Investors, startup founders and industry veterans met for the second event as part of the lead up to the 3 Rivers Venture Fair, which will be happening in October.
Alongside networking sessions, the event featured two panels. One featured a discussion of lessons learned from working in the industry. The three panelists were Mike Green, managing director of Mountain State Capital; Eric Kline, partner at Troutman Pepper; and Randy Eager, CEO of SilisiumTech, a CMU spin-out that develops silicon wafers for solar panels.
"You're so fortunate in this region to have such a vibrant community of entrepreneurs," Green, whose firm is based in Morgantown, West Virginia, said during the panel. "I look around and see so many people who know how to do so many things. The whole point of that is that if you're smart, you'll tap into that network and get advice from some of the people who have been here before."
The panelists also discussed the importance of mentorship.
"I used to tell a story about meeting Bill Gates, and I asked him [for advice] and he said, 'the first thing that I ever did when I started my company was find a bunch of people that are smarter than me and made them my mentors,'" Green said. "Find mentors. Find people who have been there before. Find people who have failed and have maybe not been successful the first time around but came away and learned from that experience and got better from it."
Panelists agreed that more can be learned from failure than from success.
"There's people I see coming out of college and I look at them and I say 'your particular thing sucks," Green said. "I look at the entrepreneur and I say 'I hope you fail' and they look at me like I'm nuts. The reason is because I want them to go ahead and do what they're passionate about and want to do. I want you to go out and fail and then come back to me the second time and you're going to have the experience not to fail."
Another lesson discussed was the importance of putting together a team and board of directors based on merit, not personal relationships. Eager said that success is "really all about the team and finding the right team."
Additionally, panelists discussed that VCs will pass on a pitch not because the idea itself is bad, but because they're skeptical of the team and the founder.
"Sometimes it isn't a product-market fit, it's a founder-problem fit," Eager said.
The other panel saw startup CEOs pitch to a panel of venture capitalists and receive feedback. These companies were Swan Neurotech, a startup developing treatments for nerve repair; Ecotone Renewables, a sustainability focused startup; and Olive, a startup utilizing artificial intelligence to measure people and pair them with properly sized clothing.
The 3 Rivers Venture Fair will be held on October 29 and 30 at the Wyndham Grand Hotel. The event will include approximately 150 companies and 75 investors.
