The Charlotte Venture Challenge (CVC) concludes Thursday, May 1, with a finals competition and entrepreneurship conference in the University’s PORTAL Building.
Keynote speakers Manoj George, founding chief financial officer of Red Hat Inc., and Phil Verghis, CEO and co-founder of Klever and an early executive with Akamai Technologies, will discuss “Building a Billion Dollar Startup” at 1 p.m.
During their presentation, the duo will share their experiences on building startup enterprises. George managed the initial public offering of Red Hat and subsequently served as president of Art.com enabling its rapid growth and successful exit through sale to a competitor. Verghis oversaw global service delivery for Akamai, including 15,000 servers in more than 2,000 data centers, until Akamai became profitable.
Following the keynote, the panel “Getting Your First Corporate Customer” will feature veteran entrepreneurs Mike Weaver, currently CEO of Intrinsic Marks International and formerly the CEO and co-founder of Hand Held Products Inc. during its growth from home office to global business; Igor Jablokov, entrepreneur-in-residence for the Blackstone Entrepreneurial Network and formerly CEO and co-founder of Yap, a venture capital funded company that pioneered cloud-based speech recognition prior to being acquired by Amazon; and Abhishek Mehta, the founder of predictive analytics software company Tresata and former managing director at Bank of America and executive-in-residence at MIT Media Lab.
The final panel “Corporate Innovation: Partnering with Startups” will begin at 2:30 p.m. It will offer an insider’s view of how entrepreneurs and corporations find mutual benefit. Panelists will be Jeff Gunther, Premier Inc.; Daniel Sondee, Ingersoll Rand Inc.; Jonathan Luster, Lowes Inc.; and Anjali Shah, Hewlett Packard.
“The Charlotte Venture Challenge continues to be the region’s premiere business competition,” said Paul Wetenhall, president, Ventureprise Inc., “In 2014, the program adds a strong focus on how entrepreneurs can connect with corporations to accelerate growth.”
Register online to attend the May 1 event; the fee is $125 and includes admission to the keynote presentation and two panel discussions and 14 finalist pitches, 38 finalist companies and an early evening gala reception and awards ceremony.