It’s been a little over a year since we launched our newly designed Triangle Startup Guide in March 2019. Over the past year, we’ve received lots of feedback and suggestions for new things to add. That’s why in June of last year, we started making weekly updates to the guide—and we continued that tradition through 2019 and now in 2020.
The Triangle Startup Guide is now a big part of our “Startup Monday” package, which includes a multi-part calendar column, a recap of the past week’s startup news headlines, as well as a list of new additions made to the startup guide each week.
The guide is complete with local (and virtual) accelerators, incubators, mentorship programs, grants, VC firms and angel groups, as well as podcasts, blogs and more resources helpful to entrepreneurs. This content is not just for people looking to start a company but to also grow an existing one or bravely launch a venture in the times of COVID-19.
With the coronavirus pandemic impacting local startups and small businesses, we recently started adding COVID-19 funding and support resources to the grants/other funding section of the guide.
If we missed a resource you think should be added, please don’t hesitate to submit it for inclusion. You can also email me directly, tweet me @shannoncuthrell or use this contact form.
Here’s a review of items we added to the guide over the past week:
We added a few more COVID-19 resources to the guide: Revive 919, NC Healthcare Foundation’s COVID-19 Fill the Gap Response Fund, NC Main Street and Rural Planning Center, a reopening guide from the Chapel Hill Chamber of Commerce, the new deadline (May 21) for the next round of Raleigh Small Business Relief Funds (plus, a link to the donation page), Wake Tech Small Business Center’s free counseling services, as well as more COVID-19 research funding opportunities.
We also added four non-COVID related items to our accelerators/mentorship programs section:
- Pax Momentum, a new accelerator that’s seeking startups in the Triangle to apply for its first cohort. Applications are due June 1.
- Taking the Leap, a free four-week business development course for early-stage entrepreneurs that are ready to take their ideas to the next level by getting their business up and running. The next round of online classes is held in May and June.
- Gillings Innovation Labs, a program for interdisciplinary teams in UNC Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health to develop tech-based solutions that bring public health discoveries into practice. Many participants go on to land follow-on funding and scholarly publications to advance their projects.
- Figure Your Sh*t Out Accelerator (FYSO), a six-month virtual program focused on helping entrepreneurs develop a business plan and marketing strategy for their early-stage startup. FYSO assigns founders to a learning circle of non-competing businesses to hold each other accountable and share progress on achieving their goals. The first cohort starts on May 31.
