Kristian Andersen

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Kristian works with entrepreneurs and business leaders to design compelling brand experiences, create new business models, and innovate new products and services. In addition to managing the daily operations at Kristian Andersen + Associates, he is an active angel investor and co-founder of Gravity Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund that makes investments in technology and technology-enabled businesses. He's co-founded a number of software companies, including TinderBox and Pathagility, and he serves on a few start-up and non-profit boards. Kristian splits his time between Indianapolis and Little Rock, where he mixes it up with his awesome wife and 3, soon to be 4, kids.

Irene Au

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Irene Au is dedicated to raising the strategic value of design and user research within software companies through better methods and practices, processes, leadership, and quality. She is Director of User Experience at Google, where her team is responsible for design and user research for Google’s products worldwide. Prior to Google, she spent eight years at Yahoo! where she was Vice President of User Experience and Design. At Yahoo!, Irene established the interaction design and user research practice, and led product and platform design efforts worldwide. Irene also headed up the Product Practices team which coached teams on Agile development practices and developed product operations programs to help business units deliver on corporate strategy.

Prior to Yahoo!, Irene was at Netscape Communications, where she was an interaction designer and led cross-product design efforts on Netscape’s browser, mail/news client, and page editor. Irene holds a master’s degree in human-computer interaction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of South Carolina, where she graduated magna cum laude.

John Bielenberg

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Since 1991, John has produced an ongoing series of projects under the pseudonym Virtual Telemetrix, Inc. that address issues related to the practice of graphic design and Corporate America. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has acquired 6 of the VT projects and staged a Virtual Telemetrix exhibition and mock IPO (Initial Public Offering) in 2000. In addition, John was recently nominated for 2 National Design Awards from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, served on the AIGA National Board of Directors, taught at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and has written articles on design for Communication Arts Magazine, Critique Magazine, “Looking Closer 2-Critical Writings on Graphic Design,” and “Design Issues- How Graphic Design Informs Society.”

John is a member of AGI (Alliance Graphique International) and is the Vice President and Director of the Pop!Tech Institute, which strives to inspire people to change the world by fostering visionary conversations about the future. In 2001, John co-founded C2 in San Francisco with Erik Cox and Greg Galle.

Ryan Carson

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After graduating with a degree in Computer Science, Ryan moved to the UK in 2001 where he worked as Lead Web Developer at several design agencies in London working on projects for HondaF1, Aston Martin and Rolls Royce. In 2004, he started Carsonified with his wife Gill.

Carsonified has created many different projects and events, such as DropSend (sold in 2008), Think Vitamin, Chirp – Twitter’s Developer Conference, Future of Web Apps, Future of Web Design, HelloApp and more. The team at Carsonified is working to reinvent how web developers and web designers are educated with Think Vitamin Membership.

Ryan was an advisor to 280 North, since acquired by Motorola for $20m. He has written for A List Apart, Signal vs Noise and TechCrunch.

Cyril Ebersweiler

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Cyril is an entrepreneur and globe-trotter investor in SOSventures International, an early stage venture capital firm. He has been hanging out in Asia for the last ten years, and founded the first mentorship-driven seed funding program in China, Chinaccelerator. The program has successfully incubated several startups already.

Before he became investor, Cyril was building and running operations in the fields of retail, travel and consulting. He also likes to play all kinds of sports (football, marathon, etc…) and video games.

Brad Feld

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Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture Capital.

Brad currently serves on the board of directors of Gist, Gnip, Oblong, Standing Cloud, and Zynga for Foundry Group.

Previously, Brad served as chief technology officer of AmeriData Technologies. AmeriData acquired Feld Technologies, a firm he founded in 1987 that specialized in custom software applications. Brad had grown Feld Technologies into one of Boston's leading software consulting firms prior to the acquisition. He also directed the diversification into software consulting at AmeriData, a $1.5 billion publicly-traded company which was acquired by GE Capital in 1995.

In addition to his investing efforts, Brad has been active with several non-profit organizations and currently is chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and co-chairman of the Colorado Governor's Innovation Council. Brad is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship and writes widely read and well respected blogs at www.feld.com and www.askthevc.com.

Notable companies that Brad has invested in and/or sat on the boards of include Abuzz (acq. NYT), Anyday.com (acq. PALM), Critical Path (CPTH), Cyanea (acq. IBM), Dante Group (acq. WEBM), DataPower (acq. IBM), FeedBurner (acq. by GOOG), Feld Group (acq. by EDS), Harmonix (acq. VIA), NetGenesis (IPO), ServiceMagic (acq. IACI), and ServiceMetrics (acq. EXDS).

Brad holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brad is also an avid art collector and long-distance runner. He has completed fourteen marathons as part of his mission to run a marathon in each of the fifty states.

Bo Fishback

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Bo Fishback is the cofounder and CEO of Zaarly.

He was previously vice president of entrepreneurship for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the president of Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation. His responsibilities include developing and advancing transformative programs that strengthen entrepreneurial engagement in the economy and help entrepreneurs succeed.

He is a founder of Orbis Biosciences, a drug delivery and particle fabrication company whose core intellectual property was developed from research conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Fishback also was a co-founder of Lightspeed Genomics, a next-generation genome sequencing company that was spun out of a research program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and acquired by Macrogen, Inc in 2009. Beyond these ventures, he has worked with a variety of life sciences and high-tech startup companies as an advisor, board member, and angel investor. Currently, he is on the board of directors for Orbis Biosciences and is an advisor for Plotwatt, Inc.

Fishback joined the Kauffman Foundation in 2006 as a director in the advancing innovation area, where he studied the country’s best business accelerators and university-based commercialization programs. In 2007, he joined Kansas City, Mo.-based BioMed Valley Discoveries, a translational research and development organization affiliated with the Stowers Institute whose mission is to translate basic biomedical research into applications that improve human health. In addition, Fishback developed the equity simulation tool, OwnYourVenture.com, an educational tool aimed at helping founders understand the impact of raising equity financing.

Prior to joining the Kauffman Foundation, he was a consultant with Puretech Ventures in Boston. Before that, he served as a director at IQHealth for Cerner Corporation in Kansas City where he led a team of application developers, designers, and product managers in the creation of Web-based health tools.

Fishback received his Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical engineering from Southern Methodist University and earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Josh Fraser

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Josh is the co-founder and CEO of Torbit. Torbit makes websites faster by automating front-end optimizations that are proven to increase the speed of your website.

Josh grew up in Scotland and has dual citizenship. He graduated from Clemson University in 2006 with a BS in computer science. After Clemson Josh went through TechStars in 2007 and founded EventVue.

Josh spends most of his time with PHP, MySQL and JavaScript, but occasionally flirts with some C++, Java, Python or Shell Scripting. Josh is a big believer in open-source and is an active contributor to several projects like PubSubHubbub.

Josh currently lives in Boulder and plans to see the world from outer space one day.

Jeffrey Fromm

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Jeff Fromm is a partner in the Corporate and Transactions Group of Dorsey & Whitney LLP, an AmLaw100 firm with over 600 attorneys in 19 offices globally. Jeff advises technology companies and traditional businesses on a wide range of corporate transactions. He is Co-Chair of Dorsey's Educational Publishing, Technology and Services Industry Group and a founder of Dorsey's Israel Practice Group.

In addition, Jeff is an active investor in technology companies globally as a Managing Member of Kidron Opportunity Fund I, a venture capital fund.

Jeff received his BA from the State University of New York at Albany, magna cum laude. He received his J.D. from New York University School of Law and his MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

Jen Groover

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Top media mogul, best-selling author & business expert, Jen has been tagged by Success Magazine as a "One-Woman Brand" & "Creativity & Innovation Guru", a leading "Serial Entrepreneur" by Entrepreneur Magazine.

Jen's a top business/lifestyle contributor & content creator for all major networks and contributes editorial pieces to several prominent business magazines & online resources.

Groover advises from personal experience. Her successes & failures during the development of her multiple business ventures has designated her an expert on almost all business platforms.These experiences were her inspiration for What If? & Why Not?, a best-selling book that provides the reader with the confidence to launch the business of their dreams. What differentiates this book from others is that Jen really reflects & builds on the psychological component of business addressing that ultimately you need to establish the right mind set before you can use all of the technical tools for success.

Jen's a highly sought-after speaker for a diversified range of audiences including Fortune 100 corporations, leadership & business events, universities, high-school workshops & media seminars.

Jen Groover Brands:

Jen Groover Designs is a complete comprehensive innovative lifestyle brand for major retailers

Groover Media establishes TV show development, speaking engagements, promotional events, joint ventures & partnerships.

Butler Bag is an award winning handbag and recognized as the world's fastest growing handbag companies sold by major retailers such as QVC, Avon, Kmart, and Sears.

Leader Girlz is multi-platform products will foster the inner-entrepreneur in every child, giving them opportunities and encourage them to become leaders in their home, schools, communities and globally.

Vikas Gupta

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Vikas leads the Payments product at Google.

Most recently Vikas co-founded Social Gold -- the web's leading virtual economy and virtual goods monetization platform. Social Gold helps online applications, social networks, games, websites and communities monetize through payments through virtual goods and currency. Social Gold was acquired by Google in August 2010.

Vikas spent 7 years at Amazon.com leading the Payments groups and Web services products — building one of the busiest transaction processing systems in the world. He was also the lead inventor for the Amazon Flexible Payments Service product. In 2004, he co-founded, hired and led the engineering teams for the Amazon.com India office in Bangalore.

Kevin Jones

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As a founding principal of Good Capital, Kevin leads market formation activities and advisor and portfolio company engagement. He has extensive private investment experience as both a limited partner and as an angel in a range of technology and social enterprises. Kevin’s former positions include CEO of Net Market Makers, an $18 million revenue online community and research and events company. Kevin built Net Market Makers into the largest brand in business-to-business internet commerce before it was sold to Jupiter Media Metrix in 2000. Five of his previous six businesses all achieved market dominance before he left or sold them.

As a journalist, Kevin has been a columnist for Forbes and Business 2.0 magazines. Early in his career, his reporting was instrumental in sending a Mississippi sheriff to prison on 53 counts of fraud. He has been on the boards of Social Enterprise Alliance, the association of non profit social enterprises, and Social Venture Partners International, a network of engaged philanthropy circles. Kevin also led a malaria project in Swaziland and Mozambique, working with Jeff Sachs of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Finally, during his 20 year business career in Mississippi he was on the founding board of Parents for Public Schools, now a national organization of community-based chapters working to attract all members of the community to public schools.

Gary Lee

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Gary has been in high-tech in telecommunications, wireless and software for over 25 years, and through the collective experience has birthed more than a dozen products and / or companies along the way. He is presently a partner at TechCXO where he consults with startup and established companies and provides C-level service and expertise around strategy, products, launches, financing and marketing.

Gary is a serial entrepreneur, being part of three global startups, Home Wireless Networks, FlexLight Networks, and mBLAST, at their idea-formation stages, and developing them through to VC-financing and global sales and operations in China, Israel, Kiev, Western Europe and North America. He’s seen his share of success and challenges, and brings these experiences to light when working with other companies.

Gary has also had “big company” experience working at Nortel, Sprint and General Datacomm to name a few, but always in an entrepreneurial / intrapreneurial role where he constantly was allowed to challenge the status quo (or was at least usually forgiven after he did).

Gary earned his Masters of Business Administration degree from Belmont University’s Massey School of Business, and his Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science from Furman University. He continues to serve at Furman University on the Executive Committee of the President’s Advisory Council, and also works at a non-profit started by his family to provide clean water solutions around the world (www.leaveatrace.org)

Bart Lorang

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Eric Marcoullier

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Eric co-founded the pioneering games site IGN.com in 1996 (IPO in 2000, acquired by NewsCorp in 2005) and the first distributed social network MyBlogLog in 2005 (acquired by Yahoo in 2007). Additionally, he made console video games for half a decade and launched social data aggregator Gnip in 2008.

Eric now lives in Boulder with his wife and two boys. During his frequent trips to SF, LA and NYC, he likes to see as much live music as possible and eat street food. Eric pines for simpler times when he played video games and ultimate frisbee.

Dan Martell

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Dan Martell skydives and snowboards and believes running is among the secrets to a fruitful life. But the 31-year-old Moncton, N.B., native insists business is his sport. With a background in computer programming but no formal business training, Dan’s passion for technology and business has meant he has had a hand in launching several companies to date.

Dan has been described as not having a “knowing-doing gap.” At 25, and just 10 months into his 2004 start-up, Spheric Technologies Inc., the Canadian firm was landing so many deals south of the border that instead of seeking visa sponsorships for his traveling employees, he moved quickly to set up a U.S. office. Growing by an average of 152% per year, Spheric raked in three business awards before he sold the company in mid-2008.

An award winning Entrepreneur, Dan recently co-founded Flowtown, a social marketing platform focused on helping small businesses achieve real results in the world of social media. Now living in San Francisco, Martell spends the majority of his time looking at ways to build a bridge between Silicon Valley and New Brunswick. As an informal angel investor, he is active in advising entrepreneurs using the Lean Startup approach to gain market adoption.

John Pizzi

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John has been building high growth technology companies for over a decade. Along the way he’s helped some of the world’s most recognizable brands leverage technology to drive business innovation – AFLAC, AT&T, Bank of America, Citi, Continental Airlines, General Mills, Philip Morris, Starbucks, Starwood and others.

John joined mFoundry shortly after its founding and has led the growth of the operations into the leading provider of mobile financial technology services in the U.S. He manages mFoundry’s world-class products and services, with a focus on retaining talent and creating strong client, partner, and supplier relationships.

Prior to mFoundry, John held management positions with a number of Publicis Groupe companies, most recently, directing the New York operations of Arc Worldwide. Before Publicis, John led the development of Capital One’s online sales and customer servicing platform, ultimately helping to create one of the most trafficked sites in the Financial Services industry. John earned his B.S. in Economics from Vanderbilt University.

Kelly Rodriques

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Hiten Shah

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Hiten Shah is a serial entrepreneur who loves to help other entrepreneurs avoid the mistakes he has made in the past like wasting $1 million on a failed web hosting business. He started 3 successful Internet companies starting with a marketing consultancy, ACS. Then he went on to start Crazy Egg, a tool to help people visualize the user experience on their websites and most recently he is the CEO and Co-founder of KISSmetrics.

Kyle Sollenberger

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Kyle is a serial entrepreneur, designer, husband and father. He has built a career creating web applications that provide a compelling user experience. Most recently, Kyle was a co-founder and the creative director at CoTweet where he oversaw all design activities—from the layout, appearance and usability of products to the representation of corporate identity. It’s Kyle’s job to make sure that each project is intuitive and engaging at every touch point.

Lloyd Taylor

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Lloyd has a unique way of looking at the world, most likely due to his upbringing by a quantum physicist and a professional musician. He spent most of his childhood and teen years hanging out with people holding widely varying, and often contradictory, perspectives on the universe, and learned to appreciate that our ability to deal with reality is largely a matter of how we perceive it.

Understanding the overall system, and getting to the underlying facts, is the core of his professional and pro bono work. Some of his better-known methods for getting to the underlying truth include asking "What problem are we really trying to solve here?", applying the discipline of the five whys, and focusing on why people behave in self-limiting ways rather than work for their own good as well as the good of the organization.

Lloyd's professional work includes developing a worldwide infrastructure platform for mobile social media companies ngmoco and DeNA, preparing LinkedIn for its rapid growth; developing, implementing and operating an infinitely scalable physical infrastructure for Google's server farms; building out a worldwide performance measurement infrastructure for Keynote Systems; and developing one of the first managed hosting architectures for Digex. His pro bono work includes angel funding and advising a select group of non-profits working on no-dependency systems approaches to ending poverty throughout the world.

Lloyd is an accomplished communicator, consistently getting very high marks from his public speaking engagements. His ability to connect with both logical and artistic minds, coupled with his strong storytelling skills, result in talks that are relevant, engaging, and entertaining.

Steven Walker

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Since Steven's start at Groupon as their first designer he has been designing, committing code, managing, talking loudly, drinking and helping build local commerce. "Design surrounds us, I'd like to be a part of that."

Aarron Walter

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Aarron Walter is the user experience design lead for MailChimp, and a frequent speaker at conferences around the world. He's 50% of the magic behind the UX Sketchbook, an essential tool for capturing interface design ideas. Aarron has published a couple of books, and has another on the way, Designing for Emotion, which will be published in the summer of 2011 by A Book Apart.

Brett Arp

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Brett Arp is a numbers guy who understands sales inside and out. He spent a decade in a direct sales environment where his ability to understand the total business put him in charge of $300 million in annual sales compensation. Brett has a passion for understanding how every variable that impacts sales. He received a business degree from University of Richmond and a MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management. He is a practical visionary who can run the numbers with the best of them.

Jim Barrett

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Peter Barth

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Peter is an alumnus of Vanderbilt University, where he studied computer engineering. After school he moved to Manhattan and became a registered options principal and general securities principal at Duke & Company before sliding over to Morgan Stanley. After a couple of years on Wall Street, he realized that he really was a hacker at heart so he moved to Indianapolis and took a development position with SinglePoint. He worked his way up to CTO then purchased a stake in the business. In 2006, Peter relocated to Greenville, SC and has taken a leadership role in the development of NEXT, the NEXT Innovation Center, InternGreenville, and The Next Big Thing.

Peter married his college tour guide, an amazing woman, and has 5 incredible kids. In the rare circumstance when he's not at work or with family he can be found on the golf course or heads down in the latest fantasy or science fiction novel.

Larry Blackwell

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Dr. Blackwell, founder of DataStream, has served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer from inception in 1986. He also served as President from inception until January 2005. Prior to founding, he was President of a subsidiary of Wisconsin Power & Light. He also co-founded and formerly served as Chairman of the Board of EDI Technology Companies, an environmental process engineering consulting company. Dr. Blackwell served four years as an officer in the Navy and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Mississippi, a Master of Science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Environmental Systems Engineering from Clemson University. Dr. Blackwell is a registered Professional Engineer in Illinois, Pennsylvania and South Carolina and has received numerous business and engineering honors, including Inc. magazine’s 1994 Entrepreneur of the Year for the State of South Carolina and Innovision Technology Awards’ 2002 Charles Townes Individual Achievement Award.

Craig Brown

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Dodd Caldwell

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Dodd’s passionate about nonprofits and startups. That passion shines through in his two favorite projects. Bellstrike provides web-based software that helps small nonprofits create great websites instantly. Rice Bowls is a creative nonprofit that partners with grass-roots orphanages in 8 countries to feed hungry children.

Previously, he led the international and chain sales efforts for his family’s manufacturing business, selling to over 100 countries and some of the nation’s largest retailers like Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Feeling the entrepreneurial urge, he packed his bags and moved to Panama, Central America where he started and ran his own boutique real estate development firm. Dodd graduated with a degree in business from Furman University. Some of his interests are the Spanish language and developing countries. Two of his pet peeves are pleats and sewing on buttons.

Leighton Cubbage

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Leighton Cubbage is a founder and serves on the Board of Directors of Serrus Capital Partners.

He was co-founder and served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Corporate Telemanagement Group from 1989 until 1995, when Corporate Tele management Group was acquired by LCI International. Since 1995, Leighton has been a private investor maintaining investment interests in a telecommunications company, car dealerships, and a trucking company.

Leighton has also served as member of the Greenville Technical College Foundation Board, a member of the Clemson University Entrepreneurial Board, and two terms as Chairman of the Board of Greenville Hospital System, South Carolina's largest hospital system.

A graduate of Clemson University in 1977 as well as the University of North Carolina's Advanced Management School, he was named South Carolina Entrepreneur of the Year in 1995 by Ernest & Young and Merrill Lynch.

Randy Dobbs

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Randy E. Dobbs current role since January 2011 is as a business leadership consultant and motivational leadership speaker. Prior to pursuing this role, Randy served from January 2009 as a Senior Operating Executive at Welch, Carson, Anderson & Stowe in New York, NY, where he coached portfolio company CEO’s and did operational due diligence on potential business investments. Prior to joining WCAS he was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for US Investigations Services, Inc. and its subsidiaries (USIS). As CEO, Mr. Dobbs provided leadership, vision, and strategic direction for USIS to assure the progressive expansion of business solution and risk management services in government and private sector industries. With annual revenues of over $850 million, USIS provided business intelligence and risk management solutions, security and related professional services, and a broad range of expert staffing and critical program support for institutions, commercial businesses, and federal agencies. Prior to joining USIS in February 2005, Mr. Dobbs served as President and Chief Executive Officer for Philips Medical Systems, North America. In this highly technical and regulated market, Mr. Dobbs was responsible for a field sales and service organization of more than 5,500 people, revenue in excess of $3.3 billion, and an organization focused on the sales and service of Medical Diagnostic Imaging equipment. Before Philips Medical, Mr. Dobbs was President and Chief Executive Officer of GE Capital, IT Solutions, where he was honored with General Electric’s “Turnaround Business of the Year Award.”

Mr. Dobbs’ business leadership is derived from more than 25 years with the General Electric Company where he held senior level positions with increasing responsibilities. With GE, Mr. Dobbs directed Global Services, Information Technology Solutions; Industrial Control Systems, Engineering Services; Medical Systems Division, SE Region and Latin America; and Motors Division, Marketing. He also managed a foreign affiliate located in northern Mexico.

Mr. Dobbs is a proven leader who has successfully operated and grown businesses that are dependent on both geographically dispersed organizations and application of technology. Randy is renowned for his insightful development of strategies that emphasize relationship building and direct operational communication with both customers and employees to drive business excellence.

Mr. Dobbs holds a degree from Arkansas State University and is a distinguished graduate of many of GE’s internationally recognized business/leadership development programs.

Matt Dunbar

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Matt is Managing Director for the Upstate Carolina Angel Network and is responsible for the day to day operations of the organization. He holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Clemson University and an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University. Matt has previously been a strategic management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group in Atlanta and a manufacturing and plastics engineer with Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, TN.

Matthew Gevaert, Ph.D.

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Dr. Matthew (Matt) Gevaert is Chief Executive Officer of KIYATEC Inc., a life sciences company commercializing advanced three-dimensional (3D) cell culture plasticware and cell-based diagnostics. KIYATEC helps researchers better understand and predict complex behavior of cell and tissue systems in vitro, creating new opportunities for improving human health while reducing the time and cost associated with life science research, drug discovery and personalized medicine. Possessing a background which combines both business and technology, he led the commercialization of Clemson University’s biomedical and biotechnology intellectual property portfolio for nearly 5 years, working with both entrepreneurial start-ups and large, industry leading corporations. Currently Matt serves as president of the SCMedTech, the industry organization for the state of South Carolina’s medical device and technology companies.

Gevaert grew up in Ontario, Canada and graduated from the University of Waterloo with a bachelor’s degree in Applied Chemistry. He also holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in Bioengineering from Clemson University. Matt has held a variety of professional roles with 3M, Dow Chemical, and Merck, and has additional experience as sole proprietor of Edge Biomedical, a biomaterials consulting practice. He maintains current appointments as adjunct professor in the Clemson University Department of Bioengineering and as visiting professor in the Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership, where he teaches graduate courses in technology entrepreneurship and biomedical entrepreneurship for scientists, engineers and professional business students.

Frank Greer

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Frank Greer is the President, CEO, and co-founder of Zipit Wireless, Inc. A graduate of Clemson University’s Computer Engineering and MBA programs, Greer brings both leadership capabilities and technical experience to the organization. An experienced leader with proven business and entrepreneurial background, he also has a strong engineering background – knowledgeable in chip design, printed circuit board design, and system development.

Greer has over 26 years of experience in the consumer electronics, personal computer, and multimedia industries. Along with business partner, Ralph Heredia, he helped establish the Commercial Design Services Division at Aeronix in 2002, quickly growing the business through the addition of customers such as Dell, Texas Instruments, Sony, and Philips. He also was the President and Co-founder of avACTIVE, a startup focused on developing and licensing convergence technologies to large consumer OEM’s. Under his leadership, avACTIVE was acquired in 1999. He also worked for Cirrus Logic, a Silicon Valley based PC chipset provider, as the Director of the South Carolina Design Center. He began his career as a design engineer with NCR / AT&T’s Personal Computer Division and was later the Director of Engineering for AT&T’s Portable Products.

Greer’s experience in OEM sales, retail sales, and business development combined with his design and engineering expertise provides a great fit for managing and directing all aspects of a technology business.

Earle Gregory

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Earle is currently the COO at Gnoso, Inc. After doing consulting for Gnoso and serving as an adviser to the partners and serving as a product manager, Earle transitioned into the role of COO in late 2009. He has spent his time refocusing company and product strategy, guiding sales and marketing efforts, developing the team, improving operations, and mapping out financial models to support profitable growth.

Before Gnoso, Earle was a Sales Engineer at ScanSource, Inc., a fast growing Fortune 1000 specialty technology distribution company, for 5 years before becoming Sales Manager in 2005. As Sales manager, he managed division sales and delivered thirteen record quarters out of fourteen in the role. During that time he worked directly with Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and other communications technology providers as they brought new innovations to market. He also worked with 100s of small to medium sized businesses to create and sell new solutions in the space. The division and company experienced rapid growth and before he left in 2008, Earle managed all sales through a major merger integration, representing a combined $150m in annual revenue. In 2004 Earle also started a software company that did not launch its core product despite lots of time, money, and effort (though it did generate many expensive start-up lessons!).

Earle graduated from Washington and Lee with a BA in Philosophy focusing on Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence and also has an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business where he focused on strategy and marketing/sales in the technology industry. Earle is passionate about business, time with friends and family, and time outdoors.

Alan Johnson

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Alan is a startup junkie. He lead his first development team at 20 and has been the first developer on the team at three different startups. He loves finding ways for software to make users giddy.

Alan's a hacker at heart. His tool of choice at present is Ruby, but he's been known to use pretty much anything that a computer will run. Alan loves contributing to open source projects like Handlebars.js and speaking at tech events.

Alan lives in Greenville, South Carolina with his wife and three kids. He graduated with a BS in Computer Science from Clemson University in 2003. He loves cooking and listening to music and would openly admit that he thinks TV is one of the most wonderful inventions of all time.

Craig Kinley

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Craig has more than 20 years of broad telecommunications experience ranging in areas from the field to corporate perspectives. Recently he served as iPCS’s Senior Vice President of Engineering and Network Operations from June 2004 until October 2008. From September 1999 until June 2004, he was the Senior Director of Engineering and Network Operations with AirGate PCS, Inc. with responsibility during the latter portion of his service for iPCS’s territory. Mr. Kinley has also been involved in several start ups from a wireless broadband service provider (testing pre-WiMax) to a business venture that was developed to improve lake/dock lifestyle living. Through these entrepreneurial starts ups becomes the next big venture with WiProwess and WildCharge, bringing forth wire-free power technology!

Mr. Kinley graduated from DePaul University with a B.A. in Telecommunications Planning and Development and received his M.J. from Loyola School of Law in Business Law.

Matthew Klein

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Matthew Klein is an executive at Targus Information Corporation, a provider of real-time information services, which drives smarter and more profitable customer interactions. Prior to joining TARGUSinfo, he was an Enterprise Account Executive at Benefitfocus.com, Inc., the largest healthcare and voluntary benefits software provider, and an Account Executive with Blackbaud Inc., a provider of technology solutions to nonprofit organizations. Matthew founded an angel investment fund called Seed Trackers with a group of Babson College MBA alumni for the purpose of investing in high impact startup businesses. Within the local community, he serves on Clemson University Arthur M. Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership Board and the Michelin Development Steering Committee. He is also a member of The Upstate Carolina Angel Network (UCAN). Matthew holds a BA in Communications from the College of Charleston and an MBA in Entrepreneurship from the Franklin W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.

Andrew Kurtz

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Andrew graduated from Furman University with an accounting degree and initially worked for Price Waterhouse. To this day, he still enjoys accounting, but not public accounting. Andrew found that in public accounting, he was always looking back and trying to explain what happened, which he finds only relevant if you are going to use that to impact what will happen. He obtained his CPA certificate, but quit public accounting almost immediately thereafter to start his first company, ProActive Technology.

Throughout all this, he discovered that he really enjoyed (and was good at) solving business issues through software. Andrew's background in owning and running a business as well as his understanding of the financial aspects of business have served him well. His focus has never been the technology, but instead, the problem to be solved and the simplest way to solve it.

The idea for the Vigilix technology first came to him in 1996 when he found many of his customers asking him if instead of running reports, the software could tell them when something interesting happens. From there, it evolved into a platform for creating solutions for remote management, including monitoring, remote control, offsite backup and more.

Joseph Lancia

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Joseph D. Lancia is the former CEO of Dispoz-o Products, Inc., a packaging and plastics company based out of Fountain Inn, South Carolina that produces a variety of quality products for the food service industry. Mr. Joseph Lancia served as the President & CEO of Dispoz-o Products, Inc. for seven years and successfully effected a merger with Wilkinson Industries, Inc., a manufacturer of foodservice containers, in April 2009. Joseph Lancia leveraged his experience in the investment banking industry to groom Dispoz-o Products for a successful acquisition. Mr. Joseph Lancia restructured the company in order to maximize a unique vertical sales and marketing orientation. He also incorporated a lean manufacturing culture with equipment and system automation throughout the corporate facilities. Today, Joseph Lancia remains with Dispoz-o Products, Inc. in a consultative capacity. During his time with Dispoz-o Products, Inc., Joseph Lancia increased total company revenue by 23% for the 2008 fiscal year, which amounted to a 21% increase in company profits for the same period. Joseph Lancia doubled the firm’s income in six years, while creating new, integrated sales channels. With an eye toward the future, Joseph Lancia also implemented an automated manufacturing facility at Dispoz-o Products, Inc. Before working with Dispoz-o Products, Inc., Joseph Lancia spent over a decade in the investment banking sector. In that capacity, Joseph Lancia operated as President of Strategic Investments, a merger and acquisitions firm located in South Carolina. While head of Strategic Investments, Mr. Lancia carried out over 40 targeted acquisitions and managed 17 post merger integration projects. Earlier in his professional development, Joseph D. Lancia served as COO of Summit Associates, a molding and plastic injection firm. Mr. Lancia contributes to a variety of charitable causes. He is the Chairman of the Thornblade Classic Golf Tournament and a Board Member of Loaves & Fishes in his local community. Lancia is also a Board Member of the College of Business & Behavioral Science at Clemson University. Joseph Lancia studied Corporate Finance at Southern Connecticut State College. In his free time, he enjoys golfing and spending time with his family. He currently makes his home in South Carolina.

Robbin Phillips

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Under Robbin’s guidance, Brains on Fire has been recognized for their work on a national scale with a 2007 GOLD EFFIE, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s WOMMIE Awards (other recipients included Yahoo! and Coca-Cola), the ad:tech Awards and Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest-growing companies in the nation. Brains on Fire has also been recognized 11 times by the ReBrand 100 Awards, placing in every category and their work has been featured in eight books, including Designing Brand Identity, Groundswell and The Anatomy of Buzz as well as being featured in the May 2009 edition of Fast Company.

In 2007, PQ Media named Brains on Fire one of the top 3 word of mouth companies in the industry. Under her leadership and vision, Robbin has recruited highly talented individuals from all over the country to elevate Brains on Fire to national status as Brains on Fire continues to create solutions for companies all across the nation in many diverse industries. Locally, she gives her time to the Board of Directors for the Greenville CVB and the Peace Center for the Performing Arts. Robbin is also on the Board of Directors for Dining for Women, a national organization that empowers women living in extreme poverty.

Steve Roehrich

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Kevin Smith

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Kevin is a problem solver first, developer second. From enabling national retailers to take point-of-sale mobile to letting people tweet without distraction, he loves building software that promotes thinking differently about technology's place in our lives.

Matthew Smith

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An experienced Creative Director and designer, with a BA in Fine Arts, a two-year stint in visual art in the UK, and apprenticeship at the RMAC, Matthew also speaks and writes for the web design community (FOWD, ConvergeSE, .Net Magazine, FrontEnd 2010, SXSW). Matthew is the Founder and current member of CoWork Greenville, one of the leading CoWorking facilities in the United States. When he's not designing, mentoring, or geeking out on entrepreneurial activity, you'll find him playing hard with his two wild young boys, cooing over his new baby girl, or sipping on a fine Belgian Tripel with his wife Amy.

G. T. “Toby” Stansell

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G. T. “Toby” Stansell is President and Chief operating Officer of Acumen I.T., LLC. Acumen is a regional information technology consultancy firm and systems provider to the healthcare, government, education, financial services, manufacturing, and distribution markets.

Prior to Acumen, Mr. Stansell served as president of Greenville-based OOBE, Inc. Toby came to OOBE in September 2004 in the role of VP Sales. In September 2005, Mr. Stansell became Executive VP, and on October 1, 2006, he assumed the duties of President.

During Mr. Stansell’s tenure at OOBE, the company experienced unprecedented growth in revenue and profitability. OOBE’s strategy of focusing solely upon the design, development, and delivery of innovative corporate apparel and uniform programs for America’s premier companies enabled OOBE to build a customer list of name-brand, marquee accounts that are recognized and respected both within and without their respected industry niches.

Immediately prior to coming to OOBE, Mr. Stansell served between 2002 and 2004 as VP Sales for Factory Logic, an enterprise software firm headquartered in Austin, TX. Factory Logic provides for large, manufacturing organizations lean supply chain management capabilities through a suite of sophisticated “level planning” software applications that smooth production and material schedules even when product demand patterns are subject to high degrees of volatility. While at Factory Logic, Mr. Stansell was successful in securing the initial tranche of enterprise customers, including such marquee brands as Johnson Controls, the third largest global supplier of automotive systems and parts. At Factory Logic, Mr. Stansell was responsible for establishing relationships with all enterprise-class prospects and key accounts, established the reseller network, and architected alliances with complementary software and consulting firms.

From 1981 to 1985, Mr. Stansell was employed by IBM in the role of Account Executive, heading up the large account team for the nine largest manufacturing industry customers that IBM serviced in Western North Carolina. From 1985 until 1995, Mr. Stansell served as Vice President, Eastern U.S., for Jobscope Corporation and directed all manufacturing software sales and service efforts across 37 states. Jobscope experienced 15-fold growth during this 10-year period. Mr. Stansell and his family relocated to Maastricht, The Netherlands, in 1995 and established the first international office of Right Source, Inc. Right Source held exclusive contracts to produce and execute global, technology briefings and seminars for C-level (executive) audiences on behalf of IBM, Computer Associates and PTC, among others. As Managing Director, Mr. Stansell headed up all of Right Source’s operations outside of North America from 1995 – 1997 and led the international operation to profitability within five months of startup.

Between 1998 and 2001, Mr. Stansell served as VP Sales, Commercial Accounts for Western Data Systems of Calabasas, CA. In that capacity, Mr. Stansell led the global sales team selling and delivering full-function ERP systems into the Aerospace & Defense market sector. Customers included Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and BAE Systems, among others. Western Data Systems was ultimately acquired by Manugistics.

Mr. Stansell holds a BS in Financial Management from Clemson University. He has been married since 1979 to his wife, Susan, and they have two children, Taylor & Evyn, both of whom are now grown and out of the home.

Damien Stevens

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Damien (and the team at Servosity) are working on making Disaster Recovery software and systems as easy to use as a smart phone (think self-healing computers). He has a deep background in virtualization and cloud computing, including working with Amazon Web Services since early 2007. Prior to founding Servosity, Damien founded, built, and sold Utopia Net which was the number one ranked web development company in the Upstate. Damien was a co-founder of the GSA Technology Council and the IT Leadership Council, non-profit technology advocates for South Carolina. Prior to that he worked for Intel on ecommerce systems.

In 2009 Damien was named Best and Brightest 35 and Under by Greenville Magazine. He has volunteered to help with IT needs of the Special Olympics and received an Award for mentoring students at Santa Clara University. Damien is a FastTrac TechVenture Graduate, he has served on the Advisory board for ECPI College, and Advisory Council for Innoventure. Outside of work, Damien serves as Deacon at his church and spends time with his amazing wife and son.

Kevin Survance

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Kevin is founder and CEO of Eleos Technologies. Prior to founding Eleos he was CTO at MapQuest and Director of Technology Development at American Express.

Steven Wagner

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Steven relocated to Greenville, SC from Seattle to start Dealer Ignition. Prior to founding Dealer Ignition, Steven was a Retail Marketing Manager at Ford Motor Company. He worked with Ford dealerships to harness the internet to develop sales leads.

As a founder Steven has been involved in all aspects of growing a Software as a Service start-up.

Steven is a graduate of Ball State University, and cut his entrepreneurial teeth owning and driving race cars through college.

Dan Waldschmidt

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Dan Waldschmidt has been refusing since birth to accept business as usual.

Sure, he had a paper route, but he turned his into a money-making machine (though he opted not to tell his mom about his increased profits).

He ran track like plenty of other kids, but he pushed himself to break his high school’s mile record. He got the usual entry-level job right of college, but then he changed the sales process, earned millions of dollars for the company, and became CEO by the time he was 25.

These days, Dan is a people strategist.

A conversation changer.

Dan and his team help people arrive at business-changing breakthrough ideas by moving past outdated conventional wisdom, social peer pressure, and the selfish behaviors that stop them from being high performers.

Using his experience as a technology CEO and his fascination with neuroscience,he helps companies use extreme behavior and radical conversations to blow away the competition and dominate their industry.

The Wall Street Journal calls his blog, Edge of Explosion, one of the Top 7 blogs sales blogs anywhere on the internet and hundreds of his articles on unconventional sales tactics have been published.

Really though, he's just an "ordinary dude with an outrageous vision"

Peter Waldschmidt

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Peter is an entrepreneur with a passion for innovative technology. He is the founder and CEO of Gnoso Inc., a company that researches and commercializes software products. Gnoso’s flagship product is an innovative tool named NCover (ncover.com) that helps software teams improve code quality by reporting the effectiveness of their automated tests. Thousands of companies around the globe in banking, insurance, healthcare and many other industries use NCover to manage and improve the quality of their software.

Peter’s desire to grow entrepreneurship in Greenville, South Carolina has driven him to participate in various leadership roles with TEDxGreenville, NEXT, UCAN, the NEXT Innovation Center and InternGreenville.com among others. Peter is honored to participate as a Liberty Fellow in the class of 2012.

In 1997, Peter co-founded TetraData Corporation, serving as its Chief Technology Officer. While at TetraData, he and his team designed an analytical software platform that enabled school administrators to gain insight into their strengths and weaknesses ( i.e. business intelligence for schools). During this period, he and his partners grew the company nationally becoming the market leader for educational analytics. In 2004 they raised venture capital to fund their continued growth and eventually sold the company to Follett Software Corporation in 2006.

While at TetraData, Peter served on the technical board of the Schools Interoperability Framework Association (SIFA), a standards body that produces interoperability standards for software in the education industry. During this period, Peter co-chaired the SIFA Technical Board, the Data Warehousing Workgroup and the Web Services Task Force. He also authored the SIF Web Services Reporting specification, and the SIF Extended Query specification.

Before starting TetraData, Peter designed and built software for Geerdes International that modeled global commodity trade-flows. He also created motion control software for various robotics and factory automation projects at Carolina Motion Controls and developed control software for a 3D rapid prototyping machine built by BPM Technology. Peter holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Bob Jones University with a focus on Math and Computer Science. Peter also studied for an MBA at Clemson University.