Mark Bavisotto, Founder of RDU Labs, believes the gap between what artificial intelligence can do and what people know how to do with it is huge—especially in small business leadership. Through his newly launched startup, he hopes to bridge that divide and help make North Carolina more AI-fluent.
“Technology is the easy part”, Bavisotto said. “It’s a fluency thing, it’s understanding how [one] best leverages that technology, and the gap between fluency and technology is super high.”
The idea for RDU Labs came from conversations between Bavisotto and eventual Co-Founder Greg Boone (CEO of Walk West) as the pair considered how North Carolina could position itself during what Bavisotto views as a once-in-a-generation technological shift.
The pair initially discussed reviving startup events—Bavisotto had previously taken the lead on starting a Triangle chapter of “Startup Grind”—but Bavisotto ultimately had something larger in mind.
“Let’s think bigger,” he recalled telling Boone. “We’re in this huge technology platform shift, and I think with our experience we could really put North Carolina on the map to be an AI-native place.”
Their first vision was an AI innovation center—a physical space where companies could collaborate, access computing resources and receive support in adopting AI. But as Bavisotto spoke with business owners around the state, he said he discovered a more pressing need: Many small businesses had little understanding of how artificial intelligence could fit into their operations.
AI Education
As RDU Labs grew into its mission, Bavisotto and Boone settled on two parallel missions: education, and Main Street Labs.
“We really started looking at two different tracks in our mind,” Bavisotto said. “One is the fluency part; how do we educate the masses in North Carolina? The second side is the small business side.”
On the education front, RDU Labs aims to address the AI adoption and fluency problem by partnering with existing institutions rather than creating a new educational infrastructure from scratch.
The startup is in discussions with institutions across North Carolina (including late-stage conversations with Wake Tech) to develop non-accredited courses and certifications.
The curriculum is still being refined, but Bavisotto said discussions with partners have centered around modules tailored to specific professions and industries. Examples include courses for office workers, sales and finance professionals, as well as sector-specific instruction for healthcare and government employees.
More advanced offerings would focus on agentic AI and workflow automation, while another major emphasis would be reskilling workers displaced by layoffs and helping them adapt to an increasingly AI-driven economy.
Unlike traditional classroom instruction, Bavisotto envisions hands-on training that emphasizes building skills and applying AI to real-world problems.
“We want people using the tools,” he said. “We want them to build projects, build skills, build artifacts. We want them to actually do the work.”
Main Street Labs
The second arm of RDU Labs is Main Street Labs, through which the team works directly with companies that are aiming to automate operations and become more AI-fluent. Bavisotto believes that within the next three to five years, every business will need to think like a technology company.
“If you’re a plumbing company, you’re a tech company that delivers plumbing services,” Bavisotto said.
Main Street Labs revolves around three pillars: education, transformation and acquisition. After helping owners understand AI, the team works with companies to identify pain points and build workflows for areas such as sales, marketing and back-office operations. Bavisotto pointed to one fencing company that was losing thousands of dollars in missed opportunities because the owner simply did not have time to respond to incoming leads. It’s a problem he believes AI agents can help solve.
Longer term, Bavisotto sees an opportunity to acquire and modernize businesses whose owners are nearing retirement but lack succession plans. He pointed to what he called a “silver heritage crisis” and said AI could help preserve businesses that might otherwise disappear.
“We really need to focus on how we help small businesses survive and thrive in this AI economy,” he said.
Where RDU Labs goes from here
Crucially, RDU Labs is being built in a way that doesn’t rely solely on Bavisotto’s own ability to use or understand AI. In fact, Bavisotto said he does not consider himself an AI ‘expert,’ arguing that the technology is evolving too rapidly for anyone to claim complete mastery.
“I never call myself an AI expert,” Bavisotto said. “If you call yourself an AI expert, you’re just not right.”
Instead, he said expertise comes from continuously using the tools and helping others apply them. Bavisotto, who spent two decades in educational technology and now leads Successive Technologies’ North American operations, said he and Boone consider themselves “AI native,” relying on AI systems throughout their daily work. Boone has written extensively on AI and earned dozens of certifications in the field.
QUICK BITS
Startup: RDU Labs
Co-Founders: Mark Bavisotto, Greg Boone
Founded: 2026
Team size: 2
Location: Raleigh/Durham
Website: rdulabs.ai
Funding: Bootstrapped
Looking forward, RDU Labs plans to recruit additional practitioners to help teach workers and businesses.
“The closest thing to an AI expert in my mind is the people that understand the tools, use the tools, keep up with the tools and then show other people how to use them,” Bavisotto said.
For now, Bavisotto said RDU Labs is focused squarely on North Carolina, where the company hopes to expand its educational efforts and continue developing partnerships with organizations across the state.
In the next year, he said one goal is to help more than one million people become “AI native.” Looking further ahead, Bavisotto said he hopes RDU Labs can help make North Carolina the most AI-native state in the country.
Ultimately, he hopes the startup will leave a lasting impact on the state’s economy.
“We want to leave our footprint and say, hey, we really dramatically changed the state,” Bavisotto said.
