Photo Credits: North Carolina Biotechnology Center
More than 500 entrepreneurs, investors, and support organizations gathered in downtown Winston-Salem’s Innovation Quarter on August 27-28, 2026 for ConvergeSouth, the largest edition yet of the 10-year-old event organized by the nonprofit Flywheel Foundation. Flywheel Foundation founder and board member Peter Marsh described what the event is built to do: “ConvergeSouth is a place where some of our region’s most visionary entrepreneurs, and the investors and industry thought leaders who want to support them, come together in one place to learn, network and grow their businesses to the next level. The event showcases Winston-Salem as a hub of innovation.”
A Packed Healthtech and Biotech Track
The two-day event ran three tracks — healthtech/biotech, AI and B2B SaaS, and food/beverage/agtech — across venues including Biotech Place and the Bailey Power Plant, backed by title sponsors Johnson & Johnson, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Reynolds, NCInnovation, and Innovation Quarter. The North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NCBiotech) had a heavy hand in the biotech programming: Nancy Johnston, executive director of NCBiotech’s Piedmont Triad office, served on the organizing committee and led the biotech track’s second day, while staffers Kyle R. Bartholomew, Mike Carnes, and Zach Zabarsky helped plan sessions and run panels. On a “Building Biotechs in the Southeast” panel Carnes moderated, Cape Fear BioCapital co-founder and general partner Ed Field pushed founders to think past their home turf: “Don’t focus on the best technology in North Carolina, the Southeast or the U.S. You need to focus on global,” pointing specifically to China’s comparatively streamlined path to market. Hatteras Venture Partners CEO Heather Madsen made a related point about access to capital: “If you’re in Boston or the Bay Area, you are in contact with a constant volume of people. You have to start with meeting people. Make contacts in the traditional life sciences hubs such as Boston and San Francisco and ask for invitations to meetings.” Zabarsky separately led a session on Department of Defense biomedical funding, noting that Congress appropriated $1.27 billion for 34 research programs under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, through the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs.
A Pitch Win and a Lineup of Portfolio Companies
Agtech company CHONEX, which develops biological agricultural products, won the regional title in Pegasus Tech Ventures’ $1 million Startup World Cup competition at ConvergeSouth, advancing to the Grand Finale in San Francisco this November. Several companies from NCBiotech’s roughly 90-company active investment portfolio exhibited among the event’s 75 pitch-session participants: Wake Forest-based Neuriora LLC, which is working to improve the reliability of clinical trial endpoint data in psychiatry and CNS research; OncoTab Inc., developing tumor-targeted therapies for pancreatic cancer; Duke spinout OsteoCure Therapeutics, advancing an adenosine-based platform for bone repair and osteoporosis treatment; and Plakous Therapeutics, winner of NCBiotech’s 2022 Venture Challenge. Johnston summed up the two days in a LinkedIn post: “an incredible two days that brought together highly engaged entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and ecosystem leaders from across the Southeast to North Carolina, the Piedmont Triad region and to Winston-Salem!”
