What do most people do on New Year’s Day? Sleep in, watch college football, eat black eyed pea’s and greens perhaps. Well, on January 1st, 2004 Garth Moulton was in Silicon Valley doing everything but that, he was busy launching JigSaw.com, his first ever startup.

When you think of Charlotte you may think of us as the 2nd largest banking city in the country, only behind New York City on the list. You may also think of the southern tradition that is NASCAR, but startups, probably not. When we talk “startups” you’re more likely to think of think Silicon Valley or Seattle. However, you might be a little surprised if we were to throw the Queen City, Charlotte, NC into that mix. A little over a decade ago, in 2003, Lending Tree a Charlotte, NC based startup, sold for $734 million in stock shares. Jigsaw, also started in the Queen City, was sold to Sales Force for $142 million dollars in 2010. Just this past September Yap!, another local startup was sold to Amazon for an undisclosed amount. These are just a few of the many examples of huge Startups generated out of the QC, earning us the right to deem ourselves amongst the top Startup incubators in the country.