“Capital, Content, Connections, and Community.” Those four words were how Innovate Charlotte Managing Director Juan Garzón summed up the definition of the Seed The South Capital Summit in an email exchange following the first day of the event. It’s an apt summary.
Seed The South took place for the second year running (in its current form) this week, and members of the GrepBeat, Primordial, and Jurassic teams were present throughout. Below is our recap of the event (with photojournalism support from Jack Fleming of Phrayz and Preet Mankad of CED).
DAY 1
The conference got underway at The Casey by Beau Monde with opening remarks from Juan Garzón. This gave way to a headline speaker session with AvidXchange Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO Michael Praeger—who recently enjoyed a much-publicized $2.2 billion exit.
Following these opening sessions, the focus shifted largely to showcasing founders in a variety of ways (with a delightful fireside chat with NFL wide receiver-turned-Champion Venture Partners Founding Partner Marques Colston thrown in for good measure).
“Events like this are great opportunities for founders to meet one another, investors to meet one another, founders to meet investors, etc.,” Garzón said. “But the big value [of the conference] to the ecosystem, I think, is that attendees come away feeling the vibe and energy of the Charlotte ecosystem.”
All of that was certainly apparent in the main room at The Casey on Day 1, where it would have been difficult to walk through without meeting impressive founders and gaining a sense of the high-energy startup activity in and around Charlotte.
The program’s “Charlotte Startup Spotlight” sessions gave ample stage time to local companies Lucid Bots, Fastbreak AI, and Aiwyn. In between, attendees enjoyed showcase pitches by founders from Foresight, Franzy, Geli Sleep (I’m still fidgeting with the mattress sample), Zinnia, Siftwell, and EDRAY.
There was also a gener8tor gBETA accelerator Charlotte Showcase featuring Rethink AI, Ryse, Auditrol, Graphio.ai, and Tada AI.
In between all of these showcases, the first day of Seed The South also featured a handful of founder masterclasses, breakout sessions, and media opportunities for startups.
Oh—and ice cream on the patio.
DAY 2
The conference’s second day included brought more Charlotte Startup Spotlight sessions, specifically for PetScreening and Debtbook.
There was also an on-stage chat with former Carolina Panthers star Luke Kuechly, which naturally created a lot of buzz (check out his business advice to Jack Fleming here).
But the main event on Day 2 was the Big Pitch competition, which saw 10 startups present across two sessions in competition for $100K in total prize money.
The first session featured CivicReach, Ask Me Your MD, Capwave AI, Druid Agriculture, and Parlay Finance. In the second, attendees saw Scale Social AI, ThreatCaptain, Thrive Logic, Path, and RhizeBio.
Big Pitch winners were crowned at the end of the event, just before a celebratory lunch. Scale Social AI took the “Founders’ Pick” recognizing the startup with the most promise, while Parlay Finance won the “VC Pick” honoring the most exceptional startup.
It’s safe to say that those of us from GrepBeat, Primordial, and Jurassic—as well as everyone we spoke to during and after the event—had an excellent experience at Seed The South. To that point, Juan Garzón also described the feedback as “overwhelmingly positive” and said it reflected excitement about where the event goes from here.
We’re excited to watch it grow and continue to showcase both the Charlotte scene and the Southeast startup ecosystem more broadly.
Check out some more photos from the event below (courtesy of Team GrepBeat, Jack Fleming, and Preet Mankad).
