When Mark Bavisotto, the founder of Startup Summit, looked around at the Triangle and compared it to other major startup hubs like Silicon Valley and Austin, he found one thing was sorely lacking: collaboration between startups and corporations.
Now Startup Summit and Innovate Raleigh are coming together to provide the Triangle tech community with a conference designed to educate corporations and startups on working together. “Fostering Collaboration Between Startups and Corporations” is a half-day conference to strengthen the startup ecosystem. The event will be held Thursday, May 30, from 2-7 p.m. at the Archie K. Davis Conference Center in Research Triangle Park. Tickets are $30, but GrepBeat readers can use this discount code for 25% off.
“We always kind of go into each and every conference with, if we impact one business, we’re happy,” Bavisotto said. “If we impact one startup, one corporation or make one meaningful connection that accelerates a business further, we feel like we’ve done our job. People think things happen overnight, but we treat every event that we do, every connection we make as a building block to something great.”
Speakers include David Gardner of Cofounders Capital; Doug Kaufman of TransLoc; Monica Wood of Myxx; Rich Brancaccio of FokusLabs; Steve Malik of MedFusion, the North Carolina Football Club and the Carolina Courage; and Anil Chawla of ArchiveSocial.
“They’re aiming for something a little different than just we’re a bunch of old geezers telling battle stories, right?” said Malik, who is on the corporate panel. “To the extent that relationships can be formed and it can catalyze that, I think that’s great.”
Bavisotto said Startup Summit’s vision, with this event and others, centers around education and allowing the tech community to learn from experts.
Adds Malik, “I think that they’ve got a great agenda and great speakers. It’s going to be a fun event for people and that will be mission accomplished.”
This conference is the test point to see the level of interest in this topic and potentially create a platform for collaboration and similar events in the future, Bavisotto said.
“What I’m most excited about is just making those connection points,” Bavisotto said. “The reason why I do these things, a lot of it is self-fulfilling to me. I’m a huge learner. I like to learn.”
Malik is a frequent speaker at tech conferences and found that both his experiences with MedFusion, a platform for improved patient experiences and health data, and NCFC are similar in that he deals with raising money, overcoming obstacles and celebrating victories. These experiences are just some of the ones that attendees of the event can learn from.
“Maybe I keep them out of a ditch or two,” Malik said. “I’m great at telling you what not to do. I think they’ve got to follow their passion for the problems they’re trying to solve.”
