Press Release


Contact: Robert Albright
Council for Entrepreneurial Development
ralbright@cednc.org

Phone: 919-549-7500 ext.123
FAX: 919-549-7405
www.cednc.org

Seven More Companies Selected for CED's Venture 2004

Final Application Deadline Slated for Jan. 31

January 22, 2004, Research Triangle Park, NC - - The Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) has chosen seven additional companies to present at Venture 2004, and encouraged other interested companies to apply by Jan. 31 for consideration in the final selection round. Scheduled for April 27-28, 2004, in Chapel Hill, NC, CED's Venture 2004 will continue a 21-year tradition of showcasing North Carolina's innovation economy and leading investment opportunities.

Les Bethune, co-chair of Venture 2004 and partner with Ernst & Young LLP, said the presenting companies and other speakers at this year's Venture conference would highlight the region's high-growth entrepreneurial community.

“Venture 2004 will feature speakers and investment opportunities that showcase the growth of the Research Triangle and North Carolina as a leading innovation-based region,” Bethune said. “CED's Venture conference provides an unparalleled opportunity to highlight the exciting entrepreneurial culture here.”

The companies recently selected to present at Venture 2004 include the following:

  • APEX Analytix (Greensboro, NC - www.apexanalytix.com) provides audit and cost recovery software and services designed to detect, recover and prevent errors related to corporate expenditures. The company's product enables clients to assess and understand the weaknesses in their procurement and payables systems, to implement an overpayment and duplicate payment prevention tool and to better manage relationships with suppliers.
  • Chorus Systems (Durham, NC - www.chorussystems.com) develops enterprise software solutions for systems management and IT security. The company's Uptime solution automates the detection, diagnosis, reporting and remediation of problems on servers and end user PCs.
  • DarPharma, Inc. (Chapel Hill, NC - www.darpharma.com) is a pharmaceutical company focused on developing dopamine receptor agonists for neurological and psychiatric diseases, including Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, cognition and memory disorders and autism. These neurologic and psychiatric diseases are the result of imbalances in the neurotransmitter dopamine, which makes up more than 50% of the neurotransmitters in the brain.
  • End II End Communications, Inc. (Charlotte, NC - www.eiiecomm.com) is a network security and communications software company focused on bringing network equality to remote offices at the edge of a company's wide area network. End II End's patent pending Broadband Network Optimization (BNO) Technology maximizes the throughput of any broadband connection and integrates all essential network services on a single platform.
  • Noverant, Inc. (Raleigh, NC - www.noverant.com) delivers systems and services to control and streamline the challenges of regulatory compliance for FDA regulated industries. The company streamlines compliance related activities and provides "on demand" information to provide immediate response to regulatory agency audits, thereby lowering the risk of non-compliance. Noverant further enhances its systems by focusing exclusively on the needs of industries regulated by the FDA.
  • Piedmont Pharmaceuticals LLC (Greensboro, NC - www.piedmontpharma.com) identifies underserved markets and creates pharmaceuticals that offer differentiated advantages through its drug delivery and proprietary formulation technologies. The company's lead human pharmaceutical candidate is a head lice treatment that uses a non-toxic formulation, without any of the classical insecticides traditionally used in lice treatments.
  • Serenex (Durham, NC - www.serenex.com) Serenex is a drug discovery company built around a high throughput, compound-centric chemoproteomics technology platform. The company has the ability to screen compounds against as many as 4,000 potential targets simultaneously. As well as having an internal discovery pipeline, the company has discovery collaborations with several large pharma and biotech companies including GSK, Lilly, J&J, Abbott, Roche, Chiron and Aventis.

During the first selection round in December 2003, CED chose six other companies to participate in the conference:

The Venture 2004 Selection Committee includes professional venture capitalists and angel investors from throughout the Southeast. The committee is seeking presenting applications from high-growth, North Carolina-based companies from an array of industries that are looking to raise either initial or subsequent rounds of professional equity capital. For more information on applying to present, visit http://www.cednc.org/conferences/venture/2004/presenters/.

In addition to company presentations, Venture 2004 will include leading industry speakers, extensive networking opportunities and exclusive investor-only events.

About Venture 2004: CED's 21st annual Venture 2004 - Where great minds meet smart money - is scheduled for April 27-28 at The Friday Center in Chapel Hill, NC. The conference is presented with support from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and The National Venture Capital Association. Last year's conference, Venture 2003, drew a crowd of more than 850 investors, service professionals, entrepreneurs and others involved in the entrepreneurial funding process from throughout the United States. For more information on applying to present or general registration, visit www.cednc.org/venture.

About CED: The Council for Entrepreneurial Development, located in Research Triangle Park, NC, is a private, non-profit organization formed 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 through annual conferences, seminars, workshops and monthly programs on entrepreneurial management and finance. CED is the largest entrepreneurial support organization in the nation with more than 4,000 members representing 1,100 entrepreneurial companies, financiers and professional firms. www.cednc.org

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