A little while back one of the entrepreneurial leaders in our local community, Jared Goralnick, put on a great day conference at the University of Maryland that imparted some great wisdom on local budding entrepreneurs. It was a good day with lots of new people and great advice. Now round 2. This week Jared is putting on the follow up to the first event. Unlike the full day conference style, this one is an evening event with some great panels and panelists.
Obviously the climate has changed a lot in the startup area, hand in hand with the economy. Funding is few and far between, money is tight.
Things are different today: it cost less to build a startup, but venture funding is harder to come by. It’s possible to accomplish “ramen profitability”, but it’s challenging to achieve hockey-stick growth.
Learn from two skilled entrepreneurs who have invested their own money, taken outside funding, and had opportunities to sell in more than one business. To keep the talk relevant and offer more nuanced perspective, a venture capitalist and attorney, both with experience working with hundreds of startups, will round out the panel.
Be prepared to learn what you really need in terms of funding or financing…and also how to structure your business so that, should you change your mind, you’ll still have a business.
The Panelists for the evening are
- Jay Virdy is the CEO and Founder of Summize, which recently sold to Twitter. Prior to that he had launched a venture-backed business that he sold to AOL in 2000. Read more…
- Paul Singh is Founder of Philtro, a real-time relevancy search for Twitter. He has spent the last several years commuting between DC and Silicon Valley, where he served as a Director for PBWiki (now PBWorks). Read more…
- John Burke is a Partner at True Ventures, a venture capital firm based out of Silicon Valley with an office in Northern Virginia. Some of True’s investments include Automattic, KISSmetrics, and Meebo. Read more…
- Matt Swartz is a Partner at Pillsbury Law with focus on M&A and venture capital. He has represented a diversity of technology companies from Microsoft to Voxant and has experience both in Washington and Silicon Valley. Read more…
The location is a central DC location so it should be easy for all to find and to get to, so no excuses 
WHEN: Thursday, October 29th, 2009
WHERE: Pillbury Law 2300 N St, NW, Washington, DC
REGISTER HERE to attend and hope to see many of you there.
