Venture Connect 2025 — Highlights, Takeaways, And Photos

March 28, 2025 David Schwartz Triangle
Founders pose together after pitching at CED's Venture Connect 2025 at the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts

The Center for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) held its annual Venture Connect summit this week in Downtown Raleigh. After occupying the Citrix Building in 2024, the conference moved to the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts for the first time this year.

Following a 6pm kickoff party on the night of the 25th, CED presented a packed two-day slate of programming.

Day 1 (Wednesday, March 26th)

The summit effectively kicked off with opening remarks from CED CEO Kelly Rowell, followed by an address from Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell. Mayor Cowell covered the topic of “The Power of Connection—Building The Future Together.”

This address was immediately followed by a Founder Panel, moderated by CED Board of Directors Co-Chairs Karl Rectanus and Scott Uknes. The panel featured Todd Olson (Pendo), Chris Chuang (Relay), Justine Tiu (The Woobles), Tom Adams (Pairwise), Deborah Bitterfield (Lindy Biosciences), and Ramin Karimpour (Targan).

For roughly two hours after these opening remarks and panel discussions, the summit went into pitch mode with concurrent tracks of tech and biotech presentation sessions in the Martin Marietta Center’s two primary theaters. In the (non-bio) tech category, the first two such sessions featured the following categories and topics:

“Future of Work & Productivity”

  • Aktiga
  • Breva
  • BuilderPad (*Won the audience vote*)
  • Churn Assassin
  • InviteJet
  • No Show Hero
  • TEDU
  • Trayecto
  • TwoCents.ai, Ltd.

“Deep Tech”

Those two sessions took us into a lunch break, after which the summit rolled right back into pitch mode—once again with concurrent tech/biotech sessions. The two afternoon tech sessions on Day 1 were as follows:

“Sports, Gaming & Education”

  • AithELITE
  • Arclet
  • IX Studio
  • Mapt
  • Meridian Performance Systems, Inc. (*Won the audience vote*)
  • Payton Place, LLC
  • Ver Coaching

“Sustainability & Cleantech”

After a total of eight pitch sessions, Day 1 wrapped up with a half-hour “Tech Investor Reverse Pitch” in Memorial Auditorium, followed by a Fireside Chat concerning “A Bold New Vision for North Carolina’s Economic Future” (featuring new North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Briner and TrueBridge Capital Co-Founder and General Partner Edwin Poston).

Then, for some, it was on to the exclusive off-site “Investor Dinner.” For others—and indeed, quite a few—it was off to the Flying Saucer for the Founders Happy Hour, hosted by GrepBeat! (See our recap of this cheerful, almost-too-well-attended after party here.)

Day 2 (Thursday, March 27th)

Day 2 of the summit got rolling with an address/chat from executive-about-town Bill Spruill and Carta Head of Insights Peter Walker, titled “The Power of Ownership: Equity, Exits & Startup Trends.” This was a wide-ranging discussion that perhaps most interestingly touched on how founders are personally impacted by funding rounds.

This was followed once again by two hours of pitch sessions in concurrent tracks. The venue’s Fletcher Auditorium hosted a series of biotech sessions followed by pitches from NC School of Science and Math students. Meanwhile, the following batch of tech pitches took place in Memorial Auditorium:

“AI & Machine Learning”

These pitches led into an “Early-Stage Investor Reverse Pitch” session before the summit broke for lunch. After some salads, sandwiches, and extremely large cookies, afternoon programming progressed with a final batch of pitch sessions. In the tech category, these included the following:

“Growth Software”

  • BlueRecruit
  • Remoov it
  • Reveal Mobile
  • Sharely.ai
  • Tarka
  • Zinnia (*Won the audience vote*)
Photo by Theralinq

“Health Tech”

“Marketplaces & Platform Innovation”

A “BioTech Investor Reverse Pitch” rounded out the second and final day of programming before attendees made their way out onto the plaza for a cap-off celebration complete with food, drinks, music, delightful weather, and—most importantly and for no apparent reason other than that people enjoy being delighted—puppies.

Of course, this recap can’t quite capture all of the action from across two packed days at Venture Connect 2025. In between pitch sessions and addresses, there were AMA and matchmaking events, networking sessions, and unlabeled periods of general mingling. Throughout both days, we at team GrepBeat (or GargBoin, if you look closely at the photo below that was supplied by our AI Overlords) were grateful to have a table set up where many of you stopped by to say hello and/or learn about what we do.

We had a great time interacting with friends and readers, making new connections, and doing our little part to contribute to the circular uplift at the core of this conference.

Cheers, Venturers and Connectors. And congrats to CED on a great event.

About David Schwartz 129 Articles
David is the Managing Editor at GrepBeat covering Triangle tech startups and entrepreneurs. Before pivoting to journalism, he worked for a London-based digital agency, where he wrote roughly one quarter of the content you see on the internet. Outside of work, David enjoys sports and movies a little too much.

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