Articles by Michael Melton

About Michael Melton

Michael is a 2025 UNC-CH graduate who majored in Psychology and Environmental Studies. He loves trying new restaurants and cafes, going hiking, snowboarding, and going on long road trips to seemingly random states. You can also find his work in the Daily Tar Heel, where he is an editor on the Lifestyle desk.

Charlotte’s Fixxr Brings Transparency to Auto Repair

July 6, 2026 Michael Melton

Colton McComas grew up around his grandfather’s Rocky Mount repair shop, and by age 15, launched his own mobile repair business. Later on, while studying mechanical engineering at UNC-Charlotte, he […]

Triangle’s RDU Labs Aims to Increase AI Fluency in North Carolina

June 16, 2026 Michael Melton

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. […]

Wilmington Startup IQExit Targets a Blind Spot in Business Succession Planning

June 4, 2026 Michael Melton

Wilmington startup IQExit is aiming to change the way banks prepare for business ownership transitions by surfacing exit signals years before a company is sold. At its core, IQExit is […]

Charlotte’s Build-A-Bookie Offers No-Money Social Gambling Platform

May 18, 2026 Michael Melton

Charlotte founder Vincent Durham studied computer science in graduate school at the University of Dayton and now runs Durham App Designs, where he builds apps, websites, and AI workflow systems […]

Chapel Hill’s Swik AI: An Intelligence Layer For Small Business Loan Underwriting

May 8, 2026 Michael Melton

Yogi Nishanth spent much of his career in financial services, working for banks such as JP Morgan, Chase, and Capital One. In the back of his mind, he always wanted […]

Ashe County’s HiveTracks: From Beekeeping to Environmental Monitoring

April 30, 2026 Michael Melton

When Max Rünzel was working at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, he saw firsthand how difficult it was to track and manage natural systems. Data collection was expensive, […]

Chapel Hill’s Swarm is Rethinking User Testing With AI-Generated Personas

April 21, 2026 Michael Melton

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill students Krish Vazirani and Aryan Aladar met about a year before the time of this writing. Both had experience building software, and together they […]

Charlotte Startup Aims to Cut Recycling Waste With the Topper Stopper™

April 8, 2026 Michael Melton

With its innovative flagship product, dubbed the Topper Stopper™, Charlotte startup Genesis 1 Technologies is changing the landscape of how we recycle—and, perhaps, how we think about waste altogether. By […]

Durham’s Serv Technologies Brings Personalization to the Drive-Thru

March 26, 2026 Michael Melton

Duke student Jasper Svenson started exploring AI agents in the fall of 2025, focusing primarily on their real-world business applications. And with a background in restaurant-focused investment banking—as well as […]

Wilmington’s Phrayz Saves Marketers Time With Industry Intelligence Tools

March 25, 2026 Michael Melton

(Photo by Madeline Gray) Wilmington entrepreneur Jack Fleming is known to much of the North Carolina startup ecosystem—as the Founder of Socialry Marketing, as one of the driving forces behind […]