Climbit helps climbers decide where to climb, when to go and whether conditions are worth the trip. Climbit turns hyper-local weather, crag-specific terrain data and user preferences into clear recommendations on the best places and times to climb. Climbit serves a growing community of climbers through our app and powers partner forecast experiences across climbing organizations and commercial platforms.

Meet the founders

• Kyle Tomek co-founded Climbit and built it from an early idea into a growing business. He leads roadmap, user research, partnerships and go-to-market, and is embedded in the climbing community and NC startup ecosystem. He previously completed ALA with DNALI.
• Josh Alger co-founded Climbit and turned it from an early concept into a product with real traction. He leads product and engineering across frontend, backend, infrastructure and weather/data pipelines. He has 15 years of full-stack experience and has been climbing for 11 years.

DentalHold uses AI voice agents to verify patients’ insurance for dental practices, automating the manual phone calls that tie up front-desk staff every day.

Meet the founder

• Saif Saleh is the founder and engineer, an NC State computer science grad (2022) who previously built microservices for hospital nurse call systems deployed in hundreds of hospitals worldwide.

Forest Found Products are fast-acting, plant-powered bite-and-sting relief products made locally in NC.

Meet the founder

• Megan Aljian, the sole founder, has studied medicinal plants for six years and has developed and prototyped the bite-relief product, gaining expertise in the formula and its performance.

IronPlate Solutions is building Relay, which is an AI system that converts restaurant conversations into structured POS orders in real time. Servers take orders naturally while Relay captures, interprets and injects the order directly into the restaurant’s POS system, eliminating manual order entry.

Meet the founders

• Braden Champion is CEO and leads customer development, partnerships, and go-to-market strategy, and saw firsthand how manual order entry slows restaurant service during peak hours.
• Trevor Champion is CTO and leads the development of Layer 01 and Layer 02 of the system architecture, including the audio capture pipeline, speech recognition integration and the AI-driven order parsing system. He previously worked as a mechanical engineer at Tesla.

Lainey Volz is a clothing brand that stands for inclusivity, self-expression and fun! The brand’s debut product is the Button-Cup Shirt: a button-up shirt specifically designed for women who wear a D cup or larger. The Lainey Volz brand promises customers they will never have to sacrifice bold, colorful style for a perfect fit! They deserve to have it all.

Meet the founder

• Lainey Volz, CEO, founder and designer, is a recent graduate of the fashion and textile design program from  Wilson College of Textiles. She is passionate about size inclusivity, sustainability and creating designs that make the wearer feel their most beautiful! As the sole founder, Lainey oversees all aspects of the business. Throughout her college career, she held multiple apparel design and social media positions (Victoria’s Secret, Kiana Bonollo, Wilson College of Textiles and more).  

SPRTN 1’s are the world’s first wireless earbuds with a one-mile range, underwater audio and AI coaching built for swimmers and athletes. Run the full length of the track without losing connection, then dive straight into the pool, still wearing your everyday earbuds.

Meet the founders

• Hinson Wilson leads business operations, marketing, customer discovery, fundraising, financial planning, legal/IP support and cross-functional coordination, bringing a wealth of entrepreneurial, business strategy, legal and product-market fit knowledge.
• Max McKee leads all technical and product development, bringing deep hands-on experience with electronics since age 14, including Bluetooth, RF design, PCB development, embedded systems and consumer product engineering.
• Kiran Gouttumukkala is in charge of all software development, including application and website development, firmware programming and Bluetooth integration, with a focus on machine learning and industry experience.
• Reeves Rowan is responsible for 3D modeling, product design and non-electronic manufacturing development, and has several years of industry experience in mechanical R&D and new product development.
• Mohammad Riahi supports the core engineering team by helping turn ideas into product development, especially in embedded software, advanced features and biometric sensing, with a Ph.D. focus on low-power embedded systems and biomedical devices.

Sylva Systems is an autonomous drone inspection service for tree farms. We fly, detect and map every tree on a property, flagging health risks before they spread and replacing days of manual inspection with a single flight.

Meet the founders

• Nathan Hattrup leads the computer vision detection pipeline. He has built and tested the current detection and segmentation system. He architected the core models that identify individual trees in drone imagery and is driving the tracking and health classification work built on top of them.
• Kevin Spencer leads software development and backend data systems. He owns the infrastructure that turns raw pipeline outputs into the dashboard farmers and foresters use, and is responsible for connecting the detection pipeline to the production data layer.
• Tyler Danner leads operations, business strategy and finances. He drives customer discovery and cross-functional coordination, manages Sylva Systems’ budget and capital planning. He shapes the company’s go-to-market strategy across the Southeast.
• Hank Madden leads marketing, business development and market research. He owns brand positioning, competitive analysis and the outreach pipeline that builds Sylva Systems’ relationships with tree farm operators across the Southeast.
• Cole Malinchock leads drone hardware design and assembly and has conducted drone research at NC State. He built the autonomous flight platform from the ground up, integrating the cameras, sensors and telemetry stack that the rest of the pipeline depends on.

Residential HVAC Service Providers experience unpredictable revenue seasons. They pitch recurring maintenance to homeowners to flatten this revenue curve. But 70% of homeowners say no.

ThermaTech collects data from a home’s indoor and outdoor HVAC systems and sends alerts about incoming failures or inefficiencies. For the Provider, this is another option to capture 70% within their customer base and minimize costs through proactive visibility. For the Homeowner, they directly see why maintenance is needed, helping prolong system lifespan and minimize energy and emergency costs.

Meet the founders

• Halen Rienks (CFO/COO) leads operational and financial strategy, combining an electrical engineering background at Liquid Rocketry with experience in stock trading and finance.
• Alex Scruggs (CEO) leads business development, leveraging hands-on experience as the Avionics Team Leader of Liquid Rocketry and a deep understanding of electrical fabrication.
• Nathan Hambelton (CTO) leads software development across both frontend and backend systems, and is also the main electrical contact for SolarPack.
• Will Shearin (CMO) is a competitive mechanical engineer passionate about entrepreneurship and the Technical Director of SolarPack.

Tin’s Pins is a student-run merchandise brand creating trend-forward, custom-designed gameday pins and merchandise for college students, delivering the speed and style of a local seller with the reliability of a licensed brand, currently at NC State and expanding nationally.

Meet the founder

• Tindra Tramontano is a third-year student at NC State studying biological engineering with a concentration in bioprocessing engineering. As the founder of Tin’s Pins, she oversees the graphic design process, product sourcing, marketing, fulfillment and customer relationships. Tindra has background experience in advertising, social media marketing and science communications.

Verdia Diagnostics, a new startup founded by an NC State University graduate and two professors, aims to significantly reduce disease-related crop losses. The company is developing sensors to help growers detect plant disease earlier than ever before. They are currently pilot-testing sensor prototypes in commercial greenhouses across North Carolina, as part of an effort by the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative to fast-track the development of promising agricultural technology.

Meet the founder

Zach Hetzler is co-founder and CEO of Verdia Diagnostics. He has led the development of field-portable diagnostic devices for humans, agriculture and biopharma during his Ph.D. at NC State. Zach has worked closely with growers since 2020 to better understand their challenges. He brings experience in point-of-care diagnostics, sensor engineering and user-centered technology development.