Jim Roberts

Editor’s note: Jim Roberts is Executive Director, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. WILMINGTON, N.C. - One of the first things I wanted to bring to Wilmington when recruited to run the new Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at UNC Wilmington was the eagerness to compete. In a very pro-business state like North Carolina, it is difficult for a small coastal city to compete with the larger powerhouse economies of Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and craft beer city Asheville. That competitive spirit led to the CIE competing for a nationwide contest for $50,000 from...

Editor’s note: Jim Roberts, executive director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UNC-Wilmington, offers WRAL TechWire readers an exclusive insider look at Venture Atlanta. ATLANTA - Upon arriving at Venture Atlanta, it hit me again what a big urban city Atlanta really is and how many cultural assets the city has to attract the South’s best and brightest to compete for the young workforce with Raleigh, Charlotte, Nashville, and Wilmington. This was my first trip to the Georgia Aquarium and the perfect place to host a conference for ADHD tech entrepreneurs. The Ocean Ballroom was full of younger...

Editor’s note: Seed and angel investors are actively looking for deals, which is good news for entrepreneurs in the audience at the Southeast Venture Capital Conference, writes Jim Roberts. The executive director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University of North Carolina Wilmington is blogging about SEVC for WRAL Tech Wire. ATLANTA – Jason Caplain of Bull City Venture Partners went right to the heart of the issue with the Seed and Angel Investor Roundtable Panel at SEVC in Atlanta on Wednesday morning. His first question: When was your most recent investment? All four investors mentioned deals they...

Editor’s note: Jim Roberts is Executive Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is writing about the Southeast Venture Conference for WRAL TechWire. More than 50 companies from across the southeast, including numerous ones from North Carolina, are being showcased to investors. What are the VCs looking for? Roberts also reports on the VC money panel discussion. ATLANTA – At the opening day of this annual entrepreneur and venture capital conference on Tuesday, the crowd heard some new terms and listened to startup company pitches from South Carolina to Texas. They also heard...

Scott Moody was the keynote speaker on Wednesday night at the UNC Wilmington Cameron School of Business Entrepreneurship Week. Moody was the perfect speaker with the credibility of taking a company public on Nasdaq, selling that company to Apple and then the high profile of the cool fingerprint security technology on the new iPhone. Before an equal mix of business students and members of the business community, Moody kept the large audience focused with his intensity and funny stories with life lessons. Moody has a competitive nature that is normally seen in professional athletes, but instead he loves to...

Despite dissolvable knee and leg screws and other innovations featured at the annual Nanotechnology Commercialization Conference, North Carolina and the country face many challenges in growing the nano industry. In fact, until the private sector can ramp up commercialization, the academic and public sector will continue to lead the nano sector. That point was made clear at the fifth annual Nanotechnology Commercialization Conference in Winston Salem where a variety of North Carolina and national leaders in nano discussed innovations, funding trends and networked towards the goal of growing the nano sector nationwide. “North Carolina is already a leader in...

Just like Easter, visible groundhogs and the Opening Day of baseball season are symbolic rites of Spring, so is the annual Nanotechnology Commercialization Conference. This year’s North Carolina-hosted event, which opens Tuesday, will be held at the new $100 million investment and renovated Biotech Place in downtown Winston-Salem. The conference will showcase Wake Forest University technologies with people such as Dr. Tony Atala, Dr. David Carroll and NanoMedica CEO Roger Cubicciotti among others in the Triad, across North Carolina and beyond. This fifth annual conference is a partnership among the NC Department of Commerce, the North Carolina Office of Science...

What is a philanthropic, for profit venture fund? Not exactly an oxymoron, but it could be a bit confusing if you were not familiar with the new concept of venture philanthropy or Program- Related Investments (PRI). The North Carolina Biotechnology Center, NC BIO, Southeast BIO and other regional biotech organizations from Florida, Virginia and Georgia led one of the first regional conferences- the Southeast Venture Philanthropy Summit –  for this new concept on Thursday. Venture Philanthropy is where mostly non-profits make equity investments in early stage life sciences companies to both advance the novel science and attempt to fund...