What is Venture135?

The Venture135 conference is a two-day event with three major components. Day 1 includes the Fintech Venture conference showcasing two dozen of the top series A and Series B ready fintech companies in the Southeast. The evening of Day 1 is the QCFintech Class Demo Day. Day 2 is the IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator powered by LinuxONE Demo Day representing 15 of the top fintech and healthtech startups from across the world.

We bring together entrepreneurs, venture investors, and financial service executives. Venture135 is intentionally more intimate in size to create a contrasting experience to those thousand plus person events. We understand that people are the driving force behind a company's success and want to be able to curate an environment that effortlessly facilitates conversation.

Join us November 19 - 20, 2020 at Barings for one of the premier venture events in the country.

2019 Healthtech Summit

In 2019, Queen City Fintech and IBM held the first Healthtech Summit for our new IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator powered by IBM LinuxONE. This one-day event was part of and held in parallel to Venture135 in Charlotte, NC which showcases the top fintech and healthtech companies across the globe. The healthtech summit was held in partnership with the Society for Physician Entrepreneurs and Healthtech Women. Together, attendees learned about the latest trends in healthcare technology and tackle the biggest issues facing the industry today.

Schedule

Schedule for 2019 Conference:

Networking powered by

We put an extra effort into the 1-to-1 business meetings at Venture135.

The Brella networking platform launches 2 weeks prior to the event allowing attendees to set up their profile before the conference.

2019 Speakers

Tim Sheehan

CEO & Co-Founder, Greenlight Financial

Tim Sheehan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Greenlight. Greenlight is the safest way for parents to give their kids money, approve their spending, and prepare them for financial independence. Prior to Greenlight, Tim was the Lead Entrepreneur In Residence at Georgia Tech's startup incubator, the Advanced Technology Development Center. Earlier in Tim's career he was Director of Yahoo! Finance and responsible for growing it to the #1 finance site in the world. Tim also served as SVP Products, Marketing and Strategy for Biller Solutions at Fiserv, was a Cofounder & CEO of Reachable, General Manager of Yodlee, and Senior Product Manager at E*Trade.

Joyce Shen

Investment Director & Operating Partner-Tenfore Holdings

Joyce Shen is a business executive, investor, and educator in emerging technologies and innovation. She is also a published author, public speaker, board member, and entrepreneur. Her most recent book is From Talking to Doing: A Short Guide to Corporate Innovation Success.

Joyce is the investment director and operating partner at Tenfore Holdings where she invests in enterprise software, big data, and emerging technologies. Joyce is also an adjunct faculty of data science at UC Berkeley where she teaches applications of machine learning and AI in product development and innovation. She previously guest lectured on blockchain and innovation at University of Oxford.

Previously, Joyce was the global managing director of emerging technologies and venture investments in the CTO office at Thomson Reuters where she built and led global emerging technology group and the corporate venture fund. During her tenure, she led new technology strategy and product innovations in fintech, IoT, and emerging data solutions, established the global blockchain program, and made strategic investments in early-stage technology companies in big data and AI, digital identity, blockchain, and alternative data.

Prior to Thomson Reuters, Joyce was the founding global CFO of IBM Cloud Platform and managed $1B P&L. She also spent several years in IBM Corporate Development leading acquisitions and divestitures exceeding $6B in total transaction value.

Joyce received her undergraduate and masters degrees from the University of Chicago.

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Gardiner Garrard, CFA

Co-Founder & Managing Partner-TTV Capital

Gardiner is a co-founder and a Managing Partner of TTV. He has more than 18 years of venture capital experience and is recognized by Institutional Investor as one of the top fintech investors. In 2000 Gardiner founded TTV with Tom Smith. Gardiner was one of the first venture investors to recognize the transformative impact technology would begin having on the constitution and delivery of financial services. He has not only served as an active director, but also has direct operating and leadership experience in financial technology companies. Gardiner was one of the first to identify advances in equities and derivatives trading, receivables financing, transaction processing security, mobile point of sale and the use of blockchain technology. He has served on the board of 15 TTV fund companies and currently serves on the Board of Directors of DoubleNet Pay, Featurespace, Freebird Rides, FTRANS, Instant, ShopKeep, Verady, and is an observer on the BitPay Board of Directors. Gardiner earned a B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.B.A. from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. While at Emory, he was awarded the Art Dietz faculty award for excellence in finance, was the Chairman of the honor council and was recognized in 2004 with the Goizueta Business School’s Outstanding Recent Alumni Award. He is also a member of the advisory board at the Emory Eye Center.

Tyler Krueger

Vice President, Frontier Capital

Tyler Krueger is a Vice President of Frontier Capital, a $1.5B growth equity firm focused on B2B software. Prior to joining Frontier, Tyler was a Vice President at FTV Capital, where he worked with growth-stage businesses in the enterprise software and financial technology categories. Tyler started his career in investment banking with Financial Technology Partners.

David Jones

General Partner, Bull City Venture Partners

David is a Co-founder and General Partner of Bull City Venture Partners and a Partner at Southern Capitol Ventures. He serves on the board of Medfusion, Reveal Mobile, Biospatial, Attila Security and a board observer at Spoonflower and AdWerx.

Prior to joining Southern Capitol Ventures, David was with Deloitte Consulting where he managed strategic technology projects for the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.

David was on the boards of SCV portfolio companies ArtusLabs (acquired by PerkinElmer – March 2011) and AVIcode (acquired by Microsoft – Oct 2010), and BrightContext (acquired by WealthEngine – March 2014). He is co-Founder and former Chief Technology Officer of medical device portal, Orthocopia.com, which provides surgical information to operating room professionals.

David's background in technology stems from the military where he served as a Naval Aviator flying over 1900 hours in the P-3C Orion. David served as the Weapons and Operations Officer during two deployments to the Mediterranean theater and North Atlantic and led a Naval Intelligence special projects crew testing cutting-edge technologies for acoustic and non-acoustic sensors and combat mission hardware and software.

David received the Triangle Business Journal's "40 under 40" leadership award and is a frequent guest lecturer at UNC Kenan Flagler Business School. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the US Naval Academy, his MS from the University of Virginia and his MBA from UNC Chapel Hill.

Ned Daoro

Senior Associate-Clocktower Ventures

At Clocktower Technology Ventures, Ned focuses on deal sourcing, diligence, and execution. Prior to Clocktower, Ned worked at MUFG Union Bank in a corporate development role where he executed acquisitions, divestitures and other enterprise-level strategic initiatives. Before MUFG, he worked as an Equity Research Associate at Sandler O’Neill + Partners covering mid and small-cap financial institutions. Ned holds an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a BS in Finance from California Polytechnic State University. He lives in Santa Monica with his wife.

Angel Rutledge

Co-Founder, SignUpGenius

Angel Rutledge is an experienced entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of tech startup success. She and her husband built SignUpGenius, the leading online sign up service for group organizers that serves up to 18 million people per month. Angel served as the COO/CMO before transitioning to a board role at the end of 2018 and handled company finances and growth projections until they sold a majority stake in SignUpGenius in 2017 to a private equity fund. She now writes and speaks on entrepreneurship and advises founders. She can be found at AngelRutledge.com.

Scott Harkey

Chief Strategy Officer/Head of Financial Services, Levvel

Scott Harkey is the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Financial Services at Levvel, a Charlotte, NC based IT consulting firm that helps organizations with strategy, transformation, and implementation services under what broadly is known as the umbrella of digital transformation. Previously, Scott spent 5 years leading one of the largest banks in the country through definition, design, and deployment of their digital payment efforts. Prior to that, Scott spent 10 years at Wells Fargo working with various lines of business on technology transformation initiatives. With a proven ability to see the high level strategic picture, combined with a track record of getting product out the door, Scott is working with clients to tackle complex technology challenges, large and small.

Arlen Meyers, MD

President & CEO - The Society of Physician Entrepreneurs

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the University of Colorado Denver Business School and cofounding President and CEO of The Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org

Lisa Tweardy

VP of Orthopaedics, UNYQ

As Principal of Kemo Sabe and Vice President of Orthopaedics at UNYQ, Lisa is an entrepreneur, business innovator and venture philanthropist who is passionate about reducing preventable harm and accelerating the commercialization of new medical technologies. Clients include UNYQ 3D printed custom orthopaedic and prosthetic devices and Novartis Neuroscience. Previously serving as CEO for Combat Medical, General Manager for Biomet Bracing, Vice President of Orthopaedics and General Manager of Spine at Ossur, she has been awarded 19 patents and has published research in Spine and The Journal of Neurosurgery. Lisa earned her Bachelor’s in Bioengineering from Lehigh University, and a Master’s in the Management of Technology from the School of Engineering and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Lindsay Deneault

Director of Commercialization, Atrium Health

Lindsay Deneault is the Director of Commercialization for Atrium Health where she collaborates with teammate inventors and forms strategic partnerships with early-stage companies to develop, validate and deploy technology-enabled products and services. Prior to joining Atrium Health in 2016, Lindsay was a business strategist at the Texas Medical Center in Houston where she launched the TMC Innovation Institute and managed the TMCx accelerator program to help TMC’s 21 member hospitals spin out and incubate early-stage digital health and medtech companies. She has a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MBA from Rice University’s School of Business. She has served as an advisor for the SXSW Impact Pediatric Pitch, UCSF Digital Orthopedics Conference, Louisville Innovation Summit, and AARP Innovation@50+.

Neeta Kirpalani

Healthcare Strategist

In 2017, Ms. Kirpalani founded her own consulting firm designed to help technology companies grow and scale in healthcare. With more than a decade of experience, she is passionate about leading teams through change that results in sustainable growth and serving as a trusted executive and Board advisor. Prior to starting her own company, Ms. Kirpalani managed corporate strategy and corporate development initiatives at Premier, Inc., a publicly traded healthcare company. Ms. Kirpalani holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a MBA from Wake Forest University. She also holds a MPH from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is an active member of Leadership Charlotte, Healthtech Women and the Wake Forest University Alumni network in Charlotte, NC.

Maria Smith

IBM Z Offering Manager

Maria Smith is an IBM Offering Manager focused on the Healthcare / Life Sciences industry. In this role, she is responsible for finding new ways to bring innovative solutions to market, by combining the strengths of the enterprise platform with both external products and other areas within IBM, such as Watson Health. Maria’s career has spanned 22+ years with IBM and she has worked with high profile clients whose workloads demand the performance and security the mainframe delivers, such as the healthcare, financial and travel industries.

Her most recent position has enabled her to combine her passion for healthcare and IT to deliver high value, client focused solutions. She has a B.S. degree in Marketing from Post University in Connecticut and earned a Certified Professional in Health Information & Management Systems (CPHIMS) certification. Maria is married with 3 children and lives in Wake Forest, NC.

She is a 14-year Stage IV cancer survivor and has spoken about her experiences at various venues including being the keynote speaker for the 2019 NC HIMSS conference and the American Cancer Society. She hopes her message of hope inspires patients and caretakers alike.

Steve Snyder

Attorney

Steve Snyder is a Board Certified Specialist in Privacy and Information Security Law and senior attorney at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP. He is a member of the firm’s Cybersecurity and Privacy team and Financial Services practice group. He leverages his industry experience as a former CISO and network engineer to assist clients in navigating increasingly complex matters related to data protection arising from emerging technologies. Steve is a thought leader in privacy and data security and routinely writes and speaks on cybersecurity topics. Steve advises on all aspects of clients’ privacy and data security programs and regularly works with technical, legal and business stakeholders to mitigate security and privacy risk in a variety of sectors.

Tommy Marshall

Executive Director, Georgia Fintech Academy

Tommy Marshall, Executive Director, Georgia Fintech Academy, University System of Georgia - Tommy has spent his 20+ year management consulting career focused on digital financial services and fintech. He works to bring his depth in payments, banking, capital markets, finance & regulation together with the Georgia and global fintech ecosystem to lead and support the objectives of the Georgia Fintech Academy.

Tommy is a graduate of Davidson College and holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University. He has called Atlanta home for the past ten years.

Eric Kirsch

Founder, Beacon Healthcare Benefits

Founder of Beacon Healthcare Benefits, Mito Station, Integrated Health Solutions, and MedAlliance. Eric has taken these and several other companies through angel, seed, and series A funding. He is the manager of Society of Physician Entrepreneurs Charlotte. He is trained as a physician assistant with experience running a profitable medical practice, multiple sleep labs, and mail-order medical supply. He has spent time consulting with medical vendors such as pharmaceutical and medical device companies on marketing and product placement strategies. He has a strong knowledge base in the legal, technological, coding/billing, marketing and sales aspects of health care. Eric is a self-taught coder and soft-ware developer and has successfully built software that has been used in commercial applications. He mentors and advises healthcare start-ups on aspects of customer discovery, business development, marketing strategy, and early stage fund-raising.

Past Speakers

Paul Tyma

Chief Technology Officer - LendingTree

A long-time tech industry expert and influencer, Dr. Paul Tyma joined the LendingTree team in May 2016 to lead the continued advancements of the LendingTree platform and help bring our technology to life. He has built and run engineering teams at LinkedIn and Morgan Stanley and spent 3 years at Google as an engineer working on internal server development.

An avid entrepreneur, Tyma has founded four Silicon Valley startups including Preemptive Solutions, Manybrain Inc. (which owns Mailinator), Home-account.com (later acquired by Bills.com) and Refresh, Inc. (acquired by LinkedIn). He is a frequent speaker and writer, and is the author of one of the original Java books, "Java Primer Plus."

Dr. Tyma received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, focusing on Java and .NET performance.

Johnson Cook

Co-Founder of Greenlight Financial Technology

Johnson Cook is an Atlanta-based serial entrepreneur, investor, and Co-founder & President of Greenlight Financial Technology. Greenlight is on a mission to help parents raise financially smart kids. The company's first product is a smart debit card for kids that parents control from their phones. Greenlight has been in market 18 months and has over 200,000 customers. Launched in January 2017, Greenlight has raised over $27mm from investors such as Amazon, SunTrust Bank, Ally Bank, Synchrony Financial, Live Oak Bank, NEA, TTV Capital, and Relay Ventures. Learn more about Greenlight at GreenlightCard.com. Before Greenlight, Johnson co-founded the Atlanta Tech Village, the South's largest startup community hub, and was a partner with Atlanta Ventures and managed the Atlanta Ventures Accelerator.

K. C. Brechnitz

Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Capital & Debt Advisory, Ernst & Young Capital Advisors LLC

K.C. is a Senior Managing Director and leads EY’s Debt Capital Markets (“DCM”) efforts both in the U.S. and globally. K.C. helped found the DCM practice at Ernst & Young Capital Advisors, LLC in 2010, and has personally worked on over $30 billion in capital transactions as an independent advisor. He focuses on providing independent capital advisory, capital raising and capital restructuring services. K.C. has over twenty years of experience in debt capital markets including leveraged finance, high yield capital markets, restructuring advisory and loan syndications including extensive experience in private equity sponsored leveraged buyouts and complex acquisition financings.

Prior to joining EY, he served for 11 years in senior roles with Banc of America Securities and Wachovia Securities including high yield capital markets, leveraged finance, and restructuring advisory completing $58 billion in financings in his banking career. He received his BA from Southern Methodist University and his MBA from Cornell University.

David Hall

Partner - Rise of the Rest Seed Fund

David Hall is a Partner at Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and is responsible for investment sourcing, execution, and oversight for Revolution portfolio companies. David began his career with Revolution in 2006, serving as an investment professional for Revolution and has been working with the portfolio companies ever since. David has worked closely with and served as a Board Observer for Revolution Money (American Express), Booker (formerly GramercyOne), Vinfolio, Koofers, SnagFilms, BenchPrep and Homesnap.

Prior to Revolution, David was with The Washington Post Company as Director of Planning and Development. In this capacity, he managed corporate M&A and investments and launched new print and digital publications. Earlier in his career, David held positions as manager of Business Development for Akamai Technologies, Inc. and senior financial analyst for Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc.

David received a B.A. in Economics from Morehouse College and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Mac Lackey

Venture Partner - VentureSouth

Mac joined the VentureSouth team in 2015 to provide strategic advice, due diligence expertise, operational guidance and exit preparation assistance across the portfolio.

Mac is an experienced and highly successful entrepreneur who has built and sold five companies. Successful entrepreneurial efforts include Ettain Group, Mountain Khakis, The InternetSoccer Network, InTouch Interactive, and his most recent exit - KYCK.com. He has also served on various corporate boards including LendingTree.

Richard Maclean

Managing Partner - Frontier Capital

Richard Maclean co-founded Frontier Capital in 1999. His primary industry focus has been on the firm’s Managed IT and HCM Software and Services investments. Richard is also involved in setting overall firm strategy and leading investor relations and fundraising.

Prior to co-founding Frontier, Richard worked in the Investment Banking Group of NationsBank in Charlotte, NC and was a General Partner with Blue Ridge Capital.

Matt Kennedy

Vice President - Banks Street Partners

Matt Kennedy joined Banks Street Partners in 2014, where he currently serves as Vice President. Banks Street Partners is a leading investment banking firm focused on the financial services sector and one of the most active investment banking firms in the financial services sector. Matt works closely with financial institutions and financial technology companies executing M&A transactions and capital raises by providing situation-specific guidance, diligence coordination and financial modeling. Matt graduated Magna Cum Laude from Clemson University with a Bachelor of Science in Financial Management and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting. Matt is also a CFA® charterholder and holds designations in series 7, 63, and 79.