Industrious made a big bet on Raleigh when the New York-headquartered chain of co-working spaces opened up on Fayetteville Street late in 2015. Besides Regus, it was the first national brand of shared workspaces to enter the market. Local companies had really introduced the concept of co-working to the region, and...
Read MoreForbes Travel Guide editors named Raleigh one of 2017’s top 12 places to visit in the world. Though Raleigh has been commended over the years for its tech industry, urban living and startups, what made North Carolina’s capital city a must visit for the Forbes editors was the thriving food scene. Eateries like Poole’s, Chef and the Farmer and The Durham Hotel have received a lot of that praise, but a growing bench of artisanal and niche food makers may draw attention once a trio of food halls open across the Triangle. Food halls are an evolution of the traditional mall food court—local makers...
Read MoreWith a deep history in textile manufacturing and fashion design and NCSU’s College of Textiles based in Raleigh, North Carolina continues to be a place independent designers, fashion brands and textile startups are starting up. They’re creating new jobs in the state all while promoting social, ethical and environmental consciousness, helping to refine an industry that has been a staple of the North Carolina economy since the 1800s. Meet eight of these companies below. Opportunity Threads Opportunity Threads is a worker-owned, cut and sew textile plant based in Morgantown, NC. This young business offers sampling, handwork, upcycling and production of over...
Read MoreThroughout the history of modern medicine, there are three common themes among the innovations and technologies developed to improve the practice. First, they’re typically born from a need. The stethoscope, for instance, was invented in 1815 by a French physician who couldn’t hear his patient’s heartbeat using the typical practice of placing his ear on the chest. Second, new technologies are typically developed by the physicians themselves. In a list of 40 of the most well-known, impactful medical inventions, only a handful were invented by non-physicians. And finally, the purpose of the inventions—from the stethoscope to the CT scanner—is to increase the physician’s...
Read MoreLast week I was in Austin at South by Southwest, speaking about automation and the future of sports analysis on behalf of Automated Insights. Kind of a whirlwind trip—I got in Friday night and left Monday morning, not even taking advantage of my favorite South By, the music part. I call SXSW Music my favorite part (and sometimes the “real” part) because it was my first experience with the festival way back in 2000, when digital was dial-up and interactive was creepy chat rooms. It was back then when I first made a connection between Austin and the Triangle,...
Read MoreSo yesterday I took a couple hours out of what’s been a massive workload to shoot over to the Grandover Resort in Greensboro for the Raleigh Chamber’s Summer Leadership Conference. I sat on a panel to talk about innovation (I’m for it, by the way) with Raleigh City Councilperson/Innovate Raleigh board member Mary Ann Baldwin and Bull City Forward founder/Hub Raleigh co-founder Christopher Gergen. The moderator was Tom Rabon, formerly of Red Hat and now with startup New Kind. The topic assigned to me was the future of innovation as it pertains to entrepreneurs. So this is some of...
Read MoreIt’s not hard to get the grand tour of the deja mi offices. Just ask founder Justin Miller to show you the basement of his house. The company, he proudly boasts, is a true Raleigh startup—no cushy renovated Durham loft space for his team! Then again, it is a pretty nice basement—brightly lit, clean, and it seemed to fit about nine employees in a comfortably snug configuration. Sorry to call you out on this Justin, but if you want to claim the basement grunge mantle, you need to invest in a lava lamp, a Pink Floyd poster, and a...
Read MoreSo a few weeks ago, I wrote this piece about why Durham is now synonymous with startups and Raleigh is not. The next day, I got a call from James Sauls, the Director of Raleigh Economic Development, whom I had met a couple months earlier when I did a panel on tech startups for the Chamber. “Do you want to come talk to the Innovate Raleigh steering committee?” “That depends. What are they going to throw at me?” Turns out that the argument I made was one that a lot of people have been having over the last year...
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