Does Charlotte have a startup culture? We asked these experts what they think

In early January, a Charlotte reddit user with an entrepreneurial streak and software development experience was searching for a sense of community beyond the crowded tables and pastry crumbs of the local coffee shop.

“Is there any startup culture in Charlotte?” They asked via the r/Charlotte reddit thread, adding that they mostly pursued side projects while sitting at cafes. “It’s a lot of fun and fulfilling, but a bit lonely.”

Charlotte’s startup scene has been steadily growing for the better part of two decades: Organizations like RevTech Labs and Carolina Fintech Hub sprung up to support new businesses. Companies like LendingTree and AvidXchange proved homegrown firms could make it big.

Big names like Robinhood and Credit Karma targeted the city for key expansions — boosting the city’s profile as a growing tech town even if some of those plans didn’t pan out.

But Charlotte’s startup scene still has a ways to go to catch up to other cities of similar size, local tech leaders told The Charlotte Observer in recent interviews. And the city’s deep roots in risk-averse industries — enough to be nicknamed Banktown — doesn’t always mix with a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The Observer spoke with three local leaders to ask them: Does Charlotte have a ‘startup culture’? And if not, what do we need to build it? Here’s what they told us.

It’s tough to access startup funding in Charlotte

Ten years ago, Charlotte didn’t have much of a startup scene at all, said Juan Garzón, managing director of Charlotte Inno and executive director of the entrepreneurial networking event PitchBreakfast.

“You would have a few entrepreneurs who’d get together,” said Garzón, who also works as entrepreneurship and innovation lead for the city of Charlotte. “If you were really early, there wasn’t a whole lot of community.”

Charlotte now has a reputation for launching fintech companies, Garzón said. But there’s also a growing number of health technology firms, thanks to its two large hospital systems, and investments like The Pearl, Atrium Health’s new $1.5 billion innovation district that will house a new medical school in midtown Charlotte.

“I’m hoping that some of the energy that we’ve seen around FinTech, we’re going to see the same energy around health tech after the (district) opens up,” Garzón said.

But there’s one part of a startup culture that is still lacking in the city, he noted: access to capital.

“We have a lot of money in Charlotte,” he said. “But that money is harder to access than it would be if you’re in a community where capital is in the hands of people with a tech or more entrepreneurial background.”

But Charlotte’s expanding beyond fintech startups

Stefan Friend is executive director of Tabbris, a coworking space and incubator in South End. He agreed that access to funding needs to grow — and that wariness from would-be investors can play a role.

“There’s a lot more hesitation and apprehension around making that extremely risky bet,” he said.

But the size and diversity of startup companies in Charlotte is growing, he added: “We’re not only putting out fintech companies anymore.” The city could soon rival that of more well-known tech towns, he said.

“Another 10 years from now, I really believe that Charlotte will be in the same breadth as Atlanta or Boston on the East Coast,” he said. “We have the foundation to get there.”

‘One of the steepest growth curves’

Back when husband and wife Dan Roselli and Sara Garcés-Roselli founded uptown’s Packard Place, one of Charlotte’s first coworking spaces, the entrepreneurial community here was so small that “you could attend each event personally,” Dan Roselli told the Observer.

“If a Charlotte entrepreneur got funding, it was most likely from a (venture capital fund) in New York or San Francisco,” Dan Roselli said. “And the first question they would ask is: ‘When are you moving to New York or San Francisco?”

But over the next 10 years, the number of new companies skyrocketed in the city. “We were starting from a dead stop, and it just took off,” Dan Roselli said. “Charlotte has one of the steepest growth curves for entrepreneurs in the country.”

“I think people are finally starting to realize that bringing startups to your community is also a huge form of economic development,” Sara Garcés-Roselli added.

Dan Roselli acknowledged that Charlotte is still a city where most people make their money avoiding risk. But, he said, success stories like AvidXchange are beginning to change that narrative. The Charlotte ‘unicorn’ — a name given to a privately held company with a valuation greater than $1 billion — went public in a $660 million IPO last October.

Those companies may inspire a new generation of potential investors, Dan Roselli said: those willing to bet on a small local firm one day earning huge returns.

“That cycle picks up momentum, but we’re early on. That’s a 20, 30, or 40-year cycle. We’re still in our adolescence,” he said. “We are incredibly bullish on the entrepreneurial and tech community here.”

This story was originally published January 24, 2023 5:50 AM.