Brian Smith is a managing director and member of the Piper Jaffray consumer investment banking team, focused on providing M&A advisory services to companies in healthy, active and sustainable living industries, with a focus on fitness, sports nutrition and multi-unit retail.
Prior to joining Piper Jaffray, Smith was a partner and founding principal at Partnership Capital Growth, a boutique investment bank providing M&A and private placement services to health and wellness-oriented businesses. Prior to investment banking, Smith served as a director of corporate development and sales & marketing analysis at EAS, a leading sports nutrition and supplements company based in Golden, Colo. Smith previously worked with North Castle Partners where he was primarily focused on new deal generation, due diligence and financial modeling. Prior to NCP, Smith was a management consultant for Bain & Company in Boston and Los Angeles.
Smith graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a bachelor's degree in economics.
8 members of our esteemed selection committee for the Petcare Innovation Summit 'Best In Show' spotlight joined together for a roundtable to share there thought on a number of key themes, including:
Peter AJ van der Made has been at the forefront of computer innovation for 45 years. Mr. van der Made is the inventor of a computer immune system and founded vCIS Technology where he served as CTO and later Chief Scientist when it was acquired by Internet Security Systems and later by IBM. Previously, he founded PolyGraphic Systems, and designed a high resolution, high-speed color Graphics Accelerator board and subsequent chip for 900x1200 IBM PC graphics. Mr. van der Made published a book, Higher Intelligence, which describes the architecture of the brain from a computer science perspective. He is working on a follow-up book that goes deeper into neuromorphic architecture and focusses on the algorithms that are performed in the neocortex. Mr. van der Made designed the first generations of digital neuromorphic devices on which the Akida chip is based between 2004 and 2007, when he applied for a patent on this technology which was subsequently granted. He is actively involved in the design of the next generation of Akida chips and continues his research in advanced neuromorphic architectures.
