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Taylor Sharp embodies the spirit of giving. “To know the amount of families that are going to wake up to Christmas or holidays to presents they wouldn’t have otherwise had, that’s kinda the reason we do this,” the UNC-Chapel Hill student says. Sharp’s talking about the company he started with three friends last year. CommuniGift is an online giving service that lets non-profits upload family profiles and wish lists and donors adopt those families and choose items to purchase directly from the CommuniGift site. CommuniGift is bootstrapped and run with sweat equity, says Sharp. Founded by four UNC juniors, Sharp is majoring...

Ever wonder who makes the major decisions at a top news corporation? You aren’t the only one.    More than 300 students and faculty attended Monday’s Nelson-Benton Lecture Series and Carolina Seminar on Business Journalism and Public Policy to hear Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Editor-in-Chief Gerard Baker talk about the history and future of business journalism. The Wall Street Journal is celebrating its 125th year of publication.   Student journalist Andy Willard and I were chosen as panelists and were joined by Daniel Gitterman, UNC’s Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Chair in Public Policy. I got the chance to ask Baker how mobile apps are affecting the...

As folks braved the rain and lined up to check in, StartUpandPlay’s first main event in RTP was in full swing.  Over 200 people cruised through the lobby of RTP’s headquarters October 29 to visit over a dozen startups including PencilBlue, Sweeps, MusicBox, Swaggr and several Startup Factory companies. If you’ve never been to a StartUpandPlay, the best way I can describe it is “an adult science fair for entrepreneurs”. Companies (mostly tech-focused, and many of whom are targeting consumers) get a booth to set up and decorate as they wish. It’s a great chance for companies working on a product to gain valuable feedback, sign...

The idea for the SECU Prizes for Innovation came out the Emerging Issues Forum, which was founded nearly 30 years ago by then North Carolina governor Jim Hunt.  The first forum focused on innovation. Now things have come full circle.  The Institute for Emerging Issues, which now plans the annual spring forum, was founded in 2002 and began offering prizes to bright and enterprising students in 2011. The mission of those prizes is for students from around the state to find creative ways to address crucial problems in North Carolina. At stake are more than $100,000 in prizes. There are two separate competitions, one...

Entrepreneurship has certainly been romanticized. Entrepreneurs working on startups out of basements are the new starving artists striving to survive off their art. They are pursuing their dreams all the while refusing to work for The Man.  Cold, hard numbers serve to dispel such glamorized notions. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that a little under half of all small businesses survive after their fifth year and only around 35% live to see their 10th birthday. The risk of failure is enormous. Undergraduates then ask themselves: is it wise for me to start my own company?  The...

Patrick O’Neil is a corporate marketing and communication executive living in the Triangle. He’s worked with all types of companies and people, including entrepreneurs, race car drivers, CEOs, hamburger company mascots, technologists, education innovators and an ironman nun triathlete. He recently started a blog called Venn Works, where this piece was first published. I love a good conference. You know the sort—dynamic speakers, flowing content, a few surprises and maybe even a photo-op. At the recent CED Tech Venture Conference in Raleigh, I didn’t get the photo-op—but I heard many great startup stories, saw interesting ideas and learned more about what’s happening...

When I first got involved with entrepreneurship at NC State, I quickly noticed the shortage of women. I was presenting my startup idea to boards and rooms full of men. In the campus co-working space, I felt like guys were looking at me as if I was lost. I was overwhelmed by men (and specifically male engineers), because they seemed to be everywhere. The feeling was so strong that I wondered if I could really be comfortable as I tried to find my place in the entrepreneurial world.  My fears have subsided and my excitement has grown over the...

Ricky Spero is co-founder and VP of Product Development at Rheomics, a startup born at UNC with a test for measuring the strength of clots to help doctors control bleeding in sick and injured patients. I was happily nodding along with Bill Bing and Joe Procopio’s recent posts advocating a better exchange of ideas in Triangle Startup. Then a comment by Joe made me pause: I haven’t cracked the puzzle of getting the gamers more involved at startup events and vice versa. I don’t know if it’s about the fragmentation of the industry or just an independent streak. Maybe it’s like biotech, where those folks...