Another cohort of North Carolina startups has completed CED’s GRO Incubator. The program wrapped up last Thursday with its signature Demo Day, where participating founders delivered pitches to investors, mentors, ecosystem leaders, and supporters in the Triangle and beyond.
This year’s GRO Demo Day took place at North Carolina Central University’s Business Building, and was supported by Regions Foundation (impact sponsor), NCCU (venue sponsor), and Hutchinson (demo day sponsor).
The GRO Incubator is a 12-week program that provides personalized coaching, targeted workshops, expert sessions and access to a strong network to help early-stage tech and life sciences founders scale their ventures. This latest cohort (affectionately dubbed GRO11) featured a strong mix of healthtech, medtech, SaaS, and consumer-facing solutions, many with deep Triangle roots and connections. Startups highlighted work addressing everything from AI tools and sorority community needs to more underserved markets such as those with menstrual health or voice disorder needs.
The event opened with a small panel about the impact of CED’s TNT program. This was lead by Katrece Boyd with guests Natalie Maloney, Kelvin McAffity Jr. and Natia Jones.
The panel was followed by presentations from nine cohort founders. Each founder gave a pitch before engaging in Q&A with a trio of judges, and following all the demonstrations, voting occurred for audience and judges’ favorites alike.
Here’s a look at the startups that pitched for the GRO11 Demo Day:
Carolina Instruments (Ellora McTaggart, introduced by Coach Ed Pettiss)
Ellora McTaggart is advancing a deep tech platform with Pupil-Light, a camera-free, infrared approach to continuous eye tracking. It solves key issues like battery drain while enabling hands-free interaction. The technology has drawn demo requests from Google, Meta, and others, with strong interest in post-integration licensing and royalties. Potential applications include early autism detection through eye movement analysis. (See GrepBeat’s past coverage of Carolina Instruments here.)
Ensembled (Page Conway introduced by Coach Antony Evans)
Inspired by Conway’s daughter’s freshman experience, Ensembled addresses visibility and access issues in sorority life. After surveying 100+ women across nine chapters, the team built a platform (“built by them, for them”) through which sorority sisters share what they wore and where to get it via private pages. Ensembled takes a 10% transaction fee and is targeting Greek life communities. They aim to launch in the App Store this July.
Teela (David Baxter introduced by Coach Brandon McCarty)
Teela is an AI-powered platform that lets users ask questions about their data without waiting for analysts or complex SQL queries. During GRO, they developed “spotlights” for areas like revenue (showing customers, projected sales, etc.), with plans to expand to customer success, finance, and more. The platform is designed for the underserved mid-market SaaS segment (17k+ companies), and early adopters get the first year at $99/month with unlimited usage. Teela stands out by knowing when to limit AI usage for reliable answers. (See GrepBeat’s past coverage here.)
Levita Health (Aaron Tutwiler with J. Paul Mosley introduced by Coach Kishen Mitra)
Levita Health is tackling POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), which affects 8.4 million people in the U.S. (1 in 40). Patients face long diagnostic delays and misdiagnoses. Levita’s product, Uplift, offers adjustable abdominal compression for better symptom control than existing solutions provide. They are seeking POTS patients for their waitlist, capitalist partners, and supporters for a planned Duke clinical trial, and are aiming for commercialization following that trial.
Kinove Lab (Saba Kamal introduced by Coach Liz Turpin)
With over three decades of upper extremity expertise, Saba Kamal developed ThumbCore, a patent-pending solution for pain management and physical therapy through intelligent movement. Current braces and exercisers often fail patients by causing pain or yielding incorrect use. ThumbCore makes exercises intuitive and game-like. Advised by Stanford Medicine’s Dr. Amy Ladd, they aim to preserve joints while helping patients maintain daily life. Therapists showed 100% interest in the product route and the target market is growing ~2% annually, with clinical studies underway.
Insight Twin (Michael Schank introduced by Coach Paul Salisbury)
Michael Schank (25+ years at Accenture, Bank of America, EY, and Citibank) leads an AI-powered digital twin platform that acts like “Google Maps for internal operations.” Trained on public data but customized to how companies actually operate, it supports strategy, risk management, enterprise architecture, and go-to-market efforts. Insight Twin is targeting mid-market enterprises ($1.8B beachhead), with strong traction in banking (25 discovery transformation conversations) amid rising AI budgets.
InsightStack (Lee Jacobs introduced by Coaches Windy Kohls and Brandon McCarty)
InsightStack offers continuous discovery tools for lean product teams, helping them prioritize with confidence without dedicated operators. Lee Jacobs brings 10+ years of product experience, with the startup targeting 17,000 small-to-mid-size B2B SaaS companies where 87% never reach $10M in revenue. The platform starts with a free tier, and the team is seeking introductions to leaders from lean product teams.
Sonovoice (Sandeep Bhatt and Rostan Rodrigues introduced by Coach Chris Morrison)
Sonovoice addresses voice problems from trauma, medical conditions, or age with medical device hardware and SaaS, moving beyond legacy desktop systems. After 150+ clinician interviews and personal experience, they secured commitments from three clinical sites for pre-approval studies and accelerated their go-to-market. The business model centers on a $7k subscription. With $550k raised, 5 clinics testing prototypes, and strong clinical validation (UVA, USC), they are seeking “voice champions” for a $500k angel round. (See GrepBeat’s past coverage here.)
Sensible (Nandini Kanthi introduced by Coach Tia Newcomer)
Sensible surveyed 270 women and built a smart, wearable sticker for period tracking that syncs biometrics to an app for baseline data, insights, and actions. They pitch the idea of “your data, your cycle, your control” (with ‘Sense’ as the AI sidekick). Pricing is $19 per cycle (software free). The team has filed patents, secured an LOI, and connected with Siemens. Sensible was also previously recognized as one of the 30 top undergraduate student businesses, with $155k in pitch winnings. They prioritize privacy and aim to support underrepresented communities, nonprofits, and OB-GYNs. (See GrepBeat’s past coverage here.)
Following presentations, time was allotted for both judges’ deliberation (alongside the CED GRO team) and audience voting. The “Crowd Favorite” award ultimately went to Ellora McTaggart of Carolina Instruments, along with a $5,000 (giant) check courtesy of the Regions Foundation.
The judges’ ultimate prize was subsequently awarded to Nandini Kanthi of Sensible in the form of a $20,000 (also giant) check.
After these awards were given out, scheduled networking time allowed attendees to connect with founders. Many of those founders reflected on the value of mentorship, pitch refinement, and community gained through the program.
Applications are now open for the GRO12 cohort.
