About | CLT Startup House

The Problem

Most coworking spaces promise community but deliver isolation.

You walk in. You sit down. You put your headphones on. You don't talk to anyone. You leave. The "community" everyone says they want never actually happens.

Harvard researchers put sensors on 150 employees and found that tearing down walls actually reduced face-to-face interaction by 70%. People just put their headphones on louder. The problem was never open space. It was thoughtfully designed space.

And the spaces themselves? Sanitized. Corporate. Sterile. Fine for grinding through emails, but not for the kind of spontaneous collisions that spark new ideas, new companies, new friendships.

SF and NYC have startup houses where founders live and work together, feeding off each other's energy. Charlotte has... nothing like that.

Until now.

The Vision

Charlotte Startup House is a small, curated space for founders who want more than a desk.

We're taking a historic house in Charlotte and turning it into a place where:

People whiteboard on walls and jam on ideas together
Happy little accidents happen in the kitchen over coffee
Panel discussions happen in a living room, not a conference center
You're surrounded by people who understand what you're building

This is the same design principle that produced the transistor at Bell Labs, nine Nobel laureates at MIT's Building 20, and every Pixar movie since Toy Story. Private space for deep work. Shared space for collision. A kitchen where different people end up at the same time. It sounds simple because it is. The hard part is being intentional about it.

This is not another WeWork. It's intimate. It's curated. It's a home base for the people actually building the future of Charlotte.

How It Works

Four ways to be part of CLT Startup House.

Residents

A dedicated room in the house for your team. 24/7 access, all events, and a front-row seat to the community.

Dedicated Desk

A reserved desk in a shared room. Your own spot in the house with 24/7 access and everything Members get.

Members

Work from any common area in the house, plus all four weekly Jam Sessions. Be part of the community without a reserved desk.

Day Pass

Drop in for a single Wednesday Jam Session. Full day of collisions, collaboration, and community.

Building with a co-founder? Join together for $450/month ($225/person). See the co-founder package →

View Pricing

Who This Is For

You might be a fit if you:

Are building something

Crave real community, not networking theater

Want to move fast in the AI era

Value spontaneous collaboration over scheduled meetings

Are tired of working alone or in sterile corporate spaces

Want to be part of something bigger than your own company

Why Now

Charlotte's startup ecosystem is at an inflection point. The ingredients are here. The infrastructure isn't. Yet.

Top 20 Tech City

Charlotte just cracked the national top 20. 50,000+ tech workers and growing fast.

Over $1B Raised

Hundreds of VC deals in five years. The capital is flowing into Charlotte startups.

Founders Stay

90% of Charlotte founders plan to stay. The social capital built here stays here.

The AI Boom

AI is accelerating everything, except for real authentic relationships. The CLT Startup House is here to solve that.

The Bottom Line

The Charlotte Startup House isn't a real estate play. It's not a coworking arbitrage.

It's community and collisions that the Charlotte startup community deserves.

A place where founders collide with other founders. Where ideas get pressure-tested over coffee. Where the next great Charlotte company might get started because two people happened to be in the same room at the same time.

SF has Y Combinator houses. NYC has founder lofts. Charlotte has 1717 Cleveland Ave.

Meet the Founder

Drew Burdick

Founder, StealthX & CLT Startup House

"I looked for a space like this in Charlotte. It didn't exist. So I'm building it."

I'm the founder of StealthX, where we help companies build products and experiences people actually love. We move fast, stay lean, and let AI do the heavy lifting.

I host a podcast and write a weekly newsletter on building great experiences with strategy, design & AI.

Most of my work is with Charlotte-area companies, and I've seen firsthand what's missing: a space where founders can collide, collaborate, and build together. Not another coworking space. A startup house.

That's what we're building.

Follow Drew

For the Builders.