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Jeff Bekiares and Marcus Cannady/SparkMarket 

Jeffrey A. Bekiares (Co-Founder and COO) — Jeff is the Co-Founder and COO of SparkMarket, a Georgia based crowdfunding platform. He is a Georgia attorney with over six years of experience in securities and corporate law. He was one of the first attorneys to identify the crowdfunding potential of the Invest Georgia Exemption (“IGE”) and has worked closely with regulators and experts in the state and national crowdfunding community to design IGE campaigns that are compliant and safe for issuers and investors. His specific expertise is in “intrastate” crowdfunding campaign design and execution, and his company SparkMarket hosted the nation’s first successful securities based crowdfunding campaign in the nation’s history, which closed above its funding goal in November 2013.

Marcus Cannady (VP, Marketing and Development) — Among his SparkMarket peers, Marcus is the resident non-attorney; however, before having warm feelings, he spent nearly 10 years working in the banking industry. In fact, it is his experience in mortgage finance, retail banking and bank management consulting that eventually led to “Big Bank” fatigue. His refuge was found working within Atlanta’s thriving advertising/marketing industry with Cox Media Group. SparkMarket has allowed for the marriage of all these skill sets and experiences–he couldn’t be happier.

Adam Lee/Bohemian Guitars 

Adam Lee, is a South African born entrepreneur and the Cofounder & CEO of Bohemian Guitars. Adam leads Bohemian Guitars, a company with a vision of changing the way people think about musical instruments by offering a more affordable, stylish, & sustainable way to make music. Adam, with Bohemian Guitars recently completed the nations first open equity crowdfunding campaign since 1933 via the Georgia based platform, SparkMarket. This past March, Bohemian Guitars competed at the Global Innovators Competition at the GTS Summit in Palo Alto, a competition judged by VC’s including Dave McClure and Bill Tai (Bohemian Guitars placed 3rd out of 10 international start-ups). Prior to Bohemian Guitars, Adam worked as an IT Project Manager for BCD Travel in which he managed a cross-functional project team of 30+ members that focused on implementing PCI Compliant web, development, and application environments to host and protect sensitive data.