Some may have been doubted whether a pair of Raleigh entrepreneurs could pull off a national-in-scope bitcoin event, but this morning's announcement that Edmund Moy, former director of the U.S. Mint and a vocal supporter of the currency globally, will headline the August 15-16 conference should put to rest any skepticism.
The Triangle is about to get some pretty major national and global attention.
Moy is one of the highest profile economic leaders to express support and hope for the currency, and this will be his first public speaking engagement on the topic. In a December 2013 blog post published on Money News, he wrote that digital currency promises a cheaper, more secure and efficient way to transact money. That means no more currency wars, exchange rate challenges and arbitrage.
“There could be less friction and more transparency for every transaction,” he wrote. --Read On
If you watched the opening ceremonies of the 2014 FIFA World Cup on June 12, then you couldn't have missed the seemingly miraculous moment when a paraplegic wearing a robotic suit kicked the first soccer ball of one of the world's most anticipated sporting events.
It was the first time a paraplegic person has walked on his own using a device controlled entirely with his own brain, and in the days since, it's given hope to the hundreds of thousands of people around the world confined to wheelchairs.
The feat hits close to home for the Triangle. Much of the innovation, science and technology behind that momentous walk and kick happened in a lab at Duke University and under the tutelage of a professor and neuroscientist named Miguel Nicolelis. When his homeland of Brazil won its bid to host the 2014 World Cup in 2008, he pledged to showcase his 25 years of work to the world. And that he did.
Below are two really cool videos explaining his mission and work. The first announces his World Cup ambitions and the work of his Walk Again Project, a global consortium he formed to assist his efforts. The second is a talk he gave at the TEDMED conference in Washington D.C. in 2012.
Benji Jones is an attorney and partner at Smith Anderson in Raleigh. For young and growing companies, she handles public equity and debt offerings, corporate formation and governance, early stage financing and mergers and acquisitions. She graduated from Columbia University Law School and has a background in writing—she was on staff at the Columbia Law Review.
This phrase has stayed with me since first semester of Con Law—the classic expression of subjectivity. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart refused to identify a set of rules or a test that would define materials as “obscene” under the First Amendment; instead, he simply explained that when it comes to “hard core” pornography—“I know it when I see it.” (Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964)).
As a corporate lawyer, I hate subjective standards. Give me a yes or no answer, a bright-line test, a set of rules to follow – anything to help me advise my client on how to get the deal done with as little risk as possible. Unfortunately, despite all of the statutes written by Congress and the rules and regulations promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it is almost impossible to avoid subjective standards in the world of securities regulation. Instead of Justice Stewart's words, however, we get the all-encompassing “facts and circumstances” test. --Read On
<Christa Wagner Vinson is program manager for the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster.
A sold-out crowd packed HQ Raleigh for the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster's recent Growing Your Cleantech Venture event. They were hungry to hear what three premier venture capital experts had to say about the current landscape for securing investment and how companies can access it.
Capital for cleantech ventures has become increasingly tough to tap in the past five years.
Three top cleantech venture experts—Scott Henneberry, vice president for smart grid strategy at Schneider Electric in Raleigh, Julien Creuzé, senior associate with Aster Capital in San Francisco, and Dave Kirkpatrick, managing director at SJF Ventures in Durham—shared their knowledge and insights on sources of venture financing available for growing companies and how they should approach securing the right type of investment in the current funding environment.
We reached out to three people who attended the event—venture experts in their own right—to find out what they found most valuable. Here are the key takeaways they said growing companies should know. --Read On
Amongst the constant barrage of link-bait and content marketing articles (aka “5 ways successful ____ do ____” aka SPAM) that make up my daily Twitter feed, I came across a link from Peter Diamandis, one of the founders of Singularity University (I attended SU's 2010 graduate studies program).
To summarize, Space X just announced and showed off its new spaceship, and Peter was able to go on board and hang out with Space X founder Elon Musk. The spaceship is unreal in its design and appearance – it truly is something out of a sci-fi film. In his post Peter writes that, according to Elon, within 15 years people will be able to use the Dragon V2 to make a roundtrip to Mars for $500,000.
Think about that for a minute – flying roundtrip in a spaceship to Mars. In 15 years. My son is 2 years old, so this is not an absurdly far off time period to me. Hell, it could be a high school graduation present… you know, assuming I have a half million dollars lying around taking up space.
Oh yeah, Google just announced its plans to build a fleet of driverless cars a couple of weeks ago, and before that, Amazon confirmed plans to use drones to deliver food and other items people order from them. This is to say nothing of the advances in synthetic biology, nanotechnology, solar energy, and I won't bore you with additional links or info—you get the idea.
My point is it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day bombardment of information without taking a step back to assess where we are and how much innovation is taking place across a broad variety of fields. The next 10-20 years will be unprecedented in the number and magnitude of breakthrough technologies and developments we see come to fruition. This sounds trite, but it's truly remarkable.
The biggest challenge we collectively face is figuring out how to manage/govern/regulate these advances. Our policies are horribly outdated and our political system is very slow to react. When it does, it usually acts in the best interest of deep-pocketed lobbyists (see: net neutrality). --Read On
Have you ever tried reading and comprehending a long manual for a new electronic device? It's not as easy as it seems, and neither is identifying and targeting specific problems in a classroom.
Mission 100% is looking to guide teachers and school systems on a path to higher excellence through an online video database. The team currently consists of the founder, Janice Smith, a web developer, and consultants and video analyst interns hired on a need basis.
To say Janice Smith has a long history in the education field is an understatement. Some of Smith's previous experience includes being Director of Curriculum & Instruction at Maureen Joy Charter School, founder of her own video production company called Big Dog Little Bed Productions, mentor teacher at Student U, video analyst at Relay Graduate School of Education and US History and AP US History teacher at KIPP:GCP Pride High School. And the list keeps going.
Now, Smith is continuing her goal to improve the education gap in the lowest performing schools and highest performing schools – often caused by the socioeconomic status of the community. This is the driving force behind Mission 100%, along with fulfilling “the idea that every kid deserves access to a good education.” --Read On
Scot Wingo is co-founder and CEO of ChannelAdvisor, a public company in Morrisville, N.C. that helps e-commerce retailers optimize sales across channels. Wingo and team took the company public in May 2013.
Blake Callens from PencilBlue (pencilblue.org) asked our first question:
PencilBlue 2 Employees Status and Industry: Pre-revenue, bootstrapped, open source publishing platform being released this month.
We're currently targeting web developers for adoption of the platform, with the aim of having them drive revenue through extension sales and partner programs (think an improved version of Magento's revenue model, which I'm sure you're familiar with).
My question is this: what has helped ChannelAdvisor with platform adoption outside of direct sales? What can we do to help bolster interest in our solution?
Note: to answer this question, I spent some time on pencilblue.org to get a feel for what Blake's company is all about and recommend you do that too for background.
Blake, thanks for the question. First, I noticed on your bio that you are a Veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division. The reason we are able to have the freedom in this country to build great companies and pursue our dreams is due to the hard work and sacrifices of patriots like yourself. Thank you very much for your service to our country. --Read On
When Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann visited the Fortune Magazine newsroom several years back, managing editor Andy Serwer remembers the pitch being pretty peculiar.
"Imagine you had a collection of forks..." Silbermann said and Serwer recounted during an interview last week at UNC's Journalism School.
That was long before Silbermann built a $5B valuation social media platform that now impacts even the business of Fortune. But the story is an example of the unique experiences Serwer has collected over 30 years at the magazine, the last eight of which running the newsroom.
ExitEvent intern Sarah Headley was selected as one of three journalism students to interview Serwer last week, and the insightful discussion covered everything from startup founders, to women in journalism, to the changing business of media (and changes in business in general).
Joan Siefert Rose has spent six years as president of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, considered the oldest and largest entrepreneurial support organization in the country. She previously worked in commercial and public broadcasting.
No capital for startups in North Carolina?
I can give you more than 100 reasons to think otherwise.
The Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) recently released its 2013 Innovators Report showing that investment in tech, life science, and advanced materials companies in the state was more robust and diverse than you might imagine. We found that 108 separate funders did 260 deals in North Carolina last year totaling nearly half a billion dollars – and most of those deals were with companies located here in the Triangle.
Where is the money coming from? Seventy-five percent of investors are from out of state, including 24 funders from the Boston/New York region, 10 from California, and 10 international funds. At least a dozen funds made first-time investments in North Carolina companies, which we see as an encouraging sign. --Read On
Some may have been doubted whether a pair of Raleigh entrepreneurs could pull off a national-in-scope bitcoin event, but this morning's announcement that Edmund Moy, former director of the U.S. Mint and a vocal supporter of the currency globally, will headline the August 15-16 conference should put to rest any skepticism. 
Benji Jones is an attorney and partner at Smith Anderson in Raleigh. For young and growing companies, she handles public equity and debt offerings, corporate formation and governance, early stage financing and mergers and acquisitions. She graduated from Columbia University Law School and has a background in writing—she was on staff at the Columbia Law Review.
Christa Wagner Vinson is program manager for the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster.
Amongst the constant barrage of link-bait and content marketing articles (aka “5 ways successful ____ do ____” aka SPAM) that make up my daily Twitter feed, I came across 
Have you ever tried reading and comprehending a long manual for a new electronic device? It's not as easy as it seems, and neither is identifying and targeting specific problems in a classroom. 
Scot Wingo is co-founder and CEO of