Mr. Friel has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services sector with a strong focus on business development, strategic investments, alliance management and working with early stage technology companies. Mr. Friel has served as a founder, director, and/or advisor to several companies, including 6fusion, eosMYCO, rFactr, Moneta Corporation, Net Direct Systems, CapitalStream, and InQuira. Mr. Friel founded Bank of America’s Strategic Alliances and Investments group charged with identifying emerging technologies and enabling business unit adoption. As President of Banc of America Technology Investments, Inc. and Banc of America Ecommerce Holdings, Inc., Mr. Friel managed the investment of over $125 million in more than 40 early-stage portfolio companies in the payments, payment processing, security and authentication, and billing sectors. Notable investments ($1 billion + exits) included Signio, an electronic payments gateway which was acquired by VeriSign, Shopping.com, which pioneered online comparison shopping and is now owned by eBay, and Archipelago, the nation's first totally open, all-electronic stock exchange which merged with the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Friel was SVP and Director of Financial and Economic Analysis at Banc of America, and taught economics at North Carolina State University.