| News & Events 2007-2008
Entrepreneurship is Focus of February Skeptics
 On February 26, Jim Medalia presented a Herman Hollerith lecture on entrepreneurship. Medalia started his entrepreneurial
career in 1979 with the founding of Digital Exchange, the first
computer graphics service bureau in New York City. His vision
to modernize and redefine the graphics and pre-press industry
has become the model for doing business today. Digital Exchange
was nationally recognized for its bold and innovative use of
cutting-edge technology, unconventional marketing and outstanding
customer service.
Medalia started the business with a $2,000 loan and one employee and built it to a 24/7 graphic services company of 40 employees generating over $4 million in revenues annually. He sold Digital Exchange in 1998 to found Justballs.com, one of the first e-commerce sites which utilized the Internet for end-to-end retail business. Justballs.com was a catalyst in transporting a mature but stagnant industry – the sporting goods industry – into the 21st Century. Medalia raised $17 million of venture capital in three rounds of financing in a very difficult funding environment, hired key management, including the CEO, and assembled the Board of Directors.
Justballs.com sold competition, fitness, and recreation balls and equipment to over 250 universities and had 18,000 individual customers. Justballs was consistently recognized through awards and the press for its unique vertical approach to the market and again for its best of class customer service.
Currently Medalia is executing his third start- up, Charter Private Safe Deposit Company. Charter Private is the first and only non-bank safe deposit facility licensed by the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance.
A full listing of the Skeptics programs is available here.
Updated 2/27/08
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