Silicon Harbor Hot Take: Carter Kennedy | Soloinsight

A coastal city with global ambitions—this conversation with Soloinsight CEO Carter Kennedy shows what it takes to scale identity governance from Charleston into 41 countries while keeping culture, speed, and profitability intact. We open with the simple promise behind complex infrastructure: connecting visitors, contractors, employees, and tenants to the right places at the right times through compliant, integrated access. From a Class A lobby to a hospital corridor, Carter explains how referenceable customers and network effects turn hard-won first deals into a repeatable enterprise motion.

We dig into what building from Charleston looks like day to day: distributed hiring that complements a rising local scene, the real advantages of quality of life and a convenient airport, and the honest gaps in capital density that still need solving. Carter shares a clear go-to-market framework—industry conferences, channel partners, and word-of-mouth from marquee accounts—plus how a small sales team can land six-figure deals by focusing on value and outcomes. The roadmap for the region is equally direct: attract more investors to fuel proven playbooks, connect founders consistently through platforms like Dignation and Dig South, and turn momentum into that first billion-dollar win that seeds the next generation of companies.

AI threads through the strategy as a practical lever, not a buzzword. Carter breaks it down into three moves: automate internal processes to shorten implementations, enhance existing products so customers pay for smarter results, and launch new AI-driven offerings already in demand across healthcare, finance, and critical infrastructure. We close with tangible takeaways—Solo Insight is hiring in Charleston, offering its platform to regional enterprises, and inviting warm introductions to large accounts ready for better identity governance. Want to plug into this movement, grow your network, and help write Charleston’s next tech headline? Subscribe, share this episode with a founder who needs it, and leave a review with the one connection that could move

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Charleston Marketing Podcast, brought to you by the Charleston AMA and broadcasting from our friends at Charleston Media Solutions Studios. Thanks to our awesome sponsors at CMS, we get to chat with the cool folks making waves in Charleston. From business and art to hospitality and tech. These movers and shakers choose to call the low country home. They live here, work here, and make a difference here. So what's their story? Let's find out together.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Today, Mike, we are with Carter Kennedy, a good friend of mine who has been a stalwart supporter of Big South Tech Summit and Charleston Tech Week last year, has a phenomenal company we're going to talk about in a minute. I'm going to let him tee that up. And he moved here from Chicago um, what, six, seven years ago, Carter? How long has it been at this point?

SPEAKER_03 0:48

Uh five years this March.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Five years this March. I love it. The five-year anniversary is coming up. So, Mike, do you want me to just tee this up and have Carter tell us a little bit about himself and solo insight?

SPEAKER_02 0:59

I like it. We can welcome everybody to the Silicon Harbor Hot Takes with Stanfield Gray. Brought to you by Dick South.

Welcome And Series Setup

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Thanks for the proper setup there, Mike. Right? Yeah, here we are in January. Uh Dig South Tech Summit and Charleston Tech Week coming up June 8th through the 12th. And we decided to have fun with Silicon Harbor Hot Tank with Stanfield Gray. So the idea here really is to showcase um thought leaders, executives, experts, investors, all the ingredients, all the people that make a flourishing tech ecosystem happen and support that. And so here we are with Carter Kennedy, who is one of the pillars of that community. Say hello, Carter, and tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

My name's Carter Kennedy. I'm the CEO of Solo Insight. Solo Insight is an identity governance company. And what we do is we take visitors, contractors, vendors, employees, and tenants. We match them with credentials so that we can give them access to different buildings and different uh opportunities in those buildings. Match that with 154 different integrations and then push that through a compliance stack. We're right now actually managing over 100 different clients in commercial uh real estate, um, in manufacturing and oil and gas, as well as in healthcare and pharma. So we've actually uh grown by more than two and a half times since we've been in Charleston. Uh and we're profitable. And uh we're having a good run we're having a very good run right now.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Let's go. Congratulations. That sounds like a lot. You just put a lot into a small time frame here. Can you elaborate a little bit more? Uh give us a case study, if you will.

SPEAKER_03 2:43

Yeah, it's it's kind of simple. Let's say you have a visitor that was coming into a commercial real estate building, like a Class A multi-tenant like Will's Tower in Chicago. Um, that visitor has to go through a the proper set of procedures. They need to get vetted, they need to get an invitation, they need to get a QR pass and an invitation. They come to that turnstile, they drop a driver's license, and then a pass is printed for them to get through the access control, get in the elevator, and go visit your favorite um your favorite uh account manager at Merrill Lyncher at the U.S. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Okay. Interesting.

Solo Insight: What The Company Does

SPEAKER_03 3:16

How did you get involved with that? You know, my business partner is a famous, a famous uh mathematician and computer and computer scientists. Not true of Stanfield doesn't matter. He actually he actually worked with the Sheikh of Dubai in 2000 to 2006, putting together a very elaborate multi-factor biometric technology for expats that are leaving the country to make sure they paid their bills. So using a retinal scan and a pond vein scan, and he was the first smart city successful endeavor out there in Charles.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

So you know it's amazing. You're headquartered here in Charleston. You have global reach. You know, tell us what that's like to run a company company from here. I we assume you have a distributed team, you have clients probably on every continent.

Real-World Visitor Access Case Study

SPEAKER_03 4:01

Yeah, we're, you know, at this stage we're in 41 different countries. We're primarily in the United States and Canada, uh, continuing to expand. We've got a footprint now in the Middle East uh as well as in Europe. Um it's interesting to be in Charleston. It's just it's the city. If you think about Steve Case talking about the rise of the rest, you know, we're kind of the rise of the rise of the rest. We're just cutting our teeth and getting to the point where we're going to get international attention. So that's been i interesting from our perspective. I'm in the process of hiring two people in Charleston, uh, and maybe a third. So building out the office here. We're distributed uh here, and then we have an offshore technology team we work with.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

So if I'm a founder in Charleston and I'm trying to learn from Carter Kennedy, what what are some of uh you know what are some of the upsides of being based in Charleston and what are some of the challenges that I'm gonna have to overcome as I scale?

SPEAKER_03 4:53

You know, this isn't Charlotte, it's not Chicago, it's not New York. So we're not gonna have that same breadth of talent to tap from. But that said, because we have a distributed company around the United States, it doesn't necessarily matter that you're not in Charleston. You know, I have people in in Little Rock, I have people in Boston, I've got people in New York, I've got people in Greensboro. Um so I think we've been fortunate finally to figure out where to find that talent. You know, the Harbor Entrepreneur Center has been a good uh catalyst for for those introductions.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Didn't even pay him for that.

Founding Story And Global Roots

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Exactly. But um so it's a beautiful city to work from. It's a great place to train people, it's a great piece place to bring people from a customer advisory board to use to take advantage of all the uh all the different opportunities here from a cultural perspective. So those are all big benefits to being here. And the airport is quite, quite convenient, as long as you're smart enough to book a uh direct flight um in the early in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah, you know that's right. You're exactly right. Were you at the pitch night at the accelerator at harbor? I was not. Okay. Then it was at the harbor somewhere though. A little deja vu. That's how I had to.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Take us back five years, Carter. How did you choose Charleston? You were based in Chicago a long time, had a background in finance and SaaS, you know, technology.

Running A Global Team From Charleston

SPEAKER_03 6:07

Yeah, you know what I what I really wanted to do is is uh move into an environment which I thought would be rich to kind of build the business from. Um Charlton has, you know, all the physical attributes, you know, uh rivers and ocean and beach and uh an incredible history behind it, and a place that we could really hang our hat and be somewhere like a big fish in the small pond. That was you know part of the intention here, and we're kind of working our way into what is a very vibrant South Carolina and Charleston business community. Um certainly Charles uh South Carolina outkicks its coverage in terms of the size of the state relative to the economics it drives. So we're working our working our way into manufacturing and cyber and Department of Defense and kind of getting our feet wet in terms of working in uh Charleston and South Carolina more broadly.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

So Silicon Harbor Hot Take is a segment on the Charleston Marketing Podcast. Tell us a little about your go-to-market strategy. You know, when you're when you're thinking about a new country, is it is it word of mouth? Is one company recommending you to another? Is there any sort of consumer-focused campaign or is it strictly B2B?

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Aaron Powell You know, the interesting part is and we we talk about this uh sort of tongue in cheek, you know, the most powerful force in the universe is the network effect and the referenceable customer. So winning our first hospital network was impossible. Winning our 21st hospital network was a lot easier. Um between giant between some of the larger, larger hospital networks we have, uh winning our first bank was very difficult. Um and now we're we're getting a lot of good runway there. A lot of it's referenceable customers, a lot of it's word of mouth. We do attend security conferences, we attend healthcare conferences, we attend identity conferences, and then we also go through uh channel partners and value-added resellers that that make introductions for us. That's a lot. There's a lot to manage. You know, it's amazing to me how that with a very small sales team we can we can hit such large numbers because the uh the size of these opportunities has gone from 15,000 to 250,000 per customer. Okay. So you can you can as a salesperson, you can have four big wins and hit your quota, which is great.

Pros And Cons Of Building Here

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Sign me up. Yeah. You said you're looking for a salesperson, right? Or did I just put that in your mouth?

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yeah, so you know, let's let's talk about the Charleston low country, broader um tech ecosystem, the royal we. What could we do better here?

SPEAKER_03 8:29

You know, I think one of the things that's going to be really important is to just strategically tap into the venture community and into the investment community. If there's more money that people can access here, that can put them in a different trajectory. I mean, the reason that you raise capital is not because you're running out of money, it's because you want to scale what is already a a successful go-to-market strategy. If we're in five verticals now, how do we get to ten, or how do we get five times the amount of business in those five verticals? Well, you know, cash has you know, cash arms for your army has a lot to do that, do you know do with that. Right. So I think attracting people from Chattanooga, from Orlando, from Atlanta, from Chicago, and getting some of the Silicon Valley represent representatives here is gonna is gonna benefit the community a great deal.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

That's a lot of what we try to do at Dig South Tech Summit, you know, as we target investors for the wild pitch. Um you and I met you know through that summit many years ago at this point. Um you know, like okay, so we have some some ingredients here. We have the SCRA, we have the C RDA, and we and both of them are doing an excellent job of kind of you know backstopping not only the ecosystem, but also putting real resources into it. What are, you know, in a very tactical way, what do you view as some other things we could take advantage of? How can we harness the kind of collective you know founder group we have here?

SPEAKER_03 9:48

You know, I think that you know uh putting together, whether it's a club or a a meeting on a consistency basis, and that's why I like Dig South, is you tend to get the entrepreneurs together in one in in one venue. That's a big deal. The connectivity between uh between different technology investors or technology uh entrepreneurs is a big deal. I mean, even within the context of Ethos, which is a workout facility, I know four people that are in either the software as a service sales or start of their own company. So it's really beginning to happen organically. I think we can put it on we can put it on steroids if we if we dedicate more money, time, and focus to actually attracting the right amount of talent from an invest investor perspective as well as uh talent that can actually come down to Charleston and work.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Aaron Powell It's all about connectivity. That's what you're saying, huh? You just you want to get in front of the peop the right people in the right time and and and be in a in a a system that that helps each other, you know?

SPEAKER_03 10:42

Yeah, and I think if we can take if we see we look at some of the success that Blackbot had and some of the other technology firms, we need some more of those technology successes.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

Aren't you a future black I mean Blackbot Hey they got nothing on you?

Why Charleston Chose Him Back

SPEAKER_03 10:54

Well, you know, we need we need our we need our first billion-dollar company to come out of Charleston. Yeah, it's gonna happen. So that's that's you know, that that sort of success breeds additional success. Uh and then the derivatives of that, if you think about what Blackbot and some of the other successes with the trading companies that have been been here, the the derivative successes were taking those entrepreneurs and those leaders within the context of those companies and they're starting their own companies. So it feeds upon itself. It's a it within it's an internal network effect.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah, you get the virtuous circle there of founders putting back into the community and elevating it. Well, putting on your um, you know, looking into the crystal ball, let's say five years from now, possibly ten, what do you what is the promise of the Charleston Tech ecosystem? Where do you think it if if things fell into place and went in the right direction, what does it look like?

SPEAKER_03 11:44

I think we'd become the rise of the rest as opposed to the rise of the rise of the rest. I think we can I think we can stake our claim to as we begin to add technology companies here, software as a service company, B2B software as a service companies, as we add that talent, it it actually attracts more talent. Obviously, we have the Citadel here, College of Charleston, Clemton's not too far away. I mean, actually accessing those folks and making sure they come here to to start working for technology companies is a big deal. So we just got to organically continue to feed, you know, feed the beast. Sure. Um keep that momentum going.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

I would I would suggest even down to the high school level as well, you know, and and keep mentoring the as much as we can, you know.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Speaking of the beast, let's talk about artificial intelligence for a second. Yeah. What kind of an impact is AI having on your company, but also you know, for a founder now who maybe doesn't have a technical founder, but they have some skills they can use AI to maybe rapid prototype. You know, do you see that as you know, replacing people, augmenting people? Do you see it as the future of how everything is going to be, regardless of our opinion of that? It's just here?

Go-To-Market And Network Effects

SPEAKER_03 12:53

Aaron Powell Yeah, I think it's in it's an evolution. We'll see what takes place. It's going to happen, it's going to happen much more rapidly than people think it's going to happen. From our perspective, we're focused on three outcomes. One outcome is to take our business processes and enhance them and make them more efficient. The second is to take our current product set and and uh add AI to it so it it's also more attractive and customers were willing to pay more for it. And then the third piece is their their direct AI um AI tactical uh and strategic products that we can bring to market which are already under in demand from what is a hundred person or a hundred company portfolio of clients, including some, you know, four we have twelve uh fourteen Fortune 100 companies that are that are our clients. We mean we we we sell simplicity around complexity, so we make the complex simple. Nice. Um but AI is you know is unique, exquisitely good at it at scraping larger databases and coming up with different anomalies that you can that you can look at from a data perspective. For sure. So that to me is the most the most compelling piece, but sh you know, shrinking our implementation time, making that all those different pieces more effective and more efficient, um it's gonna drive a a lot of uh a lot of ROI to our customers and a lot of ROI to our company. Yeah. So I'm looking as we as we move along this path, uh I think it should be embraced wholeheartedly without fear. Um It's definitely a tool. It's a tool. It's a compliment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

There are two questions I love to ask all of our guests toward the end of the segment. Oh, this is the end? No, it's not the end. It's it's toward the end. Oh, well, Mike's trying to make us wrap up here.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Uh hi Emily, hi, nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Yeah, so the first is Um Carter, what can you andor solo insight offer the community here specifically? What's what's something you like to say? Hey, if you need advice or if you're looking for a company that does X, or just you know, it could be in a in a more um uh you know vague way, just uh just something you like to offer to Charleston.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

So what I'd like to offer to Charleston is the ability to get a job with Solo Insight. And so now that we've begun to hire people, I think that will feed upon itself. Um the second thing is I'd like to offer our technology to the the companies that work around Charleston and in in South Carolina. You know, we want to eat our own, eat our own home cooking. Um so I think that you know the application for what we do, which is manage is governing identities across large portfolios and large companies, has application essentially to every person going into every building, getting on the network. So it has broad application. Uh we just need to find the right customers to adopt it because it will be then become viral within within Charleston and South Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Okay. And then what can the community provide to you? What do you need right now?

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Uh I think that would it'd be it would be uh wonderful. I'll work with you on this to go back to some of the stakeholders that have access to these large clients, that they can take us to those clients and give us a give us a shot, you know, give us a an at mat. You know, we have enough we have enough critical mass from a referenceable customer and and top quality, you know, fortune, fortune names that you you're not gonna you're not gonna hesitate to want to adopt us. You can you can call you know you you can make a simple call and you're gonna have confidence that what we're delivering drives an amazing amount of value from an experience and from a security perspective and makes these all of these companies uh run more efficiently.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Love it. Mike, what do we miss?

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Uh how do we get a hold of you? How do you know for the people that want either you know to help you or to be helped, like get that get that job from you, Carl? How how do they get a hold of you?

Big Deals With A Small Sales Team

SPEAKER_03 16:32

I think go to the go to the website, yeah, soloinsight.com. Yeah. Uh and there's a product catalog which I would encourage anybody that's interested in in kind of either working with us or trying to figure out exactly what we're doing. You can download a 20 a 20-page product catalog that goes through all the different software modules we built. I mean, we actively sell mobile credentials for Apple, Samsung, and Google. We actively sell temporary access for visitors, patients, and contractors. We actively sell physical identity and access management management, which manages people in locations that are interacting with the network. It's an has an audit function as well as a cyber function. So those are the three tips of the spear, but there's much more to the platform than that, including space reservations and mass notification and mustering, uh other bull tons that can add value to add value to our customers.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Amazing. Yeah, and it's all about you know building the economy here in Charleston, and that's why we're doing this. So what a perfect kickoff episode, Stanfield.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Right. And if everybody would like to meet Carter in person, he will be at Dig South Tech Summit June 11th and 12th, and participating that week in Charleston Tech Week, June 8th through 12th. So make sure to come meet Carter Kennedy, learn more about Solo Insight, and uh yeah, just keep on keeping on. Listen to the start. Keep on keeping on.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Hey, real quick, there's a there's a tip I wanted to give our our our Diggs Dignation, if you will. Did y'all know that you can go behind the scenes and there's a networking option if you belong and are a member of Dig South? Talk about your internal network that's full of hundreds and thousands of people.

Capital, Investors, And Acceleration

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Well, I'm glad you asked, Mike. Yeah, so um Dig South, about five or six years ago, launched Dignation. And the idea was we we kept having requests from our attendee speaker sponsors. How do we stay in touch year-round? I got tired of being the personal secretary and facilitating every single intro, which is hard to scale. It is, and I'm not gonna monetize. And so we built a member platform around that called Dignation. So you can go to dignation.co. The beauty of it is if you buy a ticket or badge to Dig South Tech Summit, you're automatically a member. So you can come to those monthly meetups we host. We've done events such as Launch Fest, we partner with the Harbor Entrepreneur Center all the time on those fun things with the Charleston Marketing Association as well. So yeah, join dignation.co, grab a badge. Early bird tickets are on sale at digsummit.com. That's digsummit.com. And say hi to me, Stanfield Gray. We'll be in touch.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Yes, it's a great community event, folks. Definitely want to be a part of it. Carter, thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

My pleasure. Thanks so much for the time as well.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Really appreciate you sharing. Stanfield, good first episode, boss.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Carter. Thank you so much.