old fund after returning to the Raleigh / Durham area after moving to the Valley to work for Facebook and Snapchat.

So, back to Day Lyons of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” Among the many funny things Lyons said, people have told him the show hits a little too close to home for their comfort. Many of the story lines on the show have simply come from stories the writers have overheard in coffee shops and cocktail parties around the Valley.

Lyons quickly dove into the history of the show and talked about the importance of each team member at Pied Piper, the pretend startup that is the focus of the show. He discussed why both Erlich Bachman, the BS artist, Bertram Gilfoyle, the neurotic server developer, and Jared the MBA all have an important role on the startup team. Only the BS artist could find a way to get the investment deal done by insulting the VCs and the MBA is necessary because a team made up of only engineers would be a nightmare.

To continue the diversity theme of this year’s conference, Lyons also made fun of the theory that startup founders should hire “people they want to have a beer with.” This is part of the problem leading to the “bro” culture and the lack of diversity in the tech startup scene and joke that this leads to a frat boy culture of “bros investing in bros who only hire bros.” Thoughts?

The post Three Silicon Valley Execs Add Dash of Flavor to South’s Largest Startup Conference appeared first on Startup Southerner.

“Genius does not discriminate by zip code, but opportunity does.”

Freada Kapor Klein of Kapor Capital opened the CED Tech Venture Conference in Raleigh with this line. And the audience was buzzing.

You can read that line with the lens of your own history. If you are a minority, you may live in an area that discriminates, closes the doors of opportunity for minority entrepreneurs, forcing you to overcome the lack of resources that are open to others or move your startup to an area that is more inclusive.

With my lens, even as a white male, I first related to this statement yesterday because not only did I live outside of the massive stack of startup resources of the Durham/Raleigh zip codes, but I had to start entrepreneur startup organizations to bring startup resources to places like Charlotte, Asheville and Wilmington in North Carolina.

Meaning even if you were a white male, certain zip codes didn’t even have the infrastructure or resources to support multiple entrepreneurs even in a booming city like Charlotte.

CED is now over 30 years old and with that kind of experience and reputation, they have the gravitas with the entrepreneurial community to move upward while evolving to also be more inclusive. Of course with strong women in charge like Monica Doss and now Joan Siefert Rose and strong female board members, CED has always been inclusive of women without having to make a statement about that.

CED and American Underground, the title sponsor, have evolved and are on a mission for inclusion and diversity in the startup scene. And this was a statement event. The first three people on stage were women, including Jessica Averhart, an African-American executive from American Underground.

If you are not from North Carolina, American Underground in Durham is the model for redevelopment from an abandoned 250,000 sq ft. tobacco warehouse to an economic driver that is a magnet for brain gain and job creation. For the first time, I heard the word “CAMPUS” to describe American Underground. American Underground has achieved the true “live, work and play” status that modern entrepreneurs and young employees are looking for. Within a few blocks, entrepreneurs and their employees can live, walk to the office and have their social network meet them at a restaurant or go to the famous Durham Bulls AAA baseball stadium with modern amenities and the only craft beer brewery inside a stadium.

Moving up the Scale

CED is evolving up the ladder in North Carolina and more specifically the Durham / Raleigh-based entrepreneurial ecosystem. As new co-working spaces, accelerators and other event-based organizations have taken on the idea-stage startups, only CED has the experience, credibility and resources to move up to help scaling startups. This is also helped by the fact that the Triangle is now on their third generation of startups. As entrepreneurs like Scot Wingo, chairman of publicly traded ChannelAdvisor, are on their third or fourth startups, they are now giving back by investing in angel funds, venture capital funds and taking on mentor roles through organizations and at local and regional universities.

The female founder behind Savvi Cares, Michelle Harper was a great example of the power of the full experience of the resources for startups in the Triangle area. She listed being helped by CED, HQ Raleigh, SOAR and the Venture Mentoring Service and mentioned this was not her first time on stage at one of these CED conferences.

Back to the Original Appeal of the Conference

As the conference has evolved to include more mature, scaling startups, the entrepreneurs have had less of that first-time adrenaline energy that made the event special for me. Except for one of my favorite startup pitches today, Thomas Doochin the CEO of Communigift.

Doochin had that energy that made me fall in love with entrepreneur development. The big wide eyes that show that they appreciate the opportunity to present in front of the high number of investors in the crowd. The appreciation that with the right handshake and exchange of business cards, they might have the fuel to help their startup takeoff towards success. In just the last year while being an entrepreneur with a fast-growing startup, Doochin had also just graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and moved to the Washington, D.C. area.

To put a humorous bow on this summary of this event, the final speaker of the day had one of the best job titles I have ever seen, Dan Ariely of Duke University who is the founder of the Center of Advanced Hindsight.

Looking forward to experiencing more greatness at this event today with Joe DeSimone of Carbon 3D, a UNC-Chapel Hill professor who has churned out a few of the best startups in North Carolina.

The post Diversity and Inclusion in Spotlight at CED Tech Venture appeared first on Startup Southerner.

At this point, even the most conservative, laggard cities in the South have their own co-working space or business incubator. But simply checking these boxes doesn’t make a robust startup ecosystem. The key is evolving them from just Wi-Fi, coffee, four walls and the unused, guilt-ridden ping pong table to to something that has an economic impact on our cities and creates jobs that retain the best and brightest.

The goal of every incubator should be to grow the startups so they have to graduate and move out of the facility to make room for new entrepreneurs with new ideas. (Much like the recent announcement that Archive Social is leaving American Underground.) And for startups to grow, they need to be nurtured (not spoiled), mentored and given a hand up if they have the drive and sense of urgency that entrepreneurs must have to succeed. What can entrepreneur support organizations and economic development organizations do within cities to avoid becoming bureaucracies and simply remove barriers to quick growth and success?

Listen to the Needs of the Entrepreneurs

As the founder and manager of two angel investor networks, I have a VERY simple strategy that has served me—and the entrepreneurs I try to help—well for the past 16 years: I ask them what they need.

Yes, it is that simple, I ask entrepreneurs to tell me three things about their business where they need some help. Of course, capital is always the most popular answer. So I ask a few follow-up questions and quickly find out they are usually not anywhere near prepared for meeting an investor. The other common answers are an affordable patent lawyer, an introduction to a prospect, need for a mentor with industry experience and relevant contacts, or help with a prototype or finding affordable tech talent.

My typical follow-up to the capital search is to schedule another meeting with the entrepreneur to give me a practice investor pitch and I give them some helpful articles, links to investor-related events, videos of good pitches and the Guy Kawasaki 10-slide guideline—10 slides, 20 minutes, in 30 pt. font (because the older investors need the bigger font size to read on the screen.)

Connect Local Entrepreneurs to Your Region’s Largest Employers

Throughout my career, I have spent multiple years in both Asheville, North Carolina (mountains) and Wilmington, North Carolina (beach), as I was recruited to those regions to build the startup ecosystem to diversify from the traditional tourism economy. I am convinced most people move to these regions because they believe the tourism marketing materials that show off a great place to live, but they don’t actually do much research into the actual strengths or weaknesses of the local economy.

Therefore, these people, usually with little corporate experience, quickly become frustrated with the lack of job opportunities and they decide to start a business so they can remain in these beautiful locations. And many times, these new businesses are started with a solution in mind without much vision into the local economy or knowledge about what the actual needs are in the local industries.

My solution to this? I have had several events through the years that I call my Aspirin event. I bring in five of the largest employers in the region and have them explain the five things about their business or industry that keep them up at night. If you have five large local companies that have resources and they explain five things they need help with, that is 25 opportunities for the entrepreneurs in the room to find an early adopter for their products.

We are doing this Oct. 5 when Paul Singh comes to Wilmington. We have three General Electric and three local INC 5000 winners coming in to describe some of their growing pains. Please join us for this special event and other sessions over three days (at the beach).

Open Doors for Your Startups

Like I mentioned earlier, for startups to grow, they need to be nurtured, mentored and given a hand up. If startups were plants, they would need sunshine. Let me explain by way of my new logo for the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW). It’s a seed with images of sunshine and water and the plant grows and develops roots, showing that the startup will stay in the community.

The seed is the idea. The rainwater is the capital / client revenue. The sunshine is the media spotlight or some stage time at local, regional and statewide events.

It is so much easier to get an investor interested in a startup if the startup already has some buzz in the local community. You know, the cocktail chatter. Hey Dwayne, did you read about this great new local company in the paper today? Hey Erica, did you know this local startup was selected for a prestigious conference or regional accelerator? Hey David, I just read that this local Wilmington startup got capital from a Raleigh investor; did this local startup pitch to your local angel investor group?

This happened in Wilmington just last week. I make an occasional appearance on a local talk radio show to promote local startup events. This time, however, I brought in one of the startups my Wilmington Angels for Local Entrepreneurs (WALE) just invested in called Ten8Tech.com. As the radio show went on, the entrepreneur did a great job of promoting his company’s product and explained how it had just finished raising its third round of funding, formed a partnership with a large local software company and landed some new clients. These are all validation points of sustainable growth and not a fail-fast, gone-tomorrow startup. So what do you think happened? Someone listening to the show actually contacted the radio station and wanted to see a demo of the product.

I also serve on selection committees for the North Carolina Technology Association Awards, review committees for the startup grants for NC IDEA and also the CED Tech Venture conference selection committee, as these organizations are inclusive of the whole state of North Carolina and I represent Wilmington.

I tell you all of this because this is all free. Nothing I described above requires many resources. It does not require a strategic plan from a consultant. And it’s not rocket science. I simply open doors of opportunity for entrepreneurs who need a hand up. I suggest you work with the entrepreneurs in your community, qualify them, check their ability and willingness to follow through, ask them to achieve some simple milestones and then begin to open doors through your contacts. The entrepreneurs have to do the rest.

The post Want Economic Development in Your City? Try Entrepreneur Development appeared first on Startup Southerner.

A good startup investor does more than just write a check and wait 5-7 years for the acquisition or IPO. If they want a great return, they become part of the team, attracting other investors and leveraging their professional networks to help the startup create revenue through sales and partnerships.

In areas where venture capital is scarce and the entrepreneurs are inexperienced, the term “vulture capital” can be thrown around dangerously. The fear is that the investor is going to take more of the company than the dollars it’s worth and potentially take over the company and push out the founders. This can be prevented if you network within the community and get to know the regional investors before you begin the company.

When I ran the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council in Asheville, North Carolina, we hosted an annual Carolina Connect conference  where we once had a beautiful conversation between rockstar young entrepreneur Jud Bowman, the wise investor Steve Nelson and one of my early mentors Bob McMahan, who was the science and technology advisor to the governor of North Carolina and who served as the moderator.

In this conversation, we had Jud talk about his beginning as the founder of PinPoint Networks while he was still in high school at the North Carolina School for Science and Math. Pinpoint Networks eventually merged with another company and formed Motricity, which had an IPO.Jud has twice been named “Entrepreneur of the Year” in North Carolina. He eventually spun out a new company from Motricity called Appia which was recently acquired for over $100 million, and he recently started a new startup as well.Jud is a serial entrepreneur and now an angel investor—an important part of any startup ecosystem.

Steve, investor with Wakefield Group Venture Capital fund, talked about the realization he was investing in someone well under the age of 21. Steve has had his own entrepreneurial career, including taking Quokka Sports which had an IPO after designing a web site for the Olympics. Steve has also invested in Liquidia Technologies, a very promising drug delivery company in the nanotechnology industry. He certainly played the role of the wise mentor to the young entrepreneur who he could see had a VERY bright future.

The conversation helped people understand that Steve the investor was a very valuable part of Jud’s Pinpoint team, And how do you know that for a fact even 10 years later? Steve has also invested in Jud’s following sequence of startups including Appia and the newest startup, Sift Media.

In the 16 years I have been doing entrepreneur development, this simple chat between three powerful people received the most overwhelming positive feedback.

I have tried to recreate this chat several times, but the chemistry has never been quite the same.

On April 12, I will try again in Wilmington with three really powerful and nice people. You see, the Raleigh/Durham market is booming—some say it’s the second strongest regional economy is the United States—and we are only a short drive away. So, I have created the phrase “the Coastal Corridor,” meaning the short two-hour drive between Raleigh and Wilmington, depending on the weight of your foot on the gas pedal. We know you make business trips to the beach on Thursdays to turn it into a weekend. We are OK with that.

David Gardner is a serial entrepreneur, turned hyper-active angel investor turned founder of CoFounders Capital ($10 million fund) and has an accelerator in downtown Cary. David may be most famous for being involved in PeopleClick (acquired for over $100 million) and investing over $7 million as an angel in the Raleigh/Durham area. David is very bold and direct in his mentorship when he communicates to the startup ecosystem. He goes on sales calls with the companies he is considering investing with. He is also an author of “The Startup Hats.”

Justin Miller is just as unique as founder and CEO of WedPics.com. WedPics is an interesting pivot story which has led to 4 million downloads of his wedding-related app and over $12 million raised, including capital from David Gardner, mentioned above. Justin also owns a new taco related business.

The moderator for this Riverside chat is equally important as he has seen it all. My good friend Merrill Mason has been an active connector in the Raleigh/Durham market for more than 15 years. Merrill is a lawyer with Smith Anderson and friends with both of the other speakers. (Smith Anderson is also a sponsor of the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington )

We would welcome you to attend this event on April 12 if you are curious about our startup ecosystem and the #CoastalCorridor. Or if you just want a spring trip to the beach.

The post Is Your Startup Investor an Ally and Fuel for Growth? appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Venture philanthropy is a huge opportunity within the red-hot life sciences community in North Carolina and throughout the South that needs alternative sources of capital.

Last week, executive search firm Carlyle and Conlan among other sponsors partnered with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the Center of Innovation Network to renew the Life Sciences Forum, a quarterly event for networking and trending industry discussions among life sciences leaders, an event that ran from approximately 2003-2013.

As the panelists mentioned, venture philanthropy is a great way to de-risk some of the early expensive research into solutions for specific patient populations that the typical life sciences investors might steer away from. And despite the potential upside, finding angel investors in the life sciences is getting harder and harder.

This was a very impressive panel in front of a sold-out crowd. Christy Shaffer is a well-known life sciences executive from her days at Inspire Pharmaceuticals and is now with the Hatteras Venture Partners. Two of the panelists were distinguished executives with important foundations involved with venture philanthropy. Robert J. Beall, Ph.D, former president and CEO of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation was one of the people credited with starting the Venture Philanthropy model. Another panelist, Joshua Sommer, cofounder and executive director of the Chordoma Foundation, was actually diagnosed with skull-base Chordoma in 2006 and joined the staff of a lab at Duke University for two years, which explains his North Carolina connection. The third panelist was James Rosen, now deputy director with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Previously he was an active executive with Intersouth Partners, a Durham venture capital fund. I saw him at this event and at the CED Life Sciences Conference the following day, and he made it clear he was happy to feel welcomed back home to North Carolina.

In recent years the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested in a Research Triangle-based nanotechnology company called Liquidia Technologies cofounded by Joe DeSimone and other talented Triangle-based researchers. Not just a small angel investment, but a $10 million investment as part of the $50 plus million that Liquidia Technologies raised.

So you read that right, a nonprofit invested in a for-profit startup in a new trend called venture philanthropy. This concept got some controversy in a New York Times article pointing out a potential conflict of interest between the nonprofit and investing for gains.

I think we all need to be reminded that venture philanthropy is now an option, especially outside of the park area, as we try to grow the life sciences sector throughout North Carolina and the South.

The post NC Life Sciences Networking Forum Is Back appeared first on Startup Southerner.

The 2016 CED Life Sciences Venture Conference took place this week in Raleigh. Here’s what happened, according to Jim Roberts, one of the most dedicated supporters of North Carolina’s entrepreneurial ecosystem we know.

After 15 years of going to the CED Life Sciences Venture Conference, these events begin to feel like a class reunion. While other people may despise networking, it is comforting to me. It’s hard for me to take 10 steps at this big event without running into people who kid me about my hair loss or recent weight gain. Wait, did I say this was comforting?

More than refreshing your professional network of industry contacts, this annual conference is also a bit of a March Madness for the startups that are selected to give an investor pitch in front of 1,000 attendees. Catching the attention of the right contact could just lead to the finding and hiring of the right CEO.

I had a certain amount of pride this year in a medical devices startup called Surgilum from Wilmington, North Carolina, that I have been mentoring for a few years now. Since I do not have a direct equity or board relationship with these startups, this is kind of like watching your nephew mature from Tee Ball to getting a major league tryout.

See, the rest of North Carolina thinks of Wilmington on Friday, Saturday and Sunday as a coastal weekend tourism destination. Even people from Wilmington who just automatically signed up for this annual conference did not know Surgilum was presenting. There was also a second startup in the demo room with a cofounder from Wilmington that I have been mentoring. Imagine if these people took the time to give these startups some mentoring and coaching assistance BEFORE the event. Surgilum did a great job during their quick six minutes in the spotlight and met some great new contacts to potentially help grow their business.

There are legends of the biotech/pharma/medical device industries who are just walking around, smiling and shaking hands at this event. One of those was Monica Doss, whom I refer to as the queen of the startup ecosystem in North Carolina. She was not the founder of CED, but she did serve as executive director for more than 20 years and is responsible for growing the CED from an idea with wobbly legs to the largest entrepreneur support organization in the world. She mentors us all who are crazy enough to work with cash poor startups. She calls me one of her favorite “firebrands.” I am not an English major so I had to look up what that meant.

Another person I saw shaking hands and shook my hand was the godfather of the life sciences industry, the great Charles Hamner, who was the first executive director of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. One of the nicest men in the history of the universe. Mr. Hamner has received the award that I hope to achieve one day, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

The highlights of the second day of the conference were pretty monumental.

1. I got to meet Cindy Whitehead, the founder of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, often mislabeled as the Female Viagra. Of course, this is not the same thing as Viagra. The pill is meant to increase desire to have sex and not sexual performance. Sprout is an incredible story. Sprout is a young company and had 36 employees but was acquired for $1 billion quickly after they received FDA approval. Many of us have seen the story on CBS This Morning. She has now started the Pink Ceiling Foundation to help women advance in the Life Sciences industry.
2. Wilmington got another moment in the spotlight as the great Fred Eshelman was given the Life Science Leadership Award. Eshelman is the founder of PPD, a massive clinical research organization with headquarters in Wilmington. Eshelman was also involved in a company called Furiex, which had a HUGE $1 billion plus exit in a short period of time. And he is also the founder of Eshelman Ventures, a life sciences venture fund. He has also given $135 million to the UNC Chapel Hill Pharmacy School.
3. And then there was a VERY interesting ending to the conference when Dr. Robert Lefkowitz discussed his journey to winning the Nobel Prize in his speech, “A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Nobel Prize.” He gave a real step-by-step process in slideshow fashion about the light-hearted needling of his mother to always do better. While the presentation made the audience laugh, Dr. Lefkowitz actually had a graph of the correlation of the amount of chocolate eaten in each country to the number of Nobel prizes awarded to each of those countries. And that is how he justified to his wife at the age of 67 that he should be eating much more dark chocolate.

The post Musings From the South’s Largest Biotech Cocktail Party appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Jim attended the Emerging Issues Forum and wanted to share his comments and insights with Startup Southerner.

The people of North Carolina are the luckiest in the world. Every year we know the future before the rest of you.

See, for the past 31 years, we have hosted an event in Raleigh called the Emerging Issues Forum, which explores issues six months to five years into the future at the Emerging Issues Institute, a think (and do) tank at North Carolina State University. 

The topic for this year’s event, which is wrapping up today, was all about robots stealing jobs, or the more modern term, automation and how the economy and people of North Carolina need to adjust their skills and talents to thrive. Yes, even white-collar jobs are being changed with automation in fields such as financial bookkeeping, recruiting (see Raleigh-based EmployUs), legal work and even writing (another Raleigh-based startup, Automated Insights). We heard from state officials, as well as entrepreneurs and at least three speakers (Dambisa Moyo, Phillip Auerswald and Jaylen Bledsoe) whom I wouldn’t be surprised to see on a Time magazine cover soon.

Consistent message here at #IEIFutureWork . Inclusion and diversity are key to NC future! Thank you for your insight @wadhwa

— Nancy Crouch (@nancy_crouch) February 8, 2016

The CEO of Automated Insights Robbie Allen was one of the speakers, and one of his slides really resonated with me: “Humans + Software > Software.”

In other words, robots aren’t really replacing our jobs; they’re enhancing what we can do. To illustrate this point, the speaker and author Martin Ford explained that General Motors in 1979 had 840,000 workers and $11 billion in earnings, while today Google has 38,000 employees and $14 billion in earnings. So, Google is 20 percent more productive in earning power with fewer employees by magintudes.

Potential areas for renewed employment….artisanship. Good news for all you makers out there! #IEIFutureWork

— Ted Boyd (@Greenmarketguy) February 8, 2016

Another speaker, Devin Fidler, made some interesting points that software and algorithms have taken the place of middle managers. That software can activate, deactivate and reconfigure resources when they are needed. What are the peak times drivers are needed for Uber? The software can now make those decisions instead of a middle manager who looks like Dilbert.

So what should you do if you’re concerned about robots stealing jobs?

Allen had another great slide: “Future Proof Job? … Entrepreneur.”

“1 job that is future-proof is entrepreneur…you have more control over your destiny than just about any other occupation.” #IEIFutureWork

— ExitEvent (@exitevent) February 8, 2016

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