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Area’s top tech companies team up with NEXT to attract hundreds of local students to first ever “Intern Greenville” event

Greenville, SC - On Monday, April 11, hundreds of applicants, ranging from high school to
graduate school students, will meet face to face with dozens of CEOs and other executives from
some of the Upstate’s top technology companies during the first “Intern Greenville” event
(www.InternGreenville.com).

Hosted by NEXT at downtown Greenville’s NEXT Innovation Center, the event’s “speed dating”
format is designed to provide students and business executives with an opportunity to efficiently
and effectively find the best matches for coveted technology-focused internship positions at
participating area companies. In addition to gaining valuable experience, interns could
potentially gain an edge in an increasingly competitive job market and be hired for full-time
employment after graduation.

The initiative should also help increase regional awareness about exciting local job
opportunities offered in a wide range of technology-related fields, including software
development, graphic design, and electrical engineering. Due to the perception of greater
opportunity elsewhere, a high percentage of graduates, specifically those in technology-related
fields, have been leaving South Carolina to pursue jobs elsewhere, a trend that is of increasing
concern to business and political leaders around the state.

“One of the long-term objectives of Intern Greenville is to help reverse the ‘brain drain’ by
keeping more top graduates and knowledge-based jobs here in the Upstate,” says Brenda
Laakso, Vice President of NEXT, a collaborative whose mission is to support the start-up and
growth of globally-impactful, knowledge-based companies in the Upstate.

Students aren’t the only ones benefiting from being part of Intern Greenville. Some of the
area’s top technology companies, many of whom have had difficulty implementing independent
intern searches in years past, will enjoy having a larger pool of talented area students from
which to select their interns.

The idea for Intern Greenville started in 2009, when two Upstate technology companies,
GNOSO and OrangeCoat, realized they had a shared need: attracting talented, technology-
focused students at area schools to apply for internships. By pooling their resources, the two
companies were able to successfully attract a greater number of high quality interns, some of
whom have gone on to full-time positions at the companies.

News about the success of this initial collaboration between the two companies quickly spread
to other area technology companies. Peter Barth, CEO of NEXT Big Thing, decided to get his
company involved after learning about the opportunity through his friendship with Peter
Waldschmidt, founder and CEO of GNOSO.

Asked how this year’s event got started given the busy schedules of the executives and

entrepreneurs involved, Barth says “For 2011, we wanted to do it bigger and better and include
any technology company in Greenville, so 7 weeks ago with the help of NEXT we polled our
business group to see who was interested, threw a site up, and started letting the regional
universities and high schools know about it. 300 submissions later, I think it’s fair to say that we
filled a need.”

“We’re taking it one step at a time, but we’re all really excited about the impact this initiative
could have on the students, schools, businesses, and the Upstate in general for years to come,”
added Waldschmidt.

Some area businesses and students have already felt the impact that Intern Greenville can
have. Adam Gautsch, co-founder and Sales and Marketing Director of Orange Coat,
says “Intern Greenville lets regional students 'try out’ great jobs at cool companies in the
Upstate, while also letting those companies see what the interns can bring to the table if they
were to become full-time employees. Our two most recent hires came from this process, and
we hope that's going to become a big trend for other technology companies in the area."

For additional information about Intern Greenville, please contact:
Brenda Laakso
Vice President, NEXT
www.NEXTUpstateSC.org
Email: blaakso@greenvillechamber.org
Office: (864) 751-4806
Cell: (864) 525-0237