Entrepreneurs Learning AT Charlotte,
Accelerating IN Charlotte
At UNC Charlotte’s CO-LAB in Center City, students don’t wait for opportunity; they work in the middle of it.
CO-LAB is where innovators collide with industry, where ideas are shaped by the energy of one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, and where entrepreneurial students build companies alongside the professionals and partners who help them scale.
Students are placed inside the largest talent, tech and financial hub in the Carolinas. That proximity gives them direct access to mentors, customers, investors and real-world problems worth solving. It’s a launchpad built into the region’s innovation economy — not adjacent to it or near it, but in it.
This is what that looks like in practice
Optimist
Ren Zhen ’26 (Business Administration, Belk College of Business)
Ren Zhen didn’t grow up with a startup lab. He grew up on a farm with no Wi-Fi, a five-gig hotspot and a computer he kept taking apart because it was the only way he could use it. Curiosity turned into a habit, which turned into a business: Optimist, a company now designing and manufacturing high-performance computer systems with specialized cooling technology.
When Ren transferred to UNC Charlotte, he found what his company needed most: space, support and a city that moves at entrepreneurial speed. CO-LAB became his production base, giving him a studio for photography and content, a place to test prototypes and a front door into Charlotte’s tech ecosystem.
Optimist has since partnered with Samsung, MSI, PNY, NZXT, ASI and MaLabs, supplying components for the custom systems he builds. While the brand started with visual design, it now pushes into technical innovation that makes computers smaller, cooler and more powerful. For AI startups and professionals who need portable, high-performance machines, Ren is building solutions that didn’t exist even a year ago.
He is also taking courses in economics, accounting and entrepreneurship, folding lessons from the classroom into fundraising strategies, product development and operational planning. For Ren, everything he learns at Charlotte becomes fuel for the company he’s scaling.
Boobys Mobile Beverages
Nicholas Huger (MBA, Belk College of Business)
Before he ever rolled his custom beverage trailer onto a festival lawn, Nicholas Huger had already built a brand people talked about. Boobys — named after the blue-footed booby bird — was created to be bold, memorable and fun. What began as a mobile coffee and mocktail concept found immediate traction, appearing at Charlotte Pride, Susan G. Komen events and community festivals across the region.
When Nicholas came to UNC Charlotte, CO-LAB helped him refine Boobys into a scalable consumer brand. Through his Entrepreneurial Decisions course, he met mentors including a former Coca-Cola Consolidated vice president who guided him through brand positioning, customer experience, product development and growth strategy. CO-LAB also introduced him to Pitch Breakfast, where he expanded his network of founders, advisors and potential investors.
Nicholas is now preparing to launch canned Boobys beverages, transforming a mobile pop-up into a packaged product ready for retail shelves, online distribution and wholesale partnerships. Charlotte’s beverage ecosystem, combined with the access he has through CO-LAB, accelerated his timeline dramatically. What usually takes a founder years of trial and error is happening far faster because he is building his company inside a city that supports independent food and beverage innovation.
Blue Wings
Siddarth Gaddam (Electrical Engineering, William States Lee College of Engineering)
Meghan Asaati (Data Science)
Blue Wings emerged from a simple observation: drones could solve more industrial problems than the existing market allowed. While working in UNC Charlotte’s SMART Net Laboratory, electrical engineering student Siddarth Gaddam realized that companies needing drone inspections, data collection or autonomous operations were forced to stitch together multiple vendors. One provided hardware, another piloted systems, another processed data.
Siddarth and data science major Meghan Asaati saw an opportunity to build an end-to-end platform that could offer everything in one place: manufacturing, piloting, logistics and analytics.
At CO-LAB, they refined the concept, pitched it and received guidance from mentors who helped them move toward commercialization. Their turning point came when a solar manufacturer validated their model and expressed real interest. Blue Wings shifted from a student concept to a viable company with a clear market.
They are now expanding into the supply chain and energy utility sectors, with plans to serve construction, surveillance, entertainment and more. Their story is distinctively Charlotte, shaped by an ecosystem built around energy, logistics and high-growth industries. They are not building for hypothetical clients. Their clients are blocks away.
What Access Makes Possible
All three founders came to Charlotte with talent and ambition. What changed their trajectories was the environment they found at CO-LAB and the access created by being embedded in one of the Southeast’s most dynamic innovation economies.
“Developing and deploying the entrepreneurial mindset isn’t an afterthought; it’s a commitment,” said Brad Yeckley, executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “CO-LAB and the 49er Foundry are just the beginning. Our goal is to ensure every student gains the real-world experience and skills necessary to drive our region’s economy forward.”
When students learn AT Charlotte and plug directly into opportunity IN Charlotte, theory becomes practice. Ideas become companies. Students become founders.
This is what happens when access becomes advantage.
The Difference Is Charlotte.
