Stephen Meade

The Business Architect

What I have determined in my personal and professional life is my mind never stops working. As a result, I have taken the time to create a summary of the many projects or offerings we are working on.

I have also learned there are a few things I have become very good at:

1. Making connections and introductions. I am fortunate with the people I know and have met, and am always trying to help parties out by making target, specific and productive connections.
2. Looking at a current product/solution/offering and coming up with a simple, straightforward and unique way to accomplish something more efficiently.

I tend to view myself more as a business architect. The ability to create the vision to know what something should look like at the end. Its almost like creating the building on paper, but in this case its a business, idea or solution.

From there, the connecting the dots and building the teams becomes an art as much as it is a science. Getting the right people in the right places can help ensure success on any project.

This has led me to create businesses and relationships in which pushing up people and making the world a better place are paramount.

Background
Mr. Meade is the Principal in BigBamboo, LLC., a holding company formed to help bring companies from conceptualization to creation. Serving as Chairman and Resident Rainmaker, the company has created other entities such as-MonetaPro (www.MonetaPro.com), a software application called Community Commerce which provides a closed loop transaction platform and empowers members of a closed affinity group to buy and sell from each other, RONAStar (RONAStar.com), an enterprise solution which empowers large corporation to save money, SpoonMantics (SpoonMantics.com), a romantic gift line of Jewelry, Chocolates, and Clothing, EAMS (EAMS.org), an application for Homeland Security, disaster response and business continuity, TouchPoints Media, a convergent media and marketing company, www.AlleyWayProductions.com, an online calendar contest utilizing social networking, online voting, digital content, and mobile downloads, and several more.

Mr. Meade is a life long entrepreneur, having created 9 successful companies. He has been involved in e-commerce for the past ten years, having launched two other successful e-commerce ventures. This involvement has provided for an extended base of knowledge in the transaction processing and payment facilitation space. Known as an avid and exemplary connector, he has developed a network of influencers across the globe.

As the current Chairman and co-Founder of MonetaPro, Mr. Meade has played an integral role in developing the Companys business model, management team, systems and strategy. Under his direction the company has created several product offerings based on the same core technology.

The Community Commerce aspect of the MonetaPro systems enables members within an affinity group or specific community to buy and sell from each other, RONAStar is for a single corporation to redeploy their own items and assets internally, and EAMS is a business continuity tool where an organization needs to locate items they already own for quick recovery.

In 1996, Mr. Meade founded VirtualSellers.com (OTC BB: VDOT), a provider of e-commerce transaction processing services for Internet-based e-tailers. Mr. Meade helped develop the transaction processing systems at VDOT. VDOT was sold in 1999 to a public company that assumed the name Virtualsellers.com. At its height, VDOT had a market cap of $850 Million.

Under his direction the company created a transaction processing system that was seamless for the consumer. VDOT provided a private labeled ecommerce engine and customized shopping cart. VDOT also used their own merchant account to process and clear online transaction and orders for hundreds of different web sites.

The company provided a service of back-end transaction processing and clearing. The selling company would receive a check and mailing label and was left to simply ship their products.

The focus on actual sales and completed orders, as opposed to hits, page views or impressions, led the company to track different metrics for success- actual sales.

The end result was a hit-to-sales ratio of 6.5% versus an industry average of under 1%. In regards to shopping cart bail-out and order completion rate, the success was over 78% versus an industry average of only 16%.

VDOT- the technology, service and concept- was an early precursor to what later became PayPal.

Prior to founding VDOT, Mr. Meade was a regional vice president with Travelers Group, a Fortune 500 financial services company. His responsibilities included hiring and training a sales force with full commission positions. He was licensed in the insurance and securities industries and held a Series 6 & 63 license as well as Series 26 Principles license. Mr. Meade is a proven entrepreneur and leader, with a unique ability to network within high profile organizations.

A graduate of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Mr. Meade started in business when he was 18 where he created and owned retail stores which sold watches and fashion items called Times Up!

He has co-written three books in the field of credit improvement/budget and finance, which were marketed through seminars and newspapers. He also co-produced an infomercial for the product to be marketed nationwide.

Utilizing a background in sales and sales psychology, Mr. Meade brings a unique perspective to the world of online commerce and transaction processing. With the use of Neurolinguistics, logic flow, and site design, Mr. Meade has created successful, intuitive and forward thinking online business models.

The user interface of the MonetaPro product suite has generated such comments as; elegant, wow!, unlike any business application that exists, intuitive, and impressive from such luminary companies as SAP, NASA, Nebraska Economic Development, and Accenture.

Mr. Meade is a proven speaker and has been on panels, covered topics at industry events and given lectures at numerous universities including Northwestern University , University of Chicago, Loyola University, Peter Kiewit Institute, Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Missouri at Kansas City, USC Marshall School of Business, and the University of Nebraska.

Mr. Meade is on the advisory board of the following companies: Chicago House of Blues Foundation, (www.hob.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), Reinvention, Inc, which provides growth strategy and marketing for Women led businesses (www.reinventioninc.com), and West Coast Wireless, a national wireless retail chain.

Mr. Meade also provides consulting services to companies such as Creditz (Stock Symbol- CEOA) which is headed by the former President of George Lucas Film, LTD.

Mr. Meade is a Founding Member of KnockNOW- a non-profit created to accelerate the opportunity for entrepreneurs- www.knocknow.com, and is an avid soccer and volleyball player.

Recently, Mr. Meade was selected as a judge for the prestigious global business plan challenge from Thunderbird (www.innovationchallenge.com), and a finalist judge for Boats.com e-commerce challenge.