This summer, Launch Chapel Hill—a startup support and innovation hub—successfully executed its first-ever international accelerator program.
For just over two weeks spanning late June through the middle of July, the Launch team (Executive Director Emil Runge, Program Manager Naomi Burns, and additional mentor-slash-chaperones) guided student founders representing six startups through immersive experiences in some of western Europe’s busy startup ecosystems. The group participated in an accelerator in Luxembourg; experienced an innovation hub in Belgium; continued a “Hub Crawl” through Germany; and wrapped up with a stop in France.
“There are fundamentally different ways in which Europe is thinking about technology and entrepreneurship,” Runge said during Thursday’s cap-off event at The Junction in Chapel Hill. Exposing student founders to accelerators, mentors, founders, and support systems abroad is part of Launch’s intent to “provide the scaffolding” that promising student founders need to capitalize on growth opportunities.
Following the European swing, the team returned to North Carolina to wrap up the program by gaining exposure to and connections with various segments of the Triangle ecosystem. This portion of the program included stops at the NC Biotechnology Center and NC State, as well as, on Thursday morning, a kind of speed-mentoring event.
From there, the student founders set up at The Junction to pitch their startups to the public and share their thoughts on the accelerator experience.
Here’s a brief recap of the pitches attendees witnessed:
Canary (Walker Bauknight)
Walker opened his pitch by asserting that U.S. SMBs lost over $20 billion in 2025 due to cybersecurity breaches, with 1 in 5 ultimately going bankrupt. Yet most small business owners are priced out of robust solutions larger companies might pay for.
Canary functions as an “AI hacker” that finds vulnerabilities before attackers do—providing a fast, evolving, and more cost-effective solution for SMBs.
RadiAID (Hasini Kanthi & Isaac Yuan)
RadiAID’s co-founders began with the tragic story of a young girl whose leg pain was misdiagnosed as tendinitis and who died from cancer soon thereafter. The co-founders noted that we conduct ~300M x-rays each year, with nearly 50% relating to musculoskeletal issues—and a significant percentage of bone lesions misdiagnosed.
The RadiAID solution is a model that “finds what doctors can’t,” and which can be seamlessly deployed into existing systems to improve screening for bone cancers.
MarkitU (Justin Sonnenriech & Troy Smith)
This pitch started with the assertion that MarkIt could “turn student-to-student recommendations into a measurable channel for consumer brands.”
The premise is that with traditional marketing deteriorating (Justin highlighted that paid acquisition is “breaking” and AI slop turns people off), a more manual, on-campus approach can be effective. MarkitU helps customers recruit campus ambassadors, manage campaigns, track signups, and compensate students for their participation.
Argos (Joel Tapper)
Argos is aiming to solve a problem that most anyone who’s ever spent time in an emergency department waiting room can appreciate: patient monitoring.
This startup is developing AI-powered patches that remotely monitor patients as they wait, such that patient prioritization shifts according to need, rather than initial triage. The idea is to ensure that worsening conditions are not overlooked due to infrequent monitoring of vitals.
Seagull EcoChem (Dylan Gretok)
Dylan opened his pitch with troubling visuals and statistics concerning both the giant masses of plastic amassing in our oceans and the microplastics invading our brains (and in some cases leading to dementia).
The team at Seagull is looking to provide an alternative that can finally cut down on plastic dependency. Made with seaweed and paper, it offers the flexibility, durability, and transparency needed for mass food and goods packaging—while remaining completely non-pollutive.
Sensible (Nandini Kanthi)
If Sensible sounds familiar to some GrepBeat readers, it may be because of recent coverage—both through a direct feature and as part of the spring 2026 GRO Incubator Demo Day.
As a refresher, this startup has developed a disposable smart sticker and accompanying app (and AI assistant) designed to draw valuable health data and predictive insights from users’ menstrual blood.
Once the pitches all wrapped up, the participating founders had a chance to share personal highlights from the program. By and large, they focused on the value of meeting new mentors and interacting with other founders and innovators going through similar processes. They also spoke to the motivational spark an opportunity like this can provide more generally, as well as some of the cultural experiences they were able to enjoy along the way.
A few notable quotes:
- “I felt like I got to do a week-long MBA as an undergraduate” (Dylan Gretok)
- “It was really helpful to reconnect with the energy I had when I first started this” (Nandini Kanthi)
- “We got to meet someone who is actually going to become an integral part [of our startup]” (Hasini Kanthi)
One founder also shared that the food in Belgium was even better than in France—and a few noted that the chance to watch some World Cup matches while in France was a highlight.
Stay tuned for next summer’s look at Cohort 2, before which I will convince Launch Chapel Hill that this accelerator requires an embedded journalist.
