A swimwear company based in Carolina Beach and Fuquay-Varina announced a partnership that aims to take one pound of plastic away from the ocean with every purchase. Coastal Cool, started by 16-year-old Holden Bierman, began in 2020 and is a direct-to-consumer swim and resort wear business. The young entrepreneur is striving to create a sustainable business by using plas ...

Investors traveling to Wilmington always create a buzz in the coastal entrepreneur community. It’s not only helpful for entrepreneurs to get in front of investors, but it's also an opportunity for people like Mahati Sridhar, a principal on the investment team at Revolution Capital’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, to gauge the health of smaller markets she m ...

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s NC Biotech Venture Challenge is in full swing as startups from across each of the organization’s five offices compete to pitch their companies at the statewide venture challenge in June. The Southeastern office announced its three finalists on Wednesday. Wilmington-based startups Boreas Monitoring Solutions, Nuream a ...

Wilmington-based AI startup OpiAID is gaining runway with a spokesperson deal, a closed fund raise and three new potential investors.  OpiAID's most recent $500,000 gain is more an informal capital raise than a funding round, said founder David Reeser. Three potential investors began talks with Reeser after the team capped the half-a-million fund. After th ...

The North Carolina Black Entrepreneurship Council will open applications next month for its 2024 NC BEC Ecosystem Grant. The NC IDEA Foundation formed NC BEC in 2020 and distributed its inaugural Ecosystem Grants that year. The organization announced the next grant cycle on Feb. 15. The grant aims to support Black entrepreneurial support organizations and Historically B ...

Two Wilmington-based companies will pitch their business to an audience of hundreds of investors at CED Venture Connect. Electronic Lab Logs and Predicate HPG are among the 125 companies selected by the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) based in Research Triangle Park. The pitch event will take place on March 20 and 21 in Raleigh. Jay Bigelow, head of entrep ...

There is no shortage of things to do in the Port City, but with so many online avenues, Megan Rowe found it hard to find what she was looking for. Rowe sought to remedy this problem with her company, What’s Good, which launched last week. Megan, 25, and her brother Dustin, 28, built an algorithm and website in 2023 that compiles events and small businesses into ca ...

The University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship announced a new program offering this month, its Idea Test Lab Powered by Wells Fargo. The inaugural cohort will consist of a maximum of 10 women in technology, depending on the applicant pool, said the CIE's Director Heather McWhorter. The Idea Test Lab is a 4-week progra ...

The Durham-based NC IDEA Foundation has sniffed out 100 million-dollar ideas. The independent private foundation’s grants have provided the state’s entrepreneurs with capital since 2006. Almost 20 years later, its 2024 grant cycle has almost begun, as entrepreneurs gather their resources to apply for either $10,000 or $50,000 in nondilutive funding. On Mo ...

Venture capital is the white whale of any entrepreneur, but it’s especially elusive in the Southeast. Jim Roberts, the founder of the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington, has repeatedly stated that funding is lacking in the Wilmington area. “Right now is a really hard time to raise money,” he said. He points to high interest rates, inflation and ...