Global Midwest Alliance
888.808.0462
Driving Innovation and Growth
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On October 23-24, 2024, Global Midwest Alliance and its sponsors invite you to join us for the 9th Corporate Venturing Conference in Chicago. Meet first-hand with other Midwest CVCs who will attend and learn more about how these investors focus on the innovations and technologies that keep the Midwest industrial base competitive. Who are they? Are they strategic or financial investors? At what stage do they invest? What are their check sizes? How active are they with their portfolio companies? Do they invest as a pathway to acquisition? More broadly, how are Midwest CVCs positioning themselves in the current economic climate? Who is stepping up and who is stepping back?
Attendees will hear from industry experts, venture capitalists from across the Midwest, institutional limited partners, CEOs and entrepreneurs.
Seating will be limited. Please REGISTER on or before October 21, 2024.
9th Midwest Corporate Venturing Program
Corporate Venturing: Navigating the Pathways to Innovation
About Our Host and Sponsor
K&L Gates is a fully integrated global law firm with lawyers located across five continents. The firm represents leading multinational corporations, growth and middle-market companies, capital markets participants and entrepreneurs in every major industry group as well as public sector entities, educational institutions, philanthropic organizations and individuals. www.klgates.com
Polsinelli is an Am Law 100 firm with more than 1,000 attorneys in 22 offices nationwide. Recognized by legal research firm BTI Consulting as one of the top firms for excellent client service and client relationships, the firm’s attorneys provide value through practical legal counsel infused with business insight, and focus on health care, financial services, real estate, intellectual property, middle-market corporate, labor and employment and business litigation. Polsinelli PC, Polsinelli LLP in California. www.polsinelli.com
Global Midwest Alliance is a business-led, region-wide organization dedicated to transforming the Midwest into an internationally-recognized leader in innovation and business growth. The Alliance aligns and integrates resources throughout the Midwest helping businesses to grow by leveraging existing resources to develop new products and find customers throughout the world. The Alliance is the Private Sector Liaison Office for the World Bank and a member of Global CONNECT. Through these and other affiliations, the Alliance facilitates access to global business opportunities for Midwest business through 155 groups in 98 countries around the world. The Alliance offers educational and networking opportunities through a variety of programs and resources designed to promote innovation, technology development and access to global opportunities in the clean technology, energy, food, logistics, manufacturing and water industries. www.globalmidwestalliance.org
Member of
AGENDA
October 23, 2024
9th Midwest Corporate Venturing Program
Welcome Reception Hosted by Polsinelli
150 N. Riverside Plaza. Suite 3000, Chicago, IL 60606
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Anthony Nasharr, Shareholder, Polsinelli
Armchair Discussion: Secrets of Corporate Venture Capital
Participants:
Laurence Hayward, Partner and Co-Founder, ATOMS.VC
John Renaldi, Founder and Product Leader, Adjunct Professor, Northwestern University, and Exited Entrepreneur, Motorola, Google
Learn the inside game, how deals get done and the stuff no one wants to talk about. This presentation will be moderated by Laurence Hayward, who has managed more than fifty transactions as an investor, investment banker and entrepreneur. He will be joined by experienced CVCs and other entrepreneurs and investors who have worked with CVCs.
AGENDA
October 24, 2024
9th Midwest Corporate Venturing Program
Program Hosted by K&L Gates
70 West Madison Street, Chicago, IL 60602
Registration, Breakfast and Networking
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Christopher Bloom, Senior of Counsel, K&L Gates
Keynote Presentation and Fireside Chat
Corporate Venturing: Navigating the Pathways to Innovation
Moderator: Allen Dines, Executive Partner, WISC Partners
Keynote Speaker: Mel Gaceta, Managing Director, Touchdown Ventures
Innovation is key to the ability of companies to adapt and prosper in times of rapid change. Since its founding, the principal focus of Global Midwest Alliance has been to highlight and foster innovation in Midwest companies. While venture capital is widely known for its role in U.S. innovation, many corporations have turned to their own VC operations as a means to more precisely support innovation specific to their business base and competitive advantage. For many companies, these CVC programs have become key innovation drivers. This keynote will address how Midwest business leaders are accessing innovation through their CVC operations.
Coffee and Networking Break
Innovation and Technology Panel
Sponsored by Polsinelli
Moderator: Anthony Nasharr, Shareholder, Polsinelli
Panelists:
Stephen Sinclair, CEO/Founder, BOUNTE, INC.
BOUNTE, INC. has built an A.I.-enabled mobile and cloud platform to help hotels and airlines manage the millions of lost items left behind by guests and passengers. The lost and found is a major operational problem with hotels and airports, where staff spends an incredible amount of time logging, managing and returning those items, while guests anxiously wait.
Mark Russell, CEO and Co-Founder
CatalystXL provides Cardware, a B2B, AI-driven Digital Experience Platform (DXP) that helps enterprises streamline the delivery of communication and content, resulting in increased employee productivity that drives revenue growth. Based in Detroit and Chicago, and founded by two, seasoned startup veterans with deep SaaS startup and digital transformation backgrounds, CatalystXL is a team of 12 full-time professionals serving several Fortune 500 companies and more than 20 additional clients including four Fortune 500 companies: GM/Chevrolet, Caterpillar, Aon/NFP, Penske and Stellantis.
Reamonn Soto, Co-Founder and CEO
Sensatek Propulsion Technology, Inc improves the availability of power systems and reduces inspections by monitoring damage using video-based measurement and analysis (ViDeoMAgic). ViDeoMAgic extracts pixel-level damage and vibration data from video images. Wind turbine owners such as NextEra, Constellation Energy and Invenergy, experience blade failures, exposing wind fleet owners to $116 billion a year in costs associated with blade repairs, downtime, and revenue loss across a fleet of 415,000 turbines in operation worldwide. ViDeoMAgic offers wind project owners a $30 million increase in net present value (NPV) added per farm (80 turbines on average) with an internal rate of return (IRR) of 85%, and a one-year payback by trending damage, thus mitigating inspections and improving uptime. A video camera provides one million points of vibration and damage capture from pixels, being more sensitive to small changes in damage without wires, unlike strain gauges, accelerometers, fiber optics and acoustic sensors.
Bill Furlong, CEO and Co-Founder
SquareStack is an apps management platform created for SMB's. We solve the critical issues of integrating and organizing existing software, as well as sourcing new apps. Our solution includes single user log-in, a consolidated dashboard to track key business metrics, monthly subs cost and renewal dates. We sell via channel partners who pay us a monthly SaaS fee and a per user fee. Also, we earn 20% for all apps sold in our marketplace.
Ajay Bam, CEO and Co-Founder, Vyrill Inc.
Vyrill Inc. is an AI-powered video intelligence and marketing platform that utilizes In-video Search to deliver “moments that matter” within video content to boost conversion and customer acquisition for brands and retailer. It enables brands to search or “google” inside any video on web or mobile to unlock video data for growth. Vyrill speeds marketing decisions by helping brands capture video reviews from Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram, Campaigns and other platforms in hours versus months; understand them with rating, ranking, insights; and leverage video data at scale to influence online shopper purchase journey. Vyrill speeds shopper purchase decisions by responding to shopper Q&A with answers with key moments/clips from any video(s) on the shopper purchase journey. Vyrill is a User Generated Video Content (UGC) platform to help brands create, curate, connect and convert shoppers with video.
Coffee and Networking Break
Corporate Venturing Panel
Moderator: Tony Palcheck, Vice President, Zebra Technologies
Subradheep (Subra) Balakrishnan, Senior Director, Partnerships & Investments – Global, Nourish Ventures
Daniel Griffis, Managing Director, ADM Ventures
Eric Steager, Managing Partner, Band Venture Partners
Closing Remarks
Jason Blumberg, Co-founder & Managing Director, Earth Foundry
5:30 p.m.
6:00 p.m.
7:30 a.m.
7:55 a.m.
8:00 a.m.
9:00 a.m.
9:30 a.m.
10:30 a.m.
11:00 a.m.
12:00 p.m.
The 2024 Corporate Venturing Advisory Committee
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