Friends Elite w/ Preet Mankad | 235

Tell me about CED.

We'll start there.

Start at the grand poobah, the CED.

Yeah, tell you about CED, boy.

I am hoping that most of you all are familiar with CED.

We've been around a long time in the ecosystem, right? 40 years and the goal has always been to work with founders in the innovation ecosystem, right? So you have your high growth tech founders, anywhere from software to now a lot of AI, all the way through to kind of ag tech, clean tech, deep tech, whatever technology kind of exists.

And if you are a founder building a product-based company, CED is there to support you on the tech side.

And then we also work with founders on the biotech side.

anywhere from your therapeutics to medical devices, people starting out in universities.

But really our goal is to give founders the tools, whether that's education or the network and the connections that you need to make sure that you're not building in isolation and then really just making the right decisions without too many mistakes as much as possible.

So one of the ways that we're able to do that, having been around for such a long time in the ecosystem, we have been very fortunate to have supported a whole slew of founders that have built their companies, had exits and learned a lot along the way.

And so really tapping into that flywheel and saying, all right, you have built a company, you've exited, you've made some mistakes.

Let's share those learnings with the next generation of founders.

So David, you're a coach, right? In the Grow program.

A lot of that is because of said lessons that you've learned.

So really tapping into kind of your knowledge and expertise, and then providing that to the next gen of founders to No.

Okay.

Maybe here's where you should take a left instead of a right.

Very good.

So outside of Grow, which we'll talk about in a minute, what does CED practically do?

Yeah.

So Grow is for our early stage companies.

Well, if you think about the life cycle of a founder, Grow is the first step in that journey.

But from there we have Venture Connect is one of the most kind of flagship events that we have.

That's the annual kind of venture conference where we have founders, pitch on stage, a whole lot of educational content, but really a spot for the ecosystem across the Southeast to come and connect.

Tell me about CED.

We'll start there.

Start at the grand poobah, the CED.

Yeah, tell you about CED, boy.

I am hoping that most of you all are familiar with CED.

We've been around a long time in the ecosystem, right? 40 years and the goal has always been to work with founders in the innovation ecosystem, right? So you have your high growth tech founders, anywhere from software to now a lot of AI, all the way through to kind of ag tech, clean tech, deep tech, whatever technology kind of exists.

And if you are a founder building a product-based company, CED is there to support you on the tech side.

And then we also work with founders on the biotech side.

anywhere from your therapeutics to medical devices, people starting out in universities.

But really our goal is to give founders the tools, whether that's education or the network and the connections that you need to make sure that you're not building in isolation and then really just making the right decisions without too many mistakes as much as possible.

So one of the ways that we're able to do that, having been around for such a long time in the ecosystem, we have been very fortunate to have supported a whole slew of founders that have built their companies, had exits and learned a lot along the way.

And so really tapping into that flywheel and saying, all right, you have built a company, you've exited, you've made some mistakes.

Let's share those learnings with the next generation of founders.

So David, you're a coach, right? In the Grow program.

A lot of that is because of said lessons that you've learned.

So really tapping into kind of your knowledge and expertise, and then providing that to the next gen of founders to No.

Okay.

Maybe here's where you should take a left instead of a right.

Very good.

So outside of Grow, which we'll talk about in a minute, what does CED practically do?

Yeah.

So Grow is for our early stage companies.

Well, if you think about the life cycle of a founder, Grow is the first step in that journey.

But from there we have Venture Connect is one of the most kind of flagship events that we have.

That's the annual kind of venture conference where we have founders, pitch on stage, a whole lot of educational content, but really a spot for the ecosystem across the Southeast to come and connect.