CED picks 100-plus startups, emerging firms for Tech Venture showcases

The Council for Entrepreneurial Development is going to demonstrate the growing power of North Carolina’s startup community with a whopping 100-plus new and emerging ventures pitching their strengths to potential investors at its annual Tech Venture conference.

With more than 200 startups alone at the booming American Underground in Durham and Raleigh, more than 30 at the First Flight Center in RTP and startup hubs from Wilmington to Cary to Charlotte and beyond, the Tar Heel state has plenty of tech stars to boast about.

And the CED venture event is one of the largest venues in the southeast to do so. Plus, as WTW has reported, some of the top names in venture capital will be coming to address the event. (See links with this post.)

The lineup announced Thursday afternoon includes players from the coast to the mountains.

The theme of the show is #ScalingUp. That’s appropriate since a growing number of North Carolina ventures are either going public, being acquired or drawing investment dollars from around the country, especially Silicon Valley. The trend over the past two years has been quite remarkable really, and is a far cry from a post-2009 rcession slump that left a lot of startups gasping for investment ca[ital.

“North Carolina companies are not just starting up, but scaling up – making big hires, acquiring new customers and connecting to investors all over the country,” said Jay Bigelow, director of entrepreneurship for CED, in announcing the lineup. “The Tech Venture Conference stage will be packed with people who have cracked the scaling code. We will feature the most innovative companies and thought leaders in the country — people who know what it takes not just to start up, but to scale up and succeed.”

The CED is presenting the companies in three groups:

Showcase – “the best of the best” as the CED terms these 14
Lightning Round – 17 early-stage firms
Demo Room – Nearly 80 early-stage ventures

The “Lightning Round” is new, the CED saying it decided to add this group to make presentations to the investor-dominated audience “because of the overwhelming number of worthy applications.”

“We had so many companies this year that deserve to be in the main-stage spotlight that we had to create a whole new category with the lightning round,” Bigelow said in the announcement “Between the main stage and the Demo Room, we’ll be showing the ‘full stack’ of the ecosystem — from early stage, to emerging growth, to companies with significant traction. This is a sign of a healthy ecosystem, that we have companies at all stages and can match them with investors at all stages.”

The conference is Sept. 15-16 in Raleigh.

The Showcase firms: