David Gardner is a serial entrepreneur, writer, adviser, and early-stage fund manager with over thirty-five years of experience in creating and building software technology companies. After failing at retirement twice, David became the Triangle's most active angel investor spending his time as a volunteer coach and mentor to startup founders and managing a free accelerator he sponsored with the Town of Cary. To combat the lack of early-stage capital in NC, David created and runs Cofounders Capital, an early stage seed fund, the success of which led to subsequent $31M and $50M funds.As an entrepreneur, David was the founder or co-founder of seven companies including PeopleClick (purchased for $100 million) and Report2Web, which sold for $12M in less than eleven months from its inception. He has demonstrated a record for consistency across multiple industries with six successful exits in a row... and one he refuses to talk about! David served as the Executive VP and Thought Leader for Compuware, a Fortune 1000 Corporation, after it acquired ProviderLink, a healthcare IT venture he founded. As a writer, David is author of a popular book on entrepreneurship called The StartUp Hats. He has published many articles and forward-thinking white papers on technical innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development. He also writes regularly for WRAL Techwire. Among other firsts, David is widely credited with founding the first enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) venture in NC. As a lifelong learner, David is constantly researching new technologies and challenging traditional ways of thinking. In addition to several years of full-time computer science and business-related post graduate studies at NCSU, Mr. Gardner holds degrees in Philosophy and Music with a postgraduate concentration in theology and dead languages.What drives David today is his passion for helping smart, coach-able, first-time entrepreneurs build their businesses, watching them succeed and witnessing their life-changing transformations.