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The Bottle That Works Like a Mom, From a Team That Ran Medela
A former Medela executive and a Harvard-MBA operator spent more than a decade re-engineering the baby bottle. The pitch is simple: make the bottle behave like the breast so babies stop refusing one for the other.
THREAD Moved the Clinical Trial to the Patient's Kitchen Table
For decades a clinical trial meant a patient driving to a site. THREAD bet the visit could come to them instead - and then bought four companies to prove it.
The Temp Desk in Mayberry That Grew Into the Southeast's Second-Biggest Talent Source
It started in 1987 as a small-town temp desk in Andy Griffith's hometown. Nearly four decades later it runs 10-plus offices across three states - here's how the math actually works.
The Company Betting You Should Take the Exam Whenever You Want
A veteran-founded North Carolina startup spent more than a decade arguing that the honest way to catch cheating is to stop making people schedule it. As bigger rivals merge and raise prices, ProctorFree is quietly picking up their customers.
The College Freshman Who Turned One Phone Store Into Verizon's Biggest Retail Army
Rich Balot opened a phone store as a college freshman in 1996. Thirty years later, Victra runs more than 1,800 Verizon stores across every state - here is how a single storefront in Wilson, North Carolina became the carrier's largest retail partner.
The Duke Spinout Teaching Billion-Dollar Drugs to Fit Inside a Needle
Deborah Bitterfield raised about $8 million over seven years to prove that a protein could be dried into microbeads and shot through a needle. Then Novartis signed a deal worth up to nearly $1 billion.
The Eye Drop That Refuses to Blink Away
A serial dry-eye entrepreneur who already sold one eye-care company to Johnson & Johnson is betting that the fix for dry eye is not a better drop - it is a drop that simply stays put.
The Raleigh Holding Company Building a Wellness Stack in Plain Sight
MDO Holdings started with a gym and grew into something harder to label: part operator, part investor, part landlord. Its most revealing product may be the connective tissue between the businesses it owns.
The Soccer Catalog That Learned to Outfit the Whole Team
Sports Endeavors began with a teenager who could not easily buy the right cleats. Four decades later, the company sits where fandom, youth-team logistics and specialty retail meet - with a 200,000-square-foot fulfillment engine behind the screen.
The Quiet Firm in Chapel Hill That Grades Venture Capital's Rich List
TrueBridge Capital Partners has spent nearly two decades buying into the funds most investors can't get into - and quietly building the model that decides who tops the Forbes Midas List.
The 146-Year-Old Company Hiding in Your Patio, Boat and Workwear
You probably know Sunbrella. The more interesting business is the one behind it - a North Carolina mill that learned to sell durability, distribution and trust as one connected system.
Biltmore
America's largest privately owned home survives because the family behind it built a business around the visit - then kept finding reasons for guests to stay, dine, drink, shop and return.
Belk
Belk is a privately held American department store chain founded in 1888 by William Henry Belk in Monroe, North Carolina. Headquartered in Charlotte, it operates roughly 290 stores across about 16 Southeastern states plus belk.com, selling mid-priced national and private-label apparel, shoes, cosmetics, jewelry, accessories and home goods. Marketed under the tagline 'Modern. Southern. Style.,' Belk blends a 130-plus-year Southern retail heritage with an omnichannel model and a portfolio of exclusive private brands.
Peter Millar
Peter Millar is a Raleigh, North Carolina-based luxury lifestyle apparel brand founded in 2001 around a single cashmere sweater. It has grown into a full men's and women's collection spanning tailored clothing, sportswear, resort wear and technical golf apparel, sold through its own retail stores, e-commerce site, and premium wholesale channels such as golf pro shops and department stores. Owned by Swiss luxury group Richemont since 2012, Peter Millar pairs classic American style with performance fabrication and also operates the golf-lifestyle brand G/FORE, which it acquired in 2018.
URO-1, Inc.
URO-1, Inc. is a Greensboro, North Carolina medical device company modernizing the prostate biopsy, a procedure its founder describes as largely unchanged in decades. Founded in 2017 by prostate cancer survivor and serial MedTech entrepreneur Ted Belleza, URO-1 makes the FDA-cleared SUREcore biopsy needle and coreCARE tissue transfer system, a paired platform built to collect larger, more intact tissue cores and preserve their integrity on the way to pathology. The company reports its needle hit 92% targeting accuracy in MRI-ultrasound fusion biopsies versus 36% for conventional needles, and began commercial launch in January 2025 following an $8 million Series A.
Cutting Edge Information
Cutting Edge Information (CEI) is a Research Triangle Park-based market research and data analytics firm that builds the world's largest specialty-specific database of Fair Market Value (FMV) rates for engaging healthcare professionals. Pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies use CEI's FMV data, HCP Fee Calculator, and Compliance Insights to set rates that are both competitive enough to attract top clinical talent and defensible enough to satisfy regulators. With 230,000+ rate observations across 126 countries and 280+ specialties, CEI serves more than 300 clients, including over 70% of the top 25 pharmaceutical companies and 8 of the top 10.
Eton Solutions
Eton Solutions is a wealth management technology company that builds AtlasFive, a cloud-native, AI-driven ERP platform purpose-built for family offices, multi-family offices, private equity firms and funds. Founded in 2015 by family office veteran Rob Mallernee, the platform unifies a family office's accounting, reporting, document management and workflow into a single source of truth, and now administers more than $1 trillion in assets for 800-plus families across 15 countries.
Robert Mallernee
Robert Mallernee is the founder and CEO of Eton Solutions, the Research Triangle Park company behind AtlasFive, an integrated, cloud-native, AI-driven platform that runs the back office for more than 1,000 of the world's wealthiest families. A CFA with three-plus decades in ultra-high-net-worth wealth management, he built the software inside a real multi-family office (Eton Advisors) before spinning it out to sell to the rest of the industry. His pitch is blunt: spreadsheets are 'separate-sheets,' and the modern family office needs one system, not a hundred. In 2025 Eton closed a $58M Series C to push AtlasFive and EtonAI deeper into private equity, funds and global private banks.
Rhett & Link
Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal are an American comedy duo and lifelong best friends who have built one of YouTube's most enduring empires — Good Mythical Morning — into a daily talk show with over 19.5 million subscribers and 10.8 billion views. Operating out of Burbank as Mythical Entertainment, they create shows, podcasts, merchandise, books, and live experiences, ranking #4 on Forbes' 2025 highest-earning creator list with $36M in annual earnings.
Josh Rose
Josh Rose is the CEO of Hawthorne Health, Inc. (formerly Hawthorne Effect), a Walnut Creek-based company building the largest community-based clinical trial site network in the U.S. A clinical research industry veteran with over 20 years of experience, Rose previously led decentralized clinical trial strategy at IQVIA and CVS Health before taking the helm at Hawthorne Health in early 2024. Under his leadership, Hawthorne has expanded to 75+ community locations, partnered with 40+ pharma sponsors, and pioneered a model that embeds certified clinical research staff inside independent pharmacies and patients' homes - bringing trials to communities that traditional research networks have long bypassed.