Press Releases
June 21, 2000 |
Council for
Entrepreneurial Development |
CED Selects Six Companies to Participate in STREAK
The companies will present their business plans to a panel of experienced investors, accountants, attorneys, and entrepreneurs who will give them feedback about their business plan and presentation. The STREAK process allows early-stage companies to identify issues that are red flags in their business strategy so they can tend to these issues before meeting with potential investors.
Profiles of some of the selected companies:
LoneSource.com
The company's web site supplies one source for procurement of consumable goods
for specific target markets. Initially, it's target customer and market is the
banking industry. LoanSource.com has a unique pricing strategy, a unique distribution
method, and it offers unique value-added services to the target.
BenefitRates.com, Inc.
The reverse auction domain for BenefitRates.com will serve as an Internet portal
for human resource managers, employee benefit directors, and anyone looking
for a major point of entry for employee-related benefit issues and information.
The target customers of BenefitRates.com are small employers with less then
100 employees.
VirtualO.com
VirtualO.com is a web-portal where anybody, anywhere in the world can put on
display, view, and trade his or her creative work. The company's target customers
are internet users all over the world who are interested in any kind of creative
work.
ClearReason.com, Inc.
ClearReason.com provides applications that 1) help IT managers buy enterprise
software that really meets their needs, thereby reducing the high rate of IT
project failures, and 2) provide software vendors with qualified leads that
help them reduce their sales cycles and close more deals. The company's target
market is on the corporate side: CIOs, CFOs, Technology Managers of Fortune
500 and Fortune 1000 companies. On the software vendor side: large and small
vendors of high-value enterprise software products.
EliDigital, Inc.
EliDigital's proprietary, patent-pending core product, the Live Ad Network,
increases banner ad click-through rates in targeted vertical market segments
by 200 to 300 percent. Leveraging the Live Ad model over an entire network of
vertical market sites allows EliDigital to achieve substantial profits and a
unique market position as the only vertical market media company that's able
to offer both content and traffic in specific markets.
About STREAK
To date, CED's STREAK program has matched over 100 companies with a group of
hands-on, experienced mentors who can provide candid feedback about business
and fundraising strategies. STREAK participants present their business plans
to a panel consisting of entrepreneurs, financial experts, investors, legal
experts and marketing experts in a private session. Each quarter, two companies
are chosen to present at a public luncheon.
The application deadline is the 25th of each month, and accepted companies will be notified by the 15th of the subsequent month. Visit CED's Web site (www.cednc.org) to access an application.
STREAK is sponsored by Imperial Bank, an independent business bank offering a wide range of financial services tailored to corporate customers, entrepreneurs and professionals.
About CED
The Council for Entrepreneurial Development was founded in 1984 to stimulate the creation and growth of high-impact companies in the greater Research Triangle region. CED provides education, mentoring and capital formation resources to new and existing high growth entrepreneurs. CED sponsors annual conferences, seminars, workshops and monthly programs on entrepreneurial management and finance. CED is a non-profit organization and is the largest entrepreneurial support organization in the nation with more than 3,000 members representing 1,000 entrepreneurial companies, financiers and professional firms.