General News

From pre-seed-stage startups to multibillion-dollar tech firms, the Fire Awards are a peek at what set these companies ablaze over the last year — things like new funding rounds, product launches and pandemic pivots that not only saved the business, but benefited customers along the way. They’re companies that have expanded, inked major acquisition deals […]

UNCC Ventureprise and City Startup Labs are collaborating on an accelerator program aimed at drawing in a new batch of mentors for local entrepreneurs. The program, called the Inclusive Innovation Leadership Academy, was created to diversify the leaders and mentors who work alongside founders and entrepreneurs, said Ventureprise Director Devin Collins. READ MORE

Davidson-based Grocery Shopii has raised a $1 million seed round that comes on the heels of a partnership with Microsoft. Grocery Shopii, founded in 2018 by Katie Hotze, is a meal-planning application that helps grocers get more customers to fill their online carts and purchase online orders. Grocery Shopii has created a tool that allows […]

Local tech startup BatteryXchange seems to have hit its stride. The startup announced last week that it recently closed on an investment from local venture capital firm Defiance Ventures. The VC, founded in 2020 by John Espy and Tareq Amin, focuses on B2B enterprise technology companies. It combines capital and early-stage investment expertise with real-world […]

Persistence and grit are two things that any successful startup founder possesses. For Abi Olukeye and Desmond Wiggan, those qualities paid off in a big way. Olukeye’s startup Smart Girls HQ and Wiggan’s startup BatteryXchange, co-founded by Aubrey Yeboah, were recently announced as recipients of NC IDEA’s $50,000 seed grants. Read more in Charlotte Inno’s […]

DURHAM, NC – April 26, 2021 – NC IDEA, a private foundation committed to supporting entrepreneurial ambition and economic empowerment in North Carolina, announced today that the organization has awarded nearly $200,000 to nineteen North Carolina startups in its sixth NC IDEA MICRO grant cycle. Since the inaugural cycle in Spring 2018, NC IDEA MICRO […]

Last week, Ventureprise — UNCC’s innovation and entrepreneurship center — was named one of 10 recipients of a nationally recognized award. Devin Collins, Ventureprise interim executive director, said the U.S. Small Business Administration and National Science and Technology Council’s Lab-to-Market Inclusive Innovation Ecosystem Prize recognizes the organization’s effort to address inclusivity, innovation and sustainable growth […]

Abi Olukeye, the founder of Charlotte-based Smart Girls HQ, began her journey through Ventureprise, the University’s center for innovation and entrepreneurship. She participated in Venturprise’s Regional National Science Foundation (NFS) Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) programming in fall 2018. This six-week curriculum is designed to take early-stage entrepreneurs through the customer discovery process, which involves 30-plus interviews to […]

Dr. Victor Chen, Associate Professor of International Management in Belk College of Business and Ventureprise Launch National Science Foundation I-Corps alumnus, has designed a course for students to assist startup ventures with global potential. At its core, the Global Launch course will focus on training business majored students’ theories and practices for global market assessment, […]

Uptown Charlotte’s 7th Street Public Market is now home to BatteryXchange‘s newest tech product, Apollo. BatteryXchange, co-founded in 2018 by Desmond Wiggan and Aubrey Yeboah, is a rental platform that provides rentable, portable batteries to cell phone users. The startup launched Hercules at Packard Place last year, a kiosk machine with 24 portable batteries and […]