We are excited to announce that the Piedmont Angel Network (PAN) will be hosting the First Triad Reverse Pitch Event at Highpoint University in their Hayworth Fine Arts Center at 2:00 PM on May 12, 2015.   We are bringing together 10 of the largest and most successful high growth companies in the Triad to “pitch” the audience about their innovation needs as they look into the future to grow their business.

The event is part of PAN’s efforts to begin to connect the major companies in the Triad region to the NC academic and entrepreneurial community in order better connect industry needs with entrepreneurial startup efforts in our region.  The confirmed presenter list is noted below and we will be adding two more companies shortly.

• Reynolds American – 2^nd largest tobacco company in the United States.

• VF Corp – Leading Apparel brand with $12B in annual sales.

• Qorvo  (formerly RF Micro Devices) – Industry leader in RF technologies.

• BB&T – 12^th largest bank in the US and 2^nd largest based in North Carolina.

• Haeco Americas – Leading Aerospace and MRO company. 

• Guilford County School System – 3^rd largest school district in the state of NC and largest employer in the Triad area.

• Transtech Pharma – Leading Biotech company focused on human therapeutics.

• Wake Forest Innovations – Advancing the mission of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center to improve health care globally.

We are also excited to have Nelson Chu of Kinetic Ventures (see bio below) speak to us about the importance of aligning corporate, government, and entrepreneurial support efforts with the successful industries present in a region.  Nelson is a very successful Venture Capitalist from the Atlanta / DC area and has been an advocate on this topic for many years.

Please be on the lookout for the event invitation Thursday or Friday of this week.  The invitation will also include a link to register for the event.  We would like for you to look into your network of relationships and personally invite 8 entrepreneurs, problem solvers, developers, professors, researchers or graduating students that you think would be interested in hearing the corporate pitches and potentially responding to the innovation needs of these companies.  We would also like to extend an invitation for two members of your group to participate in the audience as well.   After the event, audience members will be able to post responses back to the presenting companies through the PAN Innovation Network platform with the hope of being selected by the presenting company to work with them on their innovation need.

We would greatly appreciate your participation and support of this event.   There is no cost to attend and the event will include a one hour networking session after the event to meet the presenters and mingle with other audience members.  We are targeting to close the event at 6:30 PM.