Growing Your Company and Loving It: Passion & Proficiency at Work
9:15 am - 9:30 am
Networking Break
9:30 am - 10:30 am
Lets Go! (Choose One):
(A) Financing Your Business – Venture Capital and Alternative Sources
Is your company ready for venture capital? Should you even be looking at venture funding or are other sources of capital more appropriate for your firm? What should you emphasize in your pitch to investors? When is bootstrapping or bank debt appropriate? How should you view debt? Bring your questions to our panel of experts.
(B) Managing Your Growth
You've received funding, are earning revenue and building your customer base. What are the next steps? Are your business planning processes scalable?
--Your infrastructure for technology? --personnel? With compensation policies changing, ethics and information security/fraud issues on the rise, how do you manage for risk in today's market?
10:30 am - 10:45 am
Networking Break
10:45am - 11:45am
Industry Updates (Choose One):
Insight from business leaders, entrepreneurs, analysts and venture experts. Learn about market opportunities, key risks, and big players in these fields as well as the revenue models, and management skills required to be successful.
(C) Opportunities in Security & Communications
(D) Opportunities in Life Sciences and Health
(E) Opportunities in Media and Telecomm Convergence
11:45 am - 12:00 pm
Networking Break
12:00 pm - 1:15 pm
Luncheon
Welcome: Dr. Alan Merten, President, George Mason University Keynote Address: Angela Drummond, President and CEO, SiloSmashers
1:15 pm - 1:30 pm
Networking Break
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Growing Your Business (choose one):
(F) Sales and Marketing Strategies for Growth
How do you market on a tight budget? What's key to securing major sales? Are you making the best use of technology in your marketing? Do you really understand what your customer wants? Learn selling do's and don'ts from those who've done it!
(G) Winning Strategies for Expanding Your Government Business
The federal government is a unique customer and working with them requires a different business strategy. Our panel includes three entrepreneurs who have built successful government facing businesses. They will share their secrets on what works and what doesn't in positioning companies for government work. Topics include, minority and disadvantaged set-asides, government sales and marketing strategies, partnering for success, contract strategies, and more.
2:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Networking Break
2:45 pm - 3:45 pm
2006 and Beyond: The VC's Perspective
What's the impact of higher energy prices, terrorism threats, and the high cost of living locally on the regional economy? What does the horizon look like for VC and institutional funding? --M&A trends? Where will VCs be investing in two years? What are the future market opportunities from a VC perspective?
Entrepreneurs and Growing Companies (excludes service providers) - $40
Bonafide Investors (no fee; pre-registration required)
Special Rates:
Entrepreneur guest of sponsor or supporting organization (no fee; registration required)
Service Provider guest of sponsor or supporting organization - $40
Business Alliance Grubstake Breakfast Past Presenters (no fee; pre-registration required)
* “Investor” is defined as an organization whose investments are tracked in an official venture capital metrics database (e.g. Ventureone, Venture Economics) or an angel investor who has made an equity investment during the last two years.
