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Every semester, Ventureprise welcomes UNC Charlotte students from every college and department across campus to participate in their customer discovery program. Funded by the National Science Foundation, students and professors are given the chance to look at commercial opportunities for their research or business idea. This semester, Ventureprise collaborated with the LEADS program to give […]

This spring, the Ventureprise Launch NSF I-Corps customer-discovery program launched its Spring 2019 cohort, celebrating its 100th UNC Charlotte team. The program focuses on assisting students and professors with exploring the commercial possibilities of their research. This semester, 11 teams participated in the program, with assistance from students in the LEADS program, which is offered […]

Ventureprise in partnership with UNC Charlotte’s Student Organization, Global Business Brigades, will host Idea Pitch 2019 on Wednesday, April 3. An opportunity for all UNC Charlotte students to showcase their business or research ideas, Idea Pitch will provide tools and resources to assist with proposed entrepreneurial ventures. Ventureprise will hold two information sessions. The first […]

Sometimes having a successful startup is all about being in the right place at the right time. For BatteryXchange CEO and co-founder, Desmond Wiggan, that rings especially true. Not only was his passion paramount to his success, but his ability to adapt and identify areas of untapped opportunity were also important factors. It wasn’t until […]

Teams from CCI Earn Top-Two Prizes On a recent rainy February weekend, several students representing UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) participated in the Queen City Hackathon and two CCI squads came away with top prizes. Featuring nearly 150 participants, Charlotte’s largest data science and machine learning hackathon is for those who believe […]

Entrepreneurship and innovation are at the heart of the teaching and research of the Belk College of Business. The Belk College is offering a new public speaker series called Entrepreneurial Decisions. During each talk, entrepreneurs in the Charlotte region discuss the decisions they made, such as starting their businesses as individual founders versus teams, acquiring […]

Description Khalia Braswell is a computer scientist and founder of INTech Camp for Girls. After starting as a user experience engineer for Apple, she quit her job and moved to her hometown of Charlotte, NC, to run her non-profit full time. “Discovering You: Engineering Your World” is produced by NBC News Learn in partnership with […]

“Actually, it was here that I realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” said Miguel Avila during an interview in the 49er Foundry, the student business incubator at UNC Charlotte. Avila, a Belk College of Business senior, will graduate at Fall Commencement. Recently, he was chosen to join the Venture for America (VFA) Fellowship program […]

UNC Charlotte alumna DeAndrea Salvador ’13 is one of 33 business school graduates honored by AACSB International (AACSB)—the world’s largest business education alliance—in the 2019 Class of Influential Leaders. This annual challenge recognizes notable alumni from AACSB-accredited schools whose inspiring work serves as a model for the next generation of business leaders. Salvador, who completed […]

The Queen City’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Paul Wetenhall, executive director of Ventureprise, Charlotte’s longest-serving entrepreneur support organization, served as an important sounding board for Howitt. He provided advice on business startup strategies and connected Howitt with financial resources and potential executive leaders who could grow the business. Alex Churchill, current chief executive officer for InfoSense, is […]

Software developer and entrepreneur Chris Dix founded Thoughtpost five years ago as a vehicle to market his software consulting work. He worked with entities across a large range of industries ranging from NASA to vending machine operators to finance firms. Then last year, he had an idea for his own product and went through some […]

On the weekend of October 13th, three graduate students representing UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) participated in Duke University’s HACKDuke Coding for Good event and earned a Wolfram Award. Though top teams are rewarded, HackDuke is more about collaboration than competition and is almost entirely focused on cultivateing ideas that aim to […]

Previous installments of this series focused on the critically important entrepreneurial action of customer discovery. Understanding the customer’s problems in the context of a proposed solution almost always generates insights that require the entrepreneur to adapt. Now, let’s consider how the entrepreneur responds and the importance of a realistic, fact-based assessment of the market. Customer […]

Seven European entrepreneurs paid a visit to the Queen City this week as part of the U.S. Department of State’s 2018 Young Transatlantic Innovative Leaders Initiative. Devin Collins, Ventureprise Interim Executive Director, hosted them on UNC Charlotte’s campus. For the full article

This fall, the 49er Foundry broadened its mission to engage students across campus who are working on ideas that solve business and social problems. These new student companies are working on ventures ranging from technology to enhance educational experiences to affordable advertising to small companies. The program is free to students and does not require […]

In the most recent article in our series on customer discovery, we advised you to use customer discovery to “listen and learn.” Although that sounds obvious and easy, startup entrepreneurs find that it takes conscious effort to accomplish meaningful listening. Completing multiple, effective interviews is useful only if you can make sense of what you […]

Former Ventureprise client and Gastonia entrepreneur shooting for the stars after achieving 1,650% growth in 3 years For the full article

When Treven Stoddard was a freshman at Clemson University, he struggled with passing calculus. To get through it, he leaned on a lot of external solutions. He also started to examine what topics he struggled with the most — and how technology could make the process easier and more effective. The result of that exploration […]