Piedmont RIA through its affiliate Militello Capital, is pleased to announce it made a venture capital investment in Dulles, Virginia based Speek, Inc.. Speek is a super simple and visual conference platform that uses a personal or business link (i.e., speek.com/yourname), rather than a traditional phone number and PIN to connect conference calls.

Conference calls today are a frustrating experience that often require the download of cumbersome software, a multi-minute process to join, and the inability to share content and collaborate, not to mention participants often don't know who's on the call or who's talking. Speek's fast and light browser-based call experience spares all the headaches of a traditional conference call. The frictionless experience lets users know who's on the call, who's talking, share files, view social profiles, and use call controls. Participants can start or join a call from their phone, the web, SMS, their mobile browser and a soon to be released iPhone app. With Speek, callers don't have to download a heavy application or register to join. And it's free.

Speek's co-founders have an experienced background in bringing voice and web communication products to market. John Bracken, CEO, is the former COO and co-founder of Evite.com, and a former business development executive at AOL (AIM). The CTO Danny Boice, educated at Harvard and MIT (Sloan), has founded multiple start-ups, and is widely respected in tech circles in the D.C. area.

According to William Militello, Managing Principal of Piedmont; "Speek is revolutionizing the way conference calls are held with their quick and easy user-friendly platform. We are impressed with Speek's commitment to innovate in a space that hasn't changed in over twenty years."

"We are very excited to have Piedmont as an investor," says John Bracken, CEO of Speek, "Piedmont is making a meaningful difference in the community by pioneering a new style of investing that fills a large need for early-stage companies and investors. Not only did we connect with their tremendous firm and team, we're thrilled to be associated with the high-caliber of start-ups in Piedmont's portfolio, which has already provided us with enhanced credibility."

Speek.com is the fastest and easiest solution for conference calling, and intends to become the place for productive conversations. Existing conference call solutions are complicated and expensive, and Speek intends to disrupt this market with a super simple, visual and free solution based on modern web and voice services.