CED Venture 2006

It was a really busy week - lots of really late nights/incredibly early mornings and I am surprised I am still at the office on a Friday night, but just wanted to capture some thoughts before I go home and collapse :)

I spent the first part of the week at CED's Venture 2006. (I'll blog about the rest of my week later - which was also a lot of fun btw)  Over 700 people attended including over 240 investors and almost 30 North Carolina companies presented. It seemed the number of out of state investors attending significantly increased from past years. Good to see a lot of firms from Boston, Mid-Atlantic and a few that made the trip from Silicon Valley. For many of them, it was their first trip to NC and I really enjoyed spending time with everyone there.

It is amazing how important this conference has been for NC. How significant is the impact? Here are some recent stats I read:

- Current and past Venture presenters raised $355 million in '05 (which is over 67% of the $530m raised in NC last year).

- Companies that presented last year raised over $226 million just since last year's conference

- Since 2001, current and past Venture presenters have raised $1.2 billion

Thanks to all the folks at CED for their help putting on another successful conference. For those that attended, additional comments welcome!