Silicon Valley Veteran Rob Bearden to Keynote Greenville's 2019 Venture Pitch Conference

GREENVILLE, S.C., Feb. 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- NEXT Upstate announced today that Rob Bearden will deliver the opening keynote for their 4^th annual conference on April 11^th, 2019.

As CEO, Rob led Hortonworks from its founding to IPO and eventually to its successful merger with Cloudera. During this tenure, Hortonworks was the fastest enterprise software company to reach $100M in annual revenue and the first open source company to successfully IPO since RedHat. Prior to that, Rob served as chief operating officer of both SpringSource and JBoss, which were also some of the most commercially successful open source companies in history. Previously, he served in senior roles at Oracle, where he directed a $1 billion sales organization, and he also served as Entrepreneur-in-Resident (EIR) at famed silicon valley venture firm, Benchmark Capital.

Rob will share lessons learned during the rapid growth stage at Hortonworks as well as anecdotes and insights regarding corporate culture, M&A's, corporate VC and partnering with industry leaders. Rob will also discuss his current role as Board Member of Cloudera and his current term as entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business.

The keynote address will open the NEXT Venture Pitch conference on Thursday afternoon, April 11th, 2019. The 4^th annual event will be hosted at the Greenville One Conference center, in the heart of highly acclaimed downtown Greenville, S.C.

This year, the NEXT Venture Pitch conference will follow the very successful 2018 format that includes an advanced deep dive session in the morning for the benefit of the region's top entrepreneurs. Along with the morning CEO Workshop, select innovative South-based startups will pitch to an audience of approximately 300 business leaders and venture capitalists. A fireside chat with highly accomplished leaders in the world of sports will share their experiences in building championship teams. Finally, a panel of leading venture capitalists will assess investment trends in the Southeast.

This year, NEXT Venture Pitch is produced in partnership with Clemson University and presented by SCRA ? two strategic allies in the Greenville/Upstate S.C. entrepreneur ecosystem. The event is expected to sell out as it did in both 2017 and 2018. Registration for NEXT Venture Pitch will open on Monday, February 18^th, 2019.

About NEXT
NEXT attracts and grows high-impact, knowledge-based companies by developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem and connecting entrepreneurs to it. NEXT is a production of the Greenville Chamber and currently supports over 120 knowledge-based companies in Upstate South Carolina.

For more information, visit www.nextsc.org.

SOURCE NEXT Upstate