Preview: 2020 Embarc Collective Southeast CEO Summit

As early-startup founders, we find ourselves in the weeds of the business focused on every detail to make sure that we can push the business to demonstrate its traction potential. However, when you’re continually focused in the business (as opposed to on the business), you may lose sight of larger strategic opportunities ahead of you.

That’s why Embarc Collective has built an annual CEO Summit for its startup members, an event dedicated to founder mindset, strategic growth plans and leadership. Last year, we welcomed Elias Torres, CTO of Drift, several startup investors and Jeff Vinik to speak for our first in-person summit.

This year, with the world operating more virtually, we saw it as an opportunity to do things differently. Much of startup support found in the Southeast (including that at Embarc Collective) focuses on the early, seed stage of a startup – however, we have several members who have reached or are soon to planning for an institutional capital raise. So this year, we’re focused on serving CEOs of Embarc Collective member startups who are planning to raise their Series B or C round within the next year. We collaborated with many of our Southeast venture partners – Mucker Capital, Engage, Florida Funders, The Jump Fund, Bull City Venture Partners, Overline, Miami Angels, IDEA Fund Partners, nrv, cofounders capital, Engage, Tech Square Ventures, Calano Ventures – to include their portfolio companies in the Southeast who are in a similar stage to also participate in the Summit. In doing this, we’ll not only expose these attendees to tremendous thought leadership from our nationally-recognized CEO and investor speakers, we’ll also help foster a network of 50+ high-growth CEOs building in the Southeast through interactive sessions.

We are very excited about this line-up of speakers:

• Matt Salzberg – Chairman and Founding CEO at Blue Apron, Managing Partner at Material
• Brian Murphy – CEO of Reliaquest
• Jan Seale – Former VP of Revenue at Havenly
• Anthony Kennada – CMO at Front
• Lo Toney – Founding Managing Partner at Plexo Capital
• Victoria Treyger – General Partner at Felicis Ventures
• Erik Rannala – Founder and Managing Partner at Mucker Capital

In addition, participating CEOs will have access to investor office hours as part of the Summit, facilitated by Build In SE. By bringing investors from Greycroft, Foundry Group, NEA, Stripes Group, Mucker and Foundation Capital among others to the Summit, Southeast CEOs will gain an opportunity to build relationships for future later-stage fundraising rounds.

Having watched my team build this event, I’m proud and excited. This is truly our most impressive Summit yet and not only conveys the quality that Embarc Collective strives for each day, but also will help us put Tampa Bay on the map as we serve later stage Embarc Collective startups members and portfolio companies of Embarc Collective venture partners.

To learn more about membership to Embarc Collective, click here.