27 finalists competing at 15th annual Charlotte Venture Challenge
The 15th annual Charlotte Venture Challenge, which will be held, Tuesday, April 19, at the North Carolina Research Campus, will showcase 27 startup finalists to investors, corporate innovation executives and the business community.
In addition to presentations by the startups, Chis Heivly, cofounder of MapQuest, will deliver a keynote presentation, and there will be updates from alumni who participated in past challenges. Register to attend this year’s celebration online.
“The Charlotte Venture Challenge has grown from five UNC Charlotte ventures in 2001 to become the premiere early stage venture competition in the Southeast by providing the region’s most promising entrepreneurs with visibility to both investors and corporate innovators,” said Paul Wetenhall, Ventureprise president. “This 15th anniversary event will highlight the innovation and entrepreneurial assets of the Charlotte metro area.”
An annual competition organized by Ventureprise Inc. and UNC Charlotte’s Charlotte Research Institute, the Charlotte Venture Challenge (CVC) is designed to showcase the region’s most innovative entrepreneurial companies to investors and corporate strategic partners.
“We know we are being successful when we are seeing finalists go on to raise seed rounds from our investor judges and establish relationships with our corporate partners” said Devin Collins, assistant director of business and entrepreneurial development at Ventureprise. “General Graphene, the 2015 CVC grand prize winner, raised $8.7 million from the startup funding network Angel Capital Group, a CVC finals judge last year.”
The 27 finalists for 2016 will present in one of four categories: new energy and high tech; IT and informatics; general, including consumer products; and student ventures.
In the new energy and high tech category, the finalists are 8 Rivers Networks (Durham), Grow Bioplastics (Knoxville, Tenn.), Indexus Biomedical (Morrisville), Innovasan (Knoxville, Tenn.), SineWatts (Charlotte), and XOONIX (Charlotte).
Finalists in the IT and informatics category are GuidePro3D (Cornelius), ProjectMQ (Savannah, Ga.), RepRevive (Charlotte), Shipedge (Durham), Thrive GPO (Fort Mill, S.C.) and Wellflix (Hillsborough).
General category finalists are BeautyOMICS (Chapel Hill), Dogphrendly (Cornelius), Fridayd (Cornelius), HomeTrackr (Charleston, S.C.), Morph (Carrboro), Sweetie Pie Organics (Raleigh) and uBack (Charlotte).
In the student ventures category, finalists are Reel Scary (UNC Charlotte), Athnetics (UNC Chapel Hill), Body Barrier (Claflin University), Credit4Less (Wingate University), Glance (Appalachian State University), MadDogg Heat Sleeve (Elon University), Monotto (College of Charleston) and Tailor Made Financial (UNC Charlotte).