Carolina Fintech Hub has partnered with Boston-based MassChallenge to push the growth of Charlotte’s tech industry through an initiative announced Wednesday – The Meta Lab.
The Meta Lab will tie health care and finance startups into an accelerator program supported by local finance and tech giants and MassChallenge, an entrepreneurship nonprofit.
The program launch, announced at a media event at Camp North End, will focus on defining challenge areas recruited companies want to tackle. These challenges areas might include diversity, inclusion and upward mobility.
Applications for companies to join the program will be accepted from Oct. 20 to Nov. 10. Selected startups will have a chance to collaborate with Carolina Fintech Hub's anchor partners, including Fifth Third Bank, U.S. Bank and Live Oak Bank. The companies can also get a share of an innovation prize pool made possible by EY, Movement Mortgage and LendingTree. Other partners include Truist Financial Corp., Barings and Atrium Health.
There are two sides to The Meta Lab initiative, said Carolina Fintech Hub Executive Director Tariq Bokhari, who is also a Charlotte City Council member. While startup applicants are being reviewed for participation in the program, the City of Charlotte and the initiative’s partners will aggressively recruit the companies to move here.
“We’ve done this thing kind of ad hoc over for the last couple years,” Bokhari said. “But even doing it ad hoc, that’s why Better.com has over a 1,000 people working here. That’s why RobinHood is here. That’s why Varo Bank is here because the fintech hub found opportunities and tossed it over to the city to recruit them to come here.”
The Meta Lab will build on that momentum, institutionalize it and create a factory of bringing the hottest companies and small businesses to Charlotte, Bokhari said. “Then we’re going to find the best startups in the world, for all of (the challenges), and ultimately bring them here, recruit them to town and see if we can make deals happen.”
Phase 2 of the program will focus on assisting Meta Lap startups in implementation, scaling, business development, acquisitions and finding opportunities to deploy capital.
“We’ve gone and had all kinds of different meetings, discussions, vettings of global players on the accelerator stage,” Bokhari said. “Our partners have discussed it, and we kept not finding the exact right fit.
Bokhari said he met with MassChallenge CEO Siobhan Dullea earlier this year and instantly knew the nonprofit was the right fit for The Meta Lab. Created out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MassChallenge is a global network for innovators. There are over 2,900 MassChallenge alumni that have created over 186,000 jobs and generated $3.6 billion in revenue since launching in 2009.
“One of the most important milestones for a startup is landing their first enterprise customer, especially in regulated industries like finance and health care,” Dullea said in a statement released Wednesday. “Meanwhile, corporate leaders are learning that the fastest way to solve big challenges is to partner with a startup. These corporate-startup collaborations are a win-win. MassChallenge is excited to bring our proven methodology to this competition to foster new economic growth.”
The Meta Hub will release the targeted challenges next week. “We’ll look back on this day as a big one for the city,” said Steve Boehm, COO of Barings, during the Wednesday launch event.
This announcement comes during an unofficial “fintech week” in the city. Earlier on Wednesday, Charlotte-based AvidXchange (NASDAQ: AVDX) debuted on the Nasdaq. “(AvidXchange) provides a great backdrop of this is what happens when the success story goes perfect,” said Bokhari.
AvidXchange began 20 years ago as, just like many of these Meta Lab hopefuls, a startup looking for a chance. By the time the payment software company turned 10 years old, it was worth $1 billion and now it's publicly traded after this week's IPO.
“This is an individual example of what The Meta Lab can be,” Bokhari said.
