Ted Elliott ’94 to Keynote W&L Entrepreneurship Summit W&L's 10th Annual Entrepreneurship Summit will feature a keynote address by Ted Elliott ’94, chief executive officer of Copado.

By Taylor Meeker
March 29, 2022

Washington and Lee University’s 10th Annual Entrepreneurship Summit will include a keynote by Ted Elliott ’94. Elliott is a serial entrepreneur and the chief executive officer of Copado, a leading DevOps platform powering some of the world’s largest digital transformations.

His talk will take place Friday, April 29 at 1:30 p.m. in Stackhouse Theater. This event is free and open to members of the W&L community who register for the Entrepreneurship Summit.

Under Elliott’s leadership, Copado has grown from 30 to over 700 employees, scaled annual recurring revenue from $4.5 million to over $60 million, completed multiple tuck-in acquisitions, and reached unicorn status last August. The Copado team has attracted more than $250 million in investment from Insight Venture Capital, Softbank Vision Fund, Salesforce Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, Declaration Partners, Perpetual Investors, IBM Ventures, CapGemini Ventures, and a series of Silicon Valley legends. Copado has five W&L alumni on its management team and has had several interns from W&L since Elliott took the helm in 2018.

Elliott has built sales, consulting, and engineering teams in cloud SAAS since 2007, focusing on leveraging the Salesforce platform. Before Copado, he was CEO of Jobscience, one of the first five Salesforce independent software vendors (ISVs). He sold Jobscience to Bullhorn, Inc in March 2018.

Prior to joining Copado, Elliott served as general counsel of Eximias Pharmaceuticals, a cancer therapy company developing Thymitaq, the first small molecule cancer therapy. Before Eximias, he launched OPV Lifescience Partners, an executive search, seed capital, and corporate advisory firm for the life science industry, as a partner.

Elliott is also a member of W&L’s J. Lawrence Connolly Center for Entrepreneurship advisory board, an advisor to multiple SAAS companies, a managing member of OPV Energy Holdings LLC, and a supporter of public education, youth sailing, and innovation in cancer research.

The Entrepreneurship Summit brings together students, faculty, and alumni interested in entrepreneurship with those who have launched their own business ventures. This year’s schedule is full of interesting panels, including:

• The Crypto Revolution, featuring alumni who are entrepreneurs in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology
• Female Founders, featuring W&L alumnae who have started successful ventures
• The Patient Path to Entrepreneurship, featuring W&L alumni and parents who demonstrate that there are many paths to becoming an entrepreneur
• Non-Founder Entrepreneurship, featuring panelists who show that it’s the spirit, worldview, and the will to take action that makes someone an entrepreneur

See the full schedule of events and register here.