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Harold Hughes      

Bandwagon CEO, Tech Innovator & Diverse Ventures Champion

Harold Hughes is the founder & CEO of Bandwagon, a South Carolina-based live experience technology company. Under his leadership, Bandwagon has raised more than $4M in venture capital and successfully acquired IdealSeat, Inc. in 2020. Their customers include Fortune 50 brands, entertainers, and professional and collegiate athletes. As a first-generation American, Hughes prioritized education, receiving two Bachelors degrees (Economics and Political Science) from Clemson University and later received his MBA from Clemson while he led business development at a Fortune 1000 company based in Greenville, South Carolina. As a web3 builder and community leader, Hughes published "A Kids Book About Blockchain" to help educate people "from 6 to 60" about the revolutionary technology that Bandwagon specializes in.

As a community builder, Hughes co-founded Black@ Labs, where he provides resources and a 12-week accelerator curriculum to help support the next generation of entrepreneurs. While his expertise focuses on go-to-market strategies and business development, as an experienced operator, Hughes has helped founders go from the idea stage to scaling as an advisor and fractional operator.

Hughes is also an active angel investor, primarily investing in women, people of color, and Black founder-led companies. Most notably, he has invested in Partake Foods, the Jay-Z-backed CPG company making allergy-friendly snacks, and companies like Liquid Death, Athletic Greens, Republic, Stix, Major League Pickleball, and the National Cycling League.

Speech Topics

People Are Buying JPGs?!: WTF are NFTs

While many of us are still navigating our pandemic wardrobe, a new wave of technology has become prominent and flat-out unavoidable. NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens are here -- thanks to Blockchain -- and given their variety of use cases, they are here to stay. NFTs are currently being used as a way for artists to participate in the value creation of their work in perpetuity, allowing communities to token-gate their access, and allowing brands to connect more directly with their customers. In this session, we will learn what NFTs are, what they can do, and how you can keep these new valuable digital assets safe.

Work-Life Balance is a Myth!

The concept of Work-Life Balance has become increasingly discussed lately while becoming seemingly impossible to achieve. If you have ever felt this, you are in for a treat as we unpack the myth of Work-Life Balance and shift our focus to Work-Life Prioritization. We will talk about healthy habits, responsible routines, and productive processes that we can all apply to feel better at home and work.

Underestimated: Keys to Navigating Being a Person of Color in Tech

As a first-generation American and son to Jamaican parents, Harold knows what it is like to overcome challenges. Being one of 5 children growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, he understood what it was like to grow up without some of the key resources that he needed. Now, an entrepreneur, Harold shares his story with others as well as his hacks for overcoming the challenges of being a person in color in tech as it relates to growing your network, raising capital, and getting in the door with your first customer.

Blockchain Beyond the Coin

Like many great innovations, the first use case isn’t always the best one. Harold and his team have navigated the adoption of blockchain technology in an enterprise environment to show that crypto doesn’t only mean cryptocurrencies. Harold will share his thoughts on permissioned-blockchains, Zero-Knowledge Proof, and other enterprise level solutions in the blockchain space.

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