Sarah Headley

Standing desks have gained popularity over the past few years as desk-workers try to live more active and less sedentary lifestyles. But most desks can cost hundreds of dollars and limit where you work.    Now there’s an affordable and local option. Meet X-Stand.    Weighing in at 3 lbs, X-Stand is a portable, adjustable standing desk that costs less than $100. The Charlotte-based startup surpassed its Kickstarter goal of $5,000 on August 18, just a week into its campaign. Now, customers can buy X-Stand through its site and on Amazon starting at $89.    X-Stand’s founders had a few non-negotiables in mind...

Local universities continue to be one of our startup community’s greatest assets—not only do they educate and produce talent that feeds into the startup community but they train students to become entrepreneurs and they employ professors and researchers who develop and commercialize groundbreaking innovation.    There’s a team of people on every campus that help to connect faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members with various programs and opportunities, all to promote innovation and economic development in the state of North Carolina.  In the fourth of a series of Q&As with university leaders across the state, meet some of the folks...

“Any free food today?”  “Nope, not today. You missed the brownies yesterday!” I hear some variation of this conversation every week at the coworking space I work for in Charlotte called Hygge (hoo-ga). And to the 10 student-entrepreneurs participating in the ImpactU accelerator this summer, I’m known as “free food” girl.    ImpactU has mentored companies in Charlotte each of the last three summers. The program is aimed toward young entrepreneurs, mostly college-age, who come in during the prototype stage of their business. The accelerator is organized by Queen City Forward, a non-profit focused on social entrepreneurship, and last Thursday night, five companies...

The complaint is well noted—Charlotte lacks substantial capital to invest in startups.    Greg Brown, Charlotte Angel Fund’s administrator, has heard it a lot. But he wants to have data-driven discussions not broad conversations that rely on anecdotes.    Brown, along with others at the forefront of the Charlotte startup scene, want to create a more cohesive early-stage investment community. That’s why CAF collected data on active angel and venture capital investors in the Charlotte area to show where they invested their money over the past five years, and where they plan to invest over the next five.   The results...

Last weekend Disney Channel aired a four-day original movie marathon—my inner pre-teen freaked out. One of my favorites was the 1999 classic, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. For those unfamiliar, Zenon is a 13-year-old girl who lives in outer space. Spaceships and holograms are commonplace in her intergalactic world.    But holograms aren’t just in Disney movies. PRSONAS, a self-service hologram company out of Durham, just landed $525,000 from investors after winning major Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft and Procter & Gamble as customers.    Via life-size computer-generated men and women powered by artificial intelligence, PRSONAS helps companies deliver marketing messages or...

Passport’s office looks and feels like the quintessential, successful startup office—it has the open floor plan, red solo cups, young employees and a gong rung every time a sale is made. But Passport isn’t in Silicon Valley or the Triangle, it’s in Charlotte, and it is dominating its space.    Passport is a mobile payment platform for parkers, giving them an alternative option to paying a parking meter and the ability to buy public transit tickets via a mobile device. Founded in 2010, this startup just landed $8 million in Series B funding from Chicago-based MK Capital, which brings the company’s...