Axios Charlotte’s 2016 Founding Partners and what you should expect

We’ve signed 2016 partnership deals with the following companies: OrthoCarolina (there from the beginning), Bojangles, Hendrick Auto Mall Concord Mills, Red Ventures, Uber, The Map Shop, AccruePartners, Windsor Jewelers, Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, STAX, Skookum, PVG CPAs, Charlotte Independence, Trinity Partners, Charlotte Radiology, Bank of America and Carolinas HealthCare System.

Our team is very thankful for our 2016 Founding Partners. As a local digital media startup, it’s exciting to see Charlotte’s top brands and brand marketers willing to grow with us.

What does this mean for you?

We will continue in our effort to make Charlotte the smartest, most human city in the world.

We hope by now, you’ve noticed that we’re not like other local media companies — we’re aggressive — and that’s not going to change. Here’s a quick look into our near-term plans.

• Job Board. We’re going to launch a simple job board within the next 45 days that will serve Charlotte’s creative/innovative community. We believe that LinkedIn is an incredible tool, but that Charlotte’s hiring managers and HR leaders need a more focused job board to recruit breakthrough talent.
• Coverage. You’ll see our coverage evolve over the next 14 months. We’ll go deeper on certain topics and we’ll do even more reporting on social. We also need to figure out simple ways for the community to participate in our coverage.
• Talent. We’re going to hire a Chief Operating Officer within the next 30 days so that we can continue to grow and experiment. This will allow us to launch new products with clear leadership.

• New products. We’re still talking this over, but we’ll likely get into events, audio and maybe even print in 2016. Live events are our priority.
• Advertising. We freaking love advertising. Our goal is to create advertising that if it went away, you’d miss it. Specifically, you will see different display advertising, a new ad product called “Invite” and co-created stories. All clearly labeled.

All of these efforts are an attempt to serve you better. Sure, we’re going to get some things right and some things wrong, but you’ll never question our integrity, transparency and effort.