European delegation to Pittsburgh Venture Fair – 21 & 22 September 2011
I am keen to encourage a group of European VCs to visit the Pittsburgh Venture Fair this coming September. My connections with Pittsburgh go back many years from posting over there with PwC in the mid-1980’s for 3 years and subsequently meeting my future wife, Kathy, who is from Pittsburgh. I have kept up the visits and contacts over this time.
Pittsburgh has just been voted the top largest city of the future for America for 2011/12 and is a veritable hotbed of exciting technologies, mainly in the areas of biomedical engineering, medical devices, software engineering, sustainable environments / clean buildings and robotics. Pittsburgh is tipped to become the leading technology city for the USA. It is already the nation’s fastest growing region for VC (PwC MoneyTree). See also: http://www.alleghenyconference.org/pra/
The Pittsburgh “Three Rivers” Venture Fair has been running very successfully for several years, held every 18 months. It brings around 600 VCs from across the USA to hear presentations from around 30 early/expansion stage tech companies over a two-day period. See: http://www.3rvf.com
There is a special cost of just $300 per European delegate to attend the two days of the fair. Around the fair we could set up meetings / dinners with groups / investee companies. With help from the Allegheny (Pittsburgh) Regional Alliance, which promotes investment in Pittsburgh from overseas, we could arrange presentations from / meetings with both Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh from which much of the lifescience and other technologies emanate.
If there is sufficient interest from European VCs in attending the fair we could arrange a package to include the fair, hotel accommodation, dinners, tours etc for say a three or four day visit. We organised a week’s tour of the Pittsburgh region for senior UK marketers in 2007 which opened their eyes as to what Pittsburgh has to offer (see this website, click on Personal / Picture Gallery / Marketors Thanksgiving Trip 2007).
Any views? Please feel free to post your comments.
Tags: Venture Capital
