By Olivia Jarman
For decades, the story of American tech startups has been synonymous with Silicon Valley,
California. If an entrepreneur wanted to make it big, they packed their bags for the Bay Area.
With the rise of artificial intelligence, research universities and regional incubators, new hubs
are emerging and North Carolina’s Research Triangle has become a focal point in the
broadened landscape of startup companies.
Among the organizations shaping this ecosystem is Innovate Carolina, a department at UNC-
Chapel Hill that handles innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development. The organization connects faculty, students and community partners who are working on new ideas
and solutions. They aim to support the development of startups and help bring technologies,
products and services into the marketplace, hoping to contribute to social and economic growth.
Since it was created in 2013, Innovate Carolina has supported 244 startups, which have
collectively raised $47 million in capital, according to Anise Robinson, the student engagement
and events program manager for Innovate Carolina.
The Triangle has also proven itself as the state’s most active startup hub. In 2022, companies
based in Durham, Raleigh, Cary and Chapel Hill accounted for more than 180 startup deals, far
outpacing other regions of North Carolina, according to the Venture Report 2022 published by
the Council for Entrepreneurial Development. That concentration of activity underscores why
founders see the Triangle as fertile ground for launching new ventures.
One of the newest ventures to come out of Chapel Hill is UniPlanner, an AI-powered app
designed to help students manage their coursework more efficiently.
This app is the creation of Nolan Westrom and Dennis Perumov, who recognized a problem all
too familiar for every college student: balancing assignments, deadlines, exams and still making
time for social life and extracurriculars. Now available as a desktop app, it can sync directly to a
student’s calendar, making it easier to integrate the tools of UniPlanner into their daily schedule.
Nolan Westrom, co-founder of Uniplanner and student at Appalachian State University, is
searching for hires in the Triangle as the startup begins to grow. Photo by Adair Martin.
Westrom, a senior at Appalachian State University pursing an online major in business, grew up
in Chapel Hill and has always been curious about trying “something besides a normal job.”
He first explored the tech field with an app that listed restaurants by their food allergy options,
but when it failed to scale, he picked up the basic ins and outs of producing a startup,
specifically learning how to adapt when things did not go as planned.
“I pivoted from the food app as I realized it wasn’t gonna work,” Westrom said. “It sucked
moving away from it because I spent a year on it, but I had to because otherwise I would have
just kept digging myself into a deeper hole when there was another level of opportunity just
waiting to go after.”
When he got the idea for UniPlanner, Westrom reached out to his longtime friend Perumov, who
graduated in May from UNC-Chapel Hill and is now pursuing an online master’s degree in
analytics from Georgia Tech.
“I called up Dennis and I asked him, ‘Was this something you’d be interested in and do you think
that you could do it?’ and he was like, ‘I can definitely learn,’” Westrom said. “I know that if he
says that he’s gonna be able to learn it he’ll be able to do it.”
Dennis Perumov, recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and co-founder of Uniplanner, settles in
for a long day of work at his favorite coffee shop in Durham, North Carolina. Photo by Adair
Martin.
From there, UniPlanner took shape. Students can upload their syllabi and the app will
automatically generate a calendar with a workload intensity heatmap, so users can see at a
glance when assignments are heaviest.
The program analyzes class times, workload and personal patterns to provide schedule insights
like good times to study or start an assignment. Users can also receive smart notifications that
nudge them to work before falling behind, aiming to keep their workflow consistent and
organized across devices.
As lead developer, Perumov is in charge of coding the app itself, fixing any bugs and helping
with customer issues, while Westrom is tasked with bringing on new clients, expanding into
different regions and eventually bringing in investors.
Together, they are leveraging AI to transform the way students plan their semesters and stay on
top of their workload.
As of now, UniPlanner has integrated with the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority chapter at N.C. State
University and has 350-400 overall users. Westrom and Perumov aim to increase their
customer base by 10- 20 times that amount next semester, and have met with organizations like
Colgate University, UNC-Chapel Hill and Appalachian State to pitch their product.
UniPlanner’s web interface allows students to track assignments and deadlines across multiple
courses using calendar and unique task management features.
Anise Robinson, the student engagement and events program manager for Innovate Carolina,
said that student founders in particular face a unique balancing act.
“Of course, there’s the balance between if you’re working on a startup for four years while you’re
an undergraduate or in grad school, once you come up onto graduation, it’s like, ’Do I go look
for a job or do I keep working on my startup?’” Robinson said.
While Innovate Carolina isn’t a traditional incubator, it hosts Launch Chapel Hill with KPMG LLP,
a leading professional services firm. This program is an AI-driven accelerator that welcomes all
innovators, with or without a UNC affiliation, and runs sessions in the spring, summer and fall.
Robinson said that out of the 10 startups Launch Chapel Hill worked with last spring, five were
AI-driven.
Beyond funding, Innovate Carolina provides office hours for legal guidance, business planning
and market research.
Robinson also emphasized the importance of resourcefulness. She noted that with such a large
network of resources found at Innovate Carolina, students who actively seek collaboration,
identify who can support them, and find ways to offer value in return are more likely to create
successful, mutually beneficial ventures.
“I think students need to be prepared for pivots and like be able to take feedback,” Robinson
shared. “I think being coachable is a huge factor for an entrepreneur.”
For every startup founder in the Triangle, there’s the shadow of Silicon Valley: the region that
has long defined startup culture.
Ben Sunshine, an applied AI engineer for Boon in San Francisco, described the contrast bluntly.
“I would say that San Francisco is the startup city,” he said. “There’s more venture capital
money here that’s willing to give people a shot before they have a product than probably
anywhere in the world.”
Drawing from his experience in San Francisco’s startup scene, Sunshine observed that
investors outside of hubs like San Francisco or New York are generally more cautious, requiring
ventures to be well-developed and credible. In Silicon Valley, he said, even niche ventures can
find backers.
“It’s easier to take risks here, and people are more willing to throw money at essentially ideas,”
he said.
Joe Robertson, a 2021 Duke University graduate, launched his startup Revenite in Durham
before relocating to San Francisco. He echoed Sunshine’s point about the advantages of being
in the Bay Area.
Yet Robertson doesn’t dismiss North Carolina’s potential.
“The Triangle is in a really unique opportunity,” he said. “Besides New York, I think it’s probably
the best as the most upside of any East Coast city in terms of just like startup development and
businesses, just because you have UNC, Duke and NC State, all in that kind of Triangle area
and each of them are producing really top tier engineering talent each year.”
According to WalletHub, Durham-Chapel Hill is ranked second in the nation for the most
educated cities, highlighting the strength of the local talent pool.
Robertson pointed to Apple’s new Raleigh-Durham office as a sign of momentum.
“It’ll be the first of many companies that will I think start to open up offices or expand their
locations to include Raleigh-Durham,” he said.
While UniPlanner is based in Chapel Hill, the Triangle is not lacking in AI startups of its own. In
Durham, BotBuild is using AI to help contractors and builders automate design and planning
processes, while in Raleigh, Levitate, an AI-driven customer engagement platform, is helping
businesses automate and personalize interactions at scale.
Together with other ventures in the state, these enterprises highlight the growing innovation
ecosystem across the Triangle.
Coding on a computer screen highlights the rise of AI start-ups driving innovation across
industries.
Sunshine said he believes startups appeal to undergraduates and new graduates because they
offer hands-on experience, full product ownership, close teamwork and the potential financial
upside of equity in a growing company.
Robertson echoed that sentiment and urged student entrepreneurs to take advantage of their
unique position.
“Really take advantage of all of the resources that you have at school,” he said. “Whether you’re
at UNC or Duke or UVA, wherever you’re at, once you graduate college, you lose access to all
those free resources.”
For Westrom and Perumov, the path forward is still unfolding. UniPlanner’s features have been
built and tested, and their next steps depend on further program development, student and
partnership engagement and scaling.
Whether they succeed or not, their story reflects a larger moment in North Carolina’s startup
scene. With students pushing forward, collaborative hubs like Innovate Carolina building
infrastructure and investors starting to notice, the Triangle is staking its claim as more than the
state capital and a few college towns.
Robertson said his advice to new founders is just to get out there and start. “It’s never been
easier to build something than it is now in terms of just getting a proof of concept together,”
Robertson said. “So go and do it and then go and show it to people and get a bunch of feedback
and keep improving it.”
