Stephen Meade

An American entrepreneur, executive and business founder who is passionate about creating companies that make a difference in the world. He has the ability to catapult an idea from pure concept to the creation of a functioning business. In the past 20 years, he has created, incubated and architected 9 successful technology-based companies.

He founded Big Bamboo, LLC in 2005 to serve as the incubator for ideas worth building a team around and bringing to market. Currently, all ideas come solely from the Founder Mr. Meade, and the company does not take on or incubate outside business or services.

Currently, Stephen CEO of MagMo, Inc., a Technology Platform that has been described as “Instagram on Steroids”. MagMo is an Ad Platform disguised as a photo sharing tool.

MagMo (which stands for Magazine Moment) is a photo sharing tool for major brands to create stories and share it with their existing audience. MagMo can provide monetization for social media audiences of the brand through a patent pending process known as the “back cover”.

Prior projects include MyBlueEarth.org, (Environmental Consumer Product), Cenoplex (Mobile Technology) RONAStar (internal eBay for large companies to save money by redeploying their own idle assets), ComCom (a private labeled transaction platform for affinity groups), MagMo (photo sharing application to create your own mini-magazines), CuCme (See you, See Me; a mobile networking app to find relevant people around you), SpoonMantics (a Romantic Gift line of Chocolate and Jewelry) SiteVisions (web development sold in 2000), Virtual Sellers (Public in 1999 VDOT), and others.

For Mr. Meade, most ideas are impactful, relevant, and quite often ahead of their time. From having the 4th ever Infomercial in the late 80’s to VirtualSellers, started in 1996, which was a pioneer e-commerce transaction processing company which was the first online master merchant and offered 6 online payment options.

Each company is based around solving a unique problem. Recent companies like Cenoplex, are revolutionary as a mobile messaging platform and is the first company in the world to insert a four-second audio message in the sequencing gap of a mobile phone call.

Still others are more serious, such as MyBlueEarth.org, having a tremendous environmental impact by saving a targeted 50 Billion Gallons of water per year, and educating millions of children about conservation.

Mr. Meade is a seasoned business leader who speaks frequently on the art of networking at executive leadership conferences startup communities around the world.

His roster of successful businesses includes the founding and selling of SiteVisions.com, a website and database development company sold in 2000, and Virtual Sellers.com started in 1996, which became an innovation for an ecommerce-based transaction processing system that proved to be an early precursor to PayPal, and EAMS (Emergency Asset Management System), which is a software application for disaster management and was used in the City of New York to help manage the crisis of September 11th..

Mr. Meade's past experience includes having an integral role in developing business models, management teams, systems and strategy. In 1996, he founded Virtual Sellers.com (OTC BB: VDOT), a provider of e-commerce transaction property services for internet-based e-tailers. He helped develop the transaction systems at VDOT. The company provided a service of back-end transaction processing and clearing. VDOT was sold in 1999 to a public company that assumed the name virtualsellers.com. At its height, VDOT had a market cap of $950Million. VDOT, the technology, service, and concept was an early precursor to what later became PayPal. Prior to venturing into the entrepreneurial world, Stephen was a regional vice president with Travelers Group, a fortune 500 financial services company.

During college, Mr. Meade created a string of retail watch stores (TimesUp!), eventually selling his interests a few years later.

Mr. Meade followed that by writing three books in the Finance industry (How to improve your credit, How to apply for credit, and How to budget and finance your money). That series of books was sold through classified ads, seminars, and eventually through a 30-minute infomercial created by Mr. Meade called; Give yourself Credit.

Mr. Meade is also a seasoned business leader who speaks about the art of networking and how to build first-rate teams by recognizing how different personality types play a critical role in the success of your company. Executives, entrepreneurs, start-up founders, co-founders and entrepreneur students benefit from his talks. He frequently speaks at executive leadership conferences and the largest communities of startups in the world.

He is a frequent participant/speaker/panelist at CGI (Clinton Global Initiative), Founder Institute, Opportunity Green, and more.

He is the author of three books in the field of finance/credit improvement and business networking, a guest lecturer at universities including MIT, Harvard, Northwestern, PKI (Peter Kiewit Institute), University of Nebraska, UMKC (University of Missouri Kansas City), USC , UCLA, University of Chicago, Loyola University, Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Chicago, UMKC (University of Missouri at Kansas City), the University of Nebraska, and more.

Mr. Meade serves as an advisor to numerous companies and organizations including: International House of Blues Foundation- Chicago, (www.IHOBF.com, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Enterprise Forum (www.mitefchicago.org ), PC Guild, which provides a tour management solution for Bands and entertainment (www.pcguild.com), AgileCo.net, Twitmob, and several more. A few of his most current speeches can be seen here; www.IsolationisaGoodThing.com.

Stephen fosters the advancement of other start-up leaders as a founding member of KnockNOW, a non-profit that accelerates opportunities for entrepreneurs (Now called Isolation is a Good Thing).

Mr. Meade was a judge for the prestigious global business plan challenge from Thunderbird (www.innovationchallenge.com), UMKC’s Entrepreneurial contest for 2010, 2011 and 2012, and a finalist judge for Boats.com ec0mmerce awards.

His "Isolation Is A Good Thing" seminar trains executives how to isolate exactly what they need and who they need to meet before they execute in order to be more effective.

He welcomes an opportunity to speak if he feels he can add value to a venue.

If you are interested in having Mr. Meade speak at your next conference please contact Stephen.Meade@bigbamboollc.com. His areas of expertise are networking, building a business team, recruiting management, building advisory boards, start-ups and leadership.