US Stem Cell Inc (USRM)

[Dragon Lady]

"To draw celebrities ranging from Pitbull to Howard Stern, this event will be a lot bigger than typical showcase type events. "??

Huh? PROOF? Facts? Data? A "rapper" is hardly the pinnacle of a "tech investment" um "event" IMO? I don't think there's ever been a credible Silicon Valley, MAJOR venture capital "event" where anyone cared if a "rapper" was in attendance or not?

Further, all the headline says is Stern was/is "invited" - not that he's attending or not and it says he's there "to party" with said rapper. Talk about grasping at meaningless straws, IMO. What does Stern have to do with anything in high technology?

Claim it will be "a LOT bigger than typical showcase events" -as opposed to say something put on by a credible firm like UBS, Cowen, Morgan Stanley or JP or Citi or various tech/VC incubators out of silicon valley- where most, serious tech "investment" money comes from- not some place in Florida, of all states?

Thee "big" one, JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. This convention is held in San Francisco’s Union Square every January. This is the granddaddy of all biotech industry conferences, having been around for more than 30 years. All the top executives in biotech and Big Pharma are there, along with the major venture capitalists, fund managers, Wall Street analysts, and media.

"Bio" in San Diego (which has a huge, bio-tech incubator campus) is also one of the top- for example, Sir Richard Branson, a billionaire who loves investing in tech, will be there this yr, not some "rapper"
http://convention.bio.org/?gclid=CPTDx678wb0CFVKIfgodhW8AgA

Biopharm America, Boston is another biggie- every major player is there typically. Boston of course, for anyone in the know, is also a huge tech corridor area. Again, don't think they put "rappers" on their billing ever or care if Howard Stern is mentioned?
http://www.ebdgroup.com/bpa/index.php

Top names in Silicon Valley- as in the who's who of venture money would be names like Kleiner Perkins Caulfied & Byers, Sand Hill Ventures (entire books written about the fame of "Sand Hill Rd" and the companies launched from that area) and the following- perhaps the most famous names in all of VC money investing and no, not familiar with any "rappers" ever associating with them:

Accel Partners - Investors in Real Networks, UUNet, Foundry, and WalMart.com.

Andreessen Horowitz - Investors in Airbnb, Instagram and Twitter.

Benchmark Capital - Investors in eBay, AOL, Pointcast, Geoworks.

Bessemer Venture Partners - Investors in EToys, Verisign, Verio, PSINet, Flycast.

DAG Ventures - Investors in BitTorrent, Chegg, Funny or Die

Draper Fisher Jurvetson - Investors in Hotmail, I-Cube and Upside.

Canaan Partners - Investors in DoubleClick, Computron, EStamp.

CMEA Ventures - Specializes in high-technology and life sciences.

Foundation Capital -- Investors in Netflix, SimplyHired, Atheros Communications.

Greylock Partners -- Investors in Facebook, LinkedIn, Oodle and Claria.

Khosla Ventures - Led by Vinod Khosla, Sun Microsystems co-founder
Hummer Winblad - Investors in BizTravel.com, TheKnot, NetGravity.
(Vinod is a LEGEND in Venture Capitol - appears in Forbes regularly for example)

Institutional Venture Partners - Investors in Excite, Seagate, Cirrus Logic.

Interwest Partners - Investors in Cyrix, Silicon Graphics, Stratacom.

Khosla Ventures - Founded by well-known investor Vinod Khosla.
(Again, Vinod is LEGEND for his stream of VC successes)

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers - Investors in Google, Sun, Intuit and AOL. (Kleiner alread mentioned above- LEGEND IN VC WORLD)

LightSpeed Ventures - Formerly Weiss, Peck and Greer Venture Partners. Investors in Brocade Communications, Blue Nile, Adaptec, Doublelick.

Mayfield Fund - Investors in Amgen, LSI Logic, Broadvision and Silicon Graphics.

Meritech Capital Partners - Late-stage Venture Capital.

Mobius Venture Capital - Formerly known as Softbank Venture Capital.

Mohr, Davidow Ventures - Investors in Critical Path, Rambus, Brocade and Viant.

New Enterprise Associates - Investors in Macromedia, The Learning Company, Silicon Graphics.

Norwest Venture Partners

Onset Ventures

Palo Alto Venture Partners - Investors in AdForce, AvantGo, Career Builder and Esurance.

Redpoint Ventures - New firm from partners of IVP and Brentwood.

Sand Hill Capital - Offers bridge loans to high-tech firms.

Sequoia Capital - Investors in Electronic Arts, Yahoo, Cisco Systems (LEGENDS OF FAME IN VC WORLD)

Silicom Ventures - Group of angel investors

Sutter Hill Ventures

Technology Crossover Ventures

US Venture Partners

Versant Ventures - Investors in biotech and medical devices.

ANY of those are names that serious players try/need to get in front of to typically "go big" IMHO. It's the "rolodex" of not only the money world, but the "connections" world- where members for board seats come from, and CEO's are eventually found for rapidly growing firms, where top mgt skills for rapidly emerging firms is located via key "connections", etc. I don't think Howard Stern is known for any of that, but that's just my opinion. "rappers" - same.