Don't Miss All Things AI at Raleigh Durham Startup Week | April 20-24

We think it takes a village of like-minded organizations to provide opportunities and network with others in the community. That's why we partnered with Raleigh Durham Startup Week to promote entrepreneurship and economic growth in the Triangle. We encourage everyone to take advantage of the amazing events running April 20–24 across Raleigh and Durham.

Our co-founder, Mark Hinkle is doing three sessions in both Raleigh and Durham on startups and AI.

Mark Hinkle has been in and around startups for most of his career. Cloud.com — acquired by Citrix for $300 million. TriggerMesh — co-founded it, backed by Index Ventures and Cisco. A handful of others that never made the headlines, and honestly, most don't. That's the nature of the game. You raise capital, you hire people, you try to get leverage, and then you race against the clock until you either win or you don't.

That model is changing. Fast.

Sam Altman has said that someday we'll see a single-person billion-dollar company. That may be further out than the hype cycle suggests — but what's happening right now is this: a 10-person company with hundreds, maybe thousands, of AI agents working around the clock is not science fiction. It's a capital strategy.
The question isn't whether AI changes how startups are built. It already has. The question is what founders do with that leverage, and how they get started.

🎟️ RSVP for Building Your Startup in the Age of AI

This session is hosted in partnership with the The American Underground as part of Raleigh Durham Startup Week.

Raleigh-Durham Startup Week is a regional movement — powered by a team of founders, entrepreneurs, and support organizations dedicated to showcasing the vibrant entrepreneurial community in the Triangle area. We strive to create meaningful moments to enrich entrepreneurial culture and our local startup community.

The Research Triangle has produced some of the most important technology companies in the world. It's a region with world-class universities, deep engineering talent, and a startup culture that doesn't get nearly enough credit on the national stage. The ingredients have always been here. What's changing is how few resources you now need to turn those ingredients into something real.

AI is rewriting the math of early-stage company building. The leverage available to a small founding team today — through agents, automation, and AI-assisted execution — would have required a Series A round and a 20-person team just five years ago. That changes everything about how you think about starting a company in the Triangle right now.

🎟️ RSVP for How AI Can Build RTP's Next Great Startup

This session is hosted in partnership with the The Loading Dock as part of Raleigh Durham Startup Week.

You don't need to learn to code. You need to learn to communicate with AI.

🎟️ Register for this virtual meetup session

Join us at Pendo HQ on Thursday, April 23 for an evening of light bites, drinks, and good conversation. As a treat, they’ll be firing up Pendo’s pizza oven and pending weather, have their patio open for great Raleigh views from the 19th floor! It’s awesome we’ve been there.

​​We’ll also have a short thought leadership discussion where Pendo's Chief AI Officer, Zain Lakhani and Mark Hinkle, Founder of the AIE Network and All Things AI, will share ideas for what’s next.

Whether you want to listen, jump in, or swap notes over a slice, this is a chance to trade perspectives and leave inspired. See you at Pendo, 301 Hillsborough St, Raleigh, bring your appetite and something you’re excited to talk about.

🎟️ Please RSVP on Lu.ma

​This event is part of Raleigh-Durham Startup Week, a community-driven conference that supports founders and celebrates entrepreneurship across the region. Learn more at raleighdurhamstartupweek.com.

Also, we really wanted to also spotlight some of our amazing local entrepreneurs and community builders.

We also want to extend a special thank you to Molly McKinley of RDSW for spotlighting these amazing folks here in RDU.

When you look at what's actually being built in the Triangle right now, the momentum is undeniable. Take Robert Thelen, CEO and co-founder of Rownd, who is actively moving AI from the cloud to the front lines. With their open-source project LlamaFarm, his team is providing the tools to run specialized models and autonomous agents directly on edge hardware. It's a critical shift for industries like defense and healthcare, where connectivity can't be assumed and failure isn't an option. You can read more about Robert's approach in our recent spotlight: If You're Building on Someone Else's Model, You Don't Own Anything.

Then there's Erkang Zheng, founder of Ariso, who reminds us that the real bottleneck isn't technical anymore—it's organizational. His company is building Ari, an AI partner that lives inside your workday to catch what you miss and give you situational awareness at scale. As Erkang points out, the real opportunity is turning every employee into a leader, a player-coach at scale, rather than just treating AI like a glorified search box. Check out Erkang's full story here: The Bottleneck Isn't Technical Anymore. Erkang Zheng Built a Company to Prove It.

And driving much of this connection is Danny Castro, an ecosystem catalyst and co-founder of the Raleigh chapter of AI Tinkerers. Danny is focused on the practical, real-consequence side of AI governance and ensuring that the community remains accessible. He knows that true fluency means actually using the language of AI, and that no one here is coding in isolation. Dive into Danny's perspective here: He's Not Selling You on AI. He's Showing You What's Already Here.

This is what's being built here in the Triangle. It's not just about the technology; it's about the people building it and the community supporting them.