Ready to Launch!

I’m thrilled to announce that Fizz Studio has been invited to join the Fall 2025 cohort at the Launch Chapel Hill accelerator (powered by KPMG)!

For me, this is more than just an exciting opportunity to take the professionalism of my startup to the next level. It’s a peak in my journey as an entrepreneur.

Eight years ago, in late 2017, shortly after I’d first formed Fizz Studio, I applied to join the Launch accelerator program. I didn’t know much about running a company, and it was really just me alone, but I poured my heart into pitching my idea of accessible data visualizations. I looked upon it as a validation of my idea, as well as a chance to learn.

My pitch was rejected.

One of the advisors for that cohort kindly took me aside and said that if I just rented a seat at the Launch coworking space, I could audit the classes. I did, and I learned a lot… but I didn’t have a direct advisor like the cohort did, and that limited how much I could get out of it.

Over the next few years, I created an accessible chart product, launched it to a small set of customers to get feedback, and then took it off the market. They were satisfied with the accessibility, but I wasn’t. Serial access to charts is no better than serial access to data tables. I knew I needed to improve it not incrementally, but to introduce a different kind of accessibility altogether. And to do that, I’d need a team.

I worked a lot of contract jobs, mostly around advising companies on making data visualizations accessible; I learned the limitations of the tools they were using. I worked with a lot of student interns (all paid!), both undergrad and grad student, trying to find good matches.

I landed a Phase I NIH grant in 2021 to help build the prototype for my next generation accessible chart software, using AI to find chart patterns in data and describe them. But by the time I found I’d gotten the grant, the experts I’d brought on had found other jobs. I rebuilt a team from scratch, starting with one bright intern, then found other Fellows from UNC’s computational linguistics program, and though it took a while, we built that prototype. Besides the grant, this was all self-funded through my consulting.

Then we took that and realized the minimum viable product (MVP) of ParaCharts, our best-of-class, AI-enhanced, accessible chart software. I grew the development team to include mathematicians and 2 native screen reader and magnifier users (nothing about us without us!), as well as brilliant business strategists, and started finding partners and customers.

Frankly, eight years ago, I wasn’t ready to run this company, to put this product on the market. I may not have even been ready for the Launch accelerator.

But this week, it comes full circle. The Launch program looks stronger than before, and I know my company and our flagship product is much stronger than before.

I can’t wait to get started with Launch!