Great last minute addition to Venture Alpha: DAVE MCCLURE of 500 Startups will be on our accelerator panel. If you’ve never heard Dave speak, you’re in for a real treat.

Just had a great prep call with Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital (Twitter, Tumblr, Runkeeper). He will be our final keynote speaker next Thursday. I think LPs will really appreciate the unique perspective he has on VC.

Another great addition to the event. COURT COURSEY of TomorrowVentures will speak on our panel about the most disruptive technologies to expect in the next five years. TomorrowVentures is Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s VC fund. See its portfolio here: http://www.tomorrowvc.com/portfolio

More great Venture Alpha news. Peter Barris, Managing GP of New Enterprise Associates, has agreed to give a keynote.

The hits keep coming, folks. Mahendra Ramsinghani, who co-wrote ”Startup Boards” with Brad Feld, will moderate two panels for us: ”The Defining Traits of an Exceptional VC” and ”Finding & Backing the Next 5x Emerging Manager.”

Great news. Rock star venture capitalist BIJAN SABET of Spark Capital will be our anchor keynote speaker at Venture Alpha in Boston on April 4. Bijan backed Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, RunKeeper and a bunch of other cool companies. Check out the conference agenda here: http://www.vcjconferences.com/events/east_2013/

Yet another big name for Venture Alpha. Scott Maxwell, Senior Managing Director & Founder of OpenView Venture Partners, rounds out our exit market panel. He joins Marc Brown, Global Head of M&A for Microsoft, and Lee Counselman, Managing Director of Global Technology M&A for Deutsche Bank.

Great addition to our emerging managers panel: Serguei Kouzmine, co-founder and Managing Partner of the new Quantum Wave Fund. Serguei has a Ph.D. in physics from Institute of Nuclear Physics in Russia, has been an entrepreneur and was previously CEO of Ritzio Entertainment Group, which he grew from $40M to $1.25B in revenue. He joins panelists…[Read more]

Landed another great mod. Jason Pontin, my old boss at iconic Red Herring and now Editor of MIT’s Technology Review, will moderate our ”Future of Media” discussion. Panelists are Eric Hippeau of Lerer Ventures, Peter Pham of Science Inc. and Amish Jani of FirstMark Capital.

Psyched that John Furrier, Editor and CEO of SiliconAngle, is going to moderate our ”Disruptive Tech” panel at Venture Alpha. Panelists include Howard L Morgan of First Round, Jeff Fagnan of Atlas Venture and Dan Ciporin of Canaan Partners. Should be a great discussion!

Just lined up another great keynoter: Kirsten Green of emerging manager Forerunner Ventures. She’s backed some really cool consumer startups, including Birchbox, Bonobos and Warby Parker. More on Kirsten here: http://www.forerunnerventures.com/about#kirsten-green