Adam Shay

The start of 2016 is upon us and the entrepreneurial leaders in Wilmington hope to continue to build upon prior year progress and success. Things have already started out with a bang.  Next Glass has moved in to its new downtown headquarters in a building owned by James Goodnight and announced a merger with the popular beer app Untappd. I expect to see continued progress by established local leaders, such as Next Glass (CEO Kurt Taylor pictured above) and venture-backed banking software company nCino. However, I’d like to highlight some other Wilmington companies to keep an eye on in 2016.    Elite Innovations  Andrew...

A 2014 experiment pairing entrepreneurs and film makers in Wilmington has spawned an entire conference dedicated to both career paths.  Part of the 21st annual Cucalorus Film Festival in downtown Wilmington next week is year two of the 10 x 10 Filmmaker and Entrepreneur Project and a new event called Cucalorus Connect.    Cucalorus Connect will include 50+ entrepreneurship related events and speakers over the four-day festival. It leverages some of the connections and events that took place during the 2014 UNCW Coastal Connect Conference, but rallies an even larger community of entrepreneurs. The big goal is to bring people together to think about what is...

Wilmington has made great strides in the last 18 months to grow its startup community, and plenty of activity has come as a result.  But so far, these efforts have been spread around various parts of town—fast-growing Next Glass, nCino and the newly public Live Oak Bank have been in Midtown, Cloudwyze in Leland, tekMountain in the Mayfaire area, and the UNCW Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE) near the college.  Soon, both Next Glass and Cloudwyze will move to downtown Wilmington. They will join Elite Innovations’ new downtown space and the monthly startup events that Jim Roberts has been holding at Ironclad Brewery. All this...

The online B2B equipment rental marketplace started by Robert Preville and Rob Kaiser, owners of the Wilmington Business Journal, is making waves in the Wilmington startup community in early 2015.    Called KWIPPED, it’s rapidly adding tool and equipment suppliers to the marketplace, along with a team of strong angel investors and board members. The founders’ mission is to quickly be global in scale—they’ll customize the site for language, cultural dissonance (ex hire = rent in Europe), international trade requirements and currency. So far, they’ve got suppliers in Canada and several European countries. But like any marketplace business, the challenge...

The online B2B equipment rental marketplace started by Robert Preville and Rob Kaiser, owners of the Wilmington Business Journal, is making waves in the Wilmington startup community in early 2015.    Called KWIPPED, it’s rapidly adding tool and equipment suppliers to the marketplace, along with a team of strong angel investors and board members. The founders’ mission is to quickly be global in scale—they’ll customize the site for language, cultural dissonance (ex hire = rent in Europe), international trade requirements and currency. So far, they’ve got suppliers in Canada and several European countries. But like any marketplace business, the challenge...

tekMountain is a 20,000-square-foot incubator and EdTech accelerator in Wilmington unlike anything in the area as far as look, vibe and amenities.    It’s more like something you would expect in areas like the Triangle with more developed startup and tech communities—an open, modern space for tech companies with its own gym, food truck, garden and brewery.    I recently chatted with Joe Finley, president of CastleBranch and a leader within tekMountain, to get a better idea of the vision of the facility and its mission to grow national-in-scale EdTech startups. What is the vision for 2015?  tekMountain plans to...

2014 has been a great year for the Wilmington startup and entrepreneurial community. There’s more momentum, activity and sense of community than at any point in my 10+ years in the area. And so I took the challenge the recap our community’s biggest year yet. Check it out below, and let us know what you’re excited about for Wilmington’s new year.   • Next Glass Next Glass built buzz all year for its scientific wine and beer recommendation app. The startup finally delivered on that buzz when it launched the app on November 20th. In a little over a month, 240,000...