THREE of the Top TEN Startups To Watch in North Carolina are from the Wilmington ecosystem. HOW is this happening from the BEACH?

I have been involved in the North Carolina technology and innovation ecosystem for almost 25 years. That means I have been working with the North Carolina Technology Association through my work in Charlotte, Asheville, Durham and now Wilmington.

In fact, for the VERY FIRST event I hosted in Wilmington even BEFORE the UNCW CIE opened, we hosted NC TECH leaders and some local entrepreneurs at the UNCW Chancellors conference room in 2013. We have been consistent for 11 years to get our entrepreneurs more active in this important organization.

Last year, the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW) co-hosted our first Brews and Bytes event with NC TECH and had the largest such event in the state of North Carolina tour of cities. Yes, 250 people attended in a city of 125,000 people. And our next monthly events without NC TECH also had 250 people with the Managing Director of Revolution Capital from DC.

This week, THREE Wilmington startups and members of the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW) were named in the TOP TEN Startups to Watch by the North Carolina Technology Association (NC TECH) and several other were named Finalists for some of the biggest awards categories for the upcoming annual awards event. (The picture above is from 2023 when OpiAID won the Top #AI and #DataAnalytics company in North Carolina.)

But how have these three entrepreneurs made this top ten list from Wilmington?

As Wilmington continues to evolve from a fishing village, service economy, tourism destination to adding a top ranked innovation ecosystem, the city still does not have a dominant vertical industry in the startup ecosystem. But we are seeing some important trends that have been intentionally nurtured. (Right Max Allen and Gary Miller ?)

1. FinTech startups coming from the leadership at Live Oak Bank - One of the top reasons of the growth of the Wilmington ecosystem is the startup branches of Live Oak Bank including nCino, Apiture, Synply (the latest) and of course Canapi Ventures. While one of the companies in the Top Ten Startups to Watch list, Lumos Data is from a former CFO of Live Oak Bank, the bank itself is not an investor. Brett and Youri Nelson have used their experiences from working at Live Oak Bank to create a new startup that is showing promising results with an impressive growing client list. (Lumos Data has also landed two of the founders of Live Oak Bank as individual angel investors.) Lumos Data presented our event at the April 2024 Wilmington INVESTOR BUZZ IN event.
2. Military Veteran entrepreneurs - Wilmington is a popular landing spot for military veterans since North Carolina has so many large military bases. Personally, even though I am not a veteran, I raised the funds and started the Bunker Labs Wilmington Chapter in 2016. Bunker Labs North Carolina was named Chapter of the year in back to back years. (Right Dean Bundschu ?) One of the high profile veterans in Wilmington is Robert S. Cooley, Jr. . Rob has an extensive background after his active service as a Brigadier General in the Army and as Chief of Staff of the Reserves at Fort Liberty. He also worked with Phillips Medical Systems as a venture capitalist. Rob is well known around Wilmington with his bakery business and a wine / bottle shop. But now he has started Nuream , an innovative startup focused on improving sleep quality that will also improve quality of life through better health. While starting with an ecommerce platform for sleep related products, the company is also working on "Connected textiles" including pillow cases that are wired to read the level of brain activity while you sleep. Rob's cofounders. Nathan and Lauren Munton, have extensive careers in the furniture industry. Nuream is in the WALE Angel Network Portfolio. Nuream also won the recent NC Biotech Center Venture Challenge competition for the SENC region.
3. Returning UNC Wilmington graduates - One of the REAL reasons the UNCW CIE incubator was founded was to create more career options for UNCW graduates. While current UNCW students have been slow to migrate to the CIE, the progress and the positive results from the ecosystem has served as a magnet to attract graduates back to the coast of North Carolina. Let's face it, people LOVE the beach and we all know they really did not want to move away to pursue their careers. The founders of Artemis Immersive were called back to the beach. Adam and Kaylan are both UNCW grads. (Kaylan actually played college golf at UNCW.) I read about Artemis Immersive when Adam seemed to be challenging both Raleigh and Wilmington ecosystems in the media to help them. So I reached out and invited the team to our upcoming startup events where he learned about the NC Tech Association Startup Showcase at the State of Technology event. They applied AND THEY WON the showcase that had stiff competition for the prizes.

Please join us on December 3rd to celebrate these entrepreneurs and other finalists from Wilmington for additional big awards at the annual NC TECH Association Awards event.