The annual Seed The South Capital Summit took place in Charlotte last week, with the big headline at the outset being that it would occupy Bank of America Stadium (aka where the Carolina Panthers play).
The event was actually spread across two days of action, with the first taking place at Northeastern University and the second in various parts of the aforementioned stadium. Attendees were treated to a busy agenda filled with keynotes, workshops, panels, startup exhibitions, and the annual “Big Pitch” competition (which culminated, pretty delightfully, in an award ceremony on the football field).
Team GrepBeat was thrilled to be on site as a media partner, and it’s now time to share some of what we observed throughout the summit.
Monday (Day 1) — Northeastern University Charlotte
Day 1 at the summit kicked off with opening remarks from Juan Garzón (of Innovate Charlotte and Friend-of-GrepBeat (FOG) status), Thomas Mastro (Northeastern), and Jenny Tacka (gWen), each of whom had an active role in organizing the event.
From there the program got underway in earnest with a fireside chat featuring Alex Smereczniak (of Charlotte startup Franzy) and moderated by Lauren Goodell (most recently of Zinnia). The theme of this talk was “Why I Started Over,” with the specific subject being why and how Smereczniak stepped away from his previous venture-backed franchise platform to build Franzy—a platform using AI to bring about the “Zillow” of franchise models.
Key Thoughts from Smereczniak:
- On the decision to create a business that makes it easier for others to start theirs, he noted, “We’ve created dozens and dozens of new entrepreneurs.”
- On what’s different this time around as a founder, he stressed the importance of learning to delegate more effectively.
- On pivoting in general, he advised, “Don’t rush it, don’t get emotional about it; talk to your most trusted advisors… people smarter than you who have seen these at-bats more than you have.”
Following this keynote chat, Day 1 was all about masterclasses. There were seven such sessions taking place across a couple locations at Northeastern, with each tapping into relevant expertise in topics relating to building, raising, marketing, and more. Here’s a look at the topics and speakers for all these masterclasses, as well as insightful moments from some of them:
- Raising Capital in the Age of AI (Led by Paul Rothstein and Mario Bolaños of Nelson Mullins)
- “Right now, the market’s kind of weird… you’ve got this amazing new technology [with] lots of opportunity but also lots of risk.”
- AI company valuations are 20-50% higher than non-AI for Seed through Series C.
- Stop Guessing Why Users Churn (Powered by Torta Studios)
- Mastering Founder-Led Sales (Led by Lauren Goodell)
- “People being sold to are inundated with polished, pretty, but insignificant emails… good is no longer good enough.”
- “When AI can replicate everything, it’s the humans that matter.”
- Lauren also walked attendees through a Buyer’s Decision Journey in an educational way, focusing on effective outreach, AI-sensitive visibility, personal credibility, and effective decision points.
- Build It Live with AI (Powered by Pattern50)
- The New Rules of Product Marketing (Led by Liz Brigham)
- “Price signals value,[especially in an existing category]”
- “You cannot out-execute a bad strategy.”
- “I’m so old that I worked on the first Disney World app”
- Finance & Accounting for Startups: Infrastructure, Team, and What Investors Check (Powered by CLA)
- The Founder Bottleneck: When You’re the Problem (Led by Oliver Peters *not on original agenda*)
- “If your copmany fails, it’s absolutely your fault.”
- “Most founders are addicted to being needed.”
- “Switch from, ‘can I carry the business?’ to ‘can the business carry itself?'”
- From Founder to CEO: Build the Team Your Company Needs (Led by Jonathan Donahue)
After all of these workshops, Nelson Mullins and Lavoie CPA hosted a kickoff reception that more or less took over a sprawling bar area at the base of the building containing Northeastern. There was also an invite-only investor dinner presented by McGuireWoods and co-sponsored by Stifel.
Tuesday (Day 2) — Bank of America Stadium
As had long been promised, Seed the South took over Bank of America Stadium for its full Day 2 program. Attendees were led up a few floors to a club level concourse, where there was a de facto event space, an expo area with views of the field, and room for lunch and VIP gatherings.
Welcome & Speaker Sessions
Juan Garzón kicked things off once again before turning the mic over to emcee David Hunt (of Maverick Project Group), who did an outstanding job emcee’ing much of the day.
Hunt warmed up the audience for the Day 2 opening keynote, which featured Passport CEO Khristian Gutierrez. Passport, which offers a parking and curbside tech platform, is one of the most recent startup success stories out of Charlotte, having been acquired just this past spring by Stockholm-based Arrive.
Rather than only focusing on this recent news or his own story in broad strokes, though, Gutierrez structured his talk around the concept of ecosystem support. The title of the talk was “Every Startup City Needs a Mafia: How One Breakout Company Creates the Next Generation of Founders,” and Gutierrez largely stuck to this concept—along with a heavy dose of optimism that successes like that of Passport are already creating a next wave of entrepreneurs in the Queen City.
Following this morning keynote, there was a “Growth Stage Panel” examining the specific growth journeys of three founders operating in completely different spaces. Those founders were:
- Reade Kidd (EDRAY)
- Mark Mahoney (Jackrabbit Technologies)
- Ernest Rolfson (Finexio)
The talk was moderated by Taylor Barden of Rockefeller Global Family Office. It largely focused on individual journeys, examining different milestones and paths to growth for the panelists’ respective companies. Though I will note that the crowd seemed most impressed when Mahoney noted that Jackrabbit has reached a point at which its employees are some 70% women “not because of any mission” but because they’ve proven best for the jobs.
Startup Alley Showcase
The Growth Stage Panel gave way directly to the “Startup Alley Showcase,” wherein 10 startups that had already been on display, so to speak, for interaction with attendees, gave four-minute pitches to the audience. This served two purposes: First, to ensure that everyone who wanted to had the opportunity to learn about the “Startup Alley” companies. And second, to give the audience a chance to vote on which of the 10 should advance to fill the final slot in the “Big Pitch” competition later that afternoon.
These were the 10 presenting startups:
Agentix Pay (San Francisco, CA)
The “universal connector” helping online merchants prepare for an online economy driven and conducted by AI agents.
Graphio.ai (Charlotte, NC)
Analyzing metadata (not content) within organizations to identify broken handoffs and misalignment between teams and prevent potential revenue loss.
Blackwing Space (Nashville, TN)
Accelerating the development of the “Space 3.0 economy” via the creation of American-made nanosatellites that simplify and lower the cost of assorted space operations.
Symphony Space (Arlington, VA)
Developing cost-effective modular orbital platforms to make the space economy more feasible (inviting everyone to “join the symphony”).
ARMAI Technologies (Charlotte, NC)
Solving vendor/supply chain compliance risks (explained following the amusing prompt question, “How many of you would like to read 10,000 pages of compliance documents?”)
SpiltEV (Manhattan, NY)
Developing a more accessible EV charging network by enabling those with chargers to earn through allowed public access and mapping.
Hardshell (Charlottesville, VA)
Addressing the issue that AI adoption is accelerating faster than accompanying security measures, building data-layer security to help organizations (in healthcare, defense, legal, etc.) “use AI safely in the places where trust matters most.”
FFERM Technologies (Charlottesville, VA)
Aiming to update methodologies for enterprise risk management, going beyond outdated “likelihood and severity” assessments to bring about more thorough and predictive approaches.
Keep it Simple Storage (Cornelius, NC)
Using tap-to-pay technology to build WiFi-, Bluetooth-, and battery-free access solutions to storage operations; a secure, convenient, reliable alternative to manual and “smart” locks.
Tada AI (Charlotte, NC)
Developing AI agents for payroll companies, serving a variety of purposes with a particular focus on assisting compliance operators.
From this group, SplitEV was ultimately voted on to take a final spot in the Big Pitch competition to come in the afternoon.
Before that competition, the program rolled on with two more speaker sessions.
Speaker Sessions
The first of these was a “Venture Capital Panel” titled “Beyond the Hype: What AI Means For Founders in the Southeast.” This discussion was moderated by Zach Crowe (Partner, Gunderson Dettmer) and featured the following four speakers:
- Trevor Kienzie (Partner, Correlation Ventures)
- Melanie Nabar (Partner, Volition Capital)
- Jason Caplain (General Partner, Bull City Ventures)
- Gregg Bordes (Managing Partner, Front Porch Ventures)
This panel delivered a range of perspectives, yet largely revolved around the notion that properly assessing the impact of AI on startup growth and investment requires more foresight than we typically see on the surface. Most notable was the agreement that early, impressive ARR may be something of a mirage (due to quick opportunity afforded by AI) in comparison to revenue retention.
Next up in the program was a fireside chat with Don Rainey (Good Human Investment Partners), moderated by Ashley Gautreaux (CreativeCo Capital). Dubbed in the official agenda “Donisms: 30 Years of Venture in One Conversation,” this was essentially a talk in which Rainey—in his own insightful yet amusing style—essentially shared lessons from a successful career in investment. Among his most notable “Donisms” were:
- “I’m an expert at gorilla marketing” (re: using people in gorilla suits to get messages out as guerrilla marketing)
- “The world record for hiring is 2 out of 3… you can’t keep a bad hire for long.”
- Something about a huge tongue
- It’s important to recognize “momentum vs. fauxmentum”
Once we’d all been imparted with 45 minutes or so’s worth of Donisms, the Big Pitch Competition began. The competition played out over two rounds with a brief intermission during which Thom Ruhe of NC IDEA delivered remarks (after notably being introduced by emcee David Hunt as a “cool motherf****r.”
Big Pitch Competition
The remainder of Day 1 consisted largely of 10 pitches comprising this much-anticipated competition. Two separate $50,000 prizes were on hand, with one to be awarded by a “founders judging panel” and the other by an “investors judging panel.” And, spoiler alert, history would be made.
Here are a few words on each of the 10 startups that competed:
Alita (Charleston, SC)
Designing the “front desk that never closes” for senior healthcare facilities in response to the converging issues of a rising senior population and declining nursing workforce. Alita delivers a 24/7, AI-native workforce for senior healthcare.
mPATH Health (Winston-Salem, NC)
Improving cancer screening through a full, six-step process (with most existing solutions only covering two). The mPATH Health approach sends automated invitations to people due for screening and then works to verify need, educate, motivate, and empower self-service.
Beam Dynamics (Winston-Salem, NC)
An asset intelligence platform simplifying asset management for the live production, media, and AV industries. Beam used the example of a single missed email costing CNN some $20M to illustrate the need for better management and informed decision-making. (See GrepBeat’s previous coverage here.)
ARUSTO (New York, New York)
Providing an AI creation engine for video lessons, offering complete control and provenance over creation and delivering “the ultimate creative and governance layer for enterprise learning.” Winner of the unofficial David’s Favorite Logo™ prize.
Horse Spot (Charleston, SC)
“Blue ribbon software” powering all things equestrian. Horse Spot provides a cloud-based SaaS competition management platform for equestrian and livestock events, as well as simple solutions for buying, selling, insuring, and observing “horse health passports.”
Grasshopper Labs (Charlotte, NC)
An all-in-one, end-to-end warehouse and transportation logistics management platform, helping operations stay better connected and using AI to ensure visibility from orders and inventory management through delivery.
Lamarr.AI (Syracuse, NY)
A drone data collection service (named, naturally, for ’30s actress slash inventor of Frequency Hopping technology Hedy Lamarr) that develops building exterior diagnostics and informs decision-making.
LOULOU (Charleston, SC)
An AI voice concierge built to support operators in the hospitality space. LOULOU’s claim is that there is more demand than can be managed at a high level, and with AI-driven concierge assistance they can equip businesses with “Forbes-level” service.
SupportPay (Charlotte, NC)
Aiming to “end family fights over money” by pioneering modern family finance. SupportPay effectively offers a unified platform whereupon families can track shared expenses, managed communication relating to financial decisions, and more.
SplitEV (Manhattan, NY)
As mentioned, SplitEV was the Startup Alley company that was voted into the Big Pitch Competition over the course of the day. To reiterate, this startup is developing a more accessible EV charging network by enabling those with chargers to earn through allowed public access and mapping.
Once the Big Pitch presentations were complete (and Hardshell was awarded a significant prize relating to the showcase portion of the event), the Seed the South organizing team—led by Juan Garzón, his family, and Jenny Tacka—ushered attendees back to the elevators, all the way down to the tunnels, and onto the Bank of America Stadium field.
This was a fantastic closing touch. A happy crowd was able to cap off the conference together with drinks and snacks right by the field, and after a bit of mingling none other than Friend-of-GrepBeat (FOG) and Carolina Hurricanes public address announcer Wade Minter was on hand to announce the two $50K pitch prize winners.
I spoiled that history was made. That was a reference to Horse Spot becoming the first startup ever to win both the investors’ and founders’ prizes.
The Charleston-based startup secured $100K total and celebrated with the crowd as a literal marching band emerged to help wrap up Seed the South 2026.
