Senior Year(s)
Sometimes we like to make fun of Grandma or Grandpa’s texts (they’re using emoji now—so cute!) or Facebook posts, but the fact is that most senior citizens these days are avid users of technology. That’s why senior living facilities need to step into the 21st century as well. Chapel Hill-based Viibrant is helping them do just that, creating resident engagement platforms with all the tech bells and whistles.
Viibrant was recently named one of NC TECH’s 2019 “10 Startups To Watch.” in fact, Viibrant was the only Triangle-based startup on the list (which included Aeva Labs, Allstacks, Green Stream Technologies, Kaleido and The Climate Service) that we hadn’t yet written about. We rectified that today with this feature story.
Seeing Clearly
In a GrepBeat feature last month on Raleigh-based scheduling software startup SchedulePop, we mentioned the company’s partnership with Durham-based LCI—one of the nation’s largest employers of the visually impaired—to help create tech jobs for the blind. Today we take a deeper dive into LCI Tech, a unit of LCI that focuses not just on tech jobs for the visually impaired but also on helping companies make their tech—and themselves—more accessible to people with disabilities. LCI Tech is led by Cary native John Samuel, who has an inspiring story of his own. You can read the full feature here.
Cleaning Up
Did you know that the average family of four spends more than 36 hours a month doing laundry? So says Dan D’Aquisto, the Co-Founder of 2ULaundry, who wants to take that chore off your plate. The Charlotte-based startup that has raised $10.7M in funding—including a $6M Series A that closed in October—is rolling out to the Triangle in early 2020. First up is Raleigh, Cary and Apex (25 ZIP codes and 250 square miles in all, D’Aquisto tells GrepBeat) on Jan. 13, with Durham and Chapel Hill to follow within a few months. The Triangle is 2ULaundry’s third market after Charlotte (launched in January 2016) and Atlanta, which the company entered in 2017 after participating in Techstars Atlanta.
The basic drill is that 2ULaundry will pick up your laundry and/or dry cleaning and return it the next day all spiffy-like. Speaking of Spiffy, 2ULandry will be doing a co-branded mailer in the Triangle with related convenience-first services Spiffy, Canopy Lawn Care and Comfort Monster HVAC. Most importantly: you can sign up here to 2ULaundry’s waitlist to get early bird pricing of 20% off for your first three months. (Here’s some more info from WRAL TechWire.)
Exit Signs
While an entrance (to a market) is good news for a startup like 2ULaundry, an exit is even better news for a VC fund like Durham’s Bull City Venture Partners. Yesterday, BCVP portfolio company VividCortex—a SaaS database performance management startup based in Washington D.C. and Charlottesville, Va.—announced its acquisition by Austin-based SolarWinds. You might recall that SolarWinds already has a sizable Triangle presence, in part through its April acquisition of Cary-based Samanage.
This is the third exit for a BCVP portfolio investment this year along with Contactually and Medfusion. That almost balances out the crushing loss suffered by BCVP’s Jason Caplain in his heated scooter race vs. GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy.
Rocket Fuel
High-flying (get it?) drone startup PrecisionHawk has banked another $32M in funding. It’s going to put that money to work pretty quickly to accelerate its already rapid growth, especially to develop its analytics tools for customers to capture and analyze the data from all those drones buzzing through the air. PrecisionHawk is also going to rapidly expand its headcount in its new HQ in downtown Raleigh right over the Milk Bar, which currently houses about 100 employees. (Here are more details from TechWire and TBJ.)
News Hounds
Chapel Hill-based City News Beat, which was incubated at Launch Chapel Hill, announced this week that it has secured a deal to reactivate the Fresco News video acquisition and creation platform for local news. City News Beat aims to create a local news experience for cord cutters; it’s currently producing Tar Heel News Beat on Roku and (soon) Amazon’s Fire TV, with Seattle News Beat, Bay Area News Beat and NYC News Beat all in production for Roku. Meanwhile the Fresco News platform, which enables citizen journalists to create and submit HD video “reports,” raised $5M in a Series A in 2017 led by John Malone’s Liberty Media.
NC Entrepreneur Corps
The state of North Carolina is launching the NC Entrepreneur Corps, a new work-based learning opportunity for college students that will kick off during the spring semester of 2020. The initiative is the brainchild of Gov. Roy Cooper’s North Carolina Entrepreneurship Council, which is chaired by Capitol Broadcasting exec Michael Goodmon. The students will be tasked with helping to solve issues like recruiting and retaining young tech talent, creating new digital communication channels and developing an analytics dashboard for citizens. TechWire has all the details, and applications from four-year and community college students are due on Dec. 31.
Colorful Name
Remember on Tuesday when we mentioned Raleigh’s Virtue Labs and its high-tech hair coloring breakthrough? If no, please just nod along anyway because I don’t like to think I’m doing this for nothing. Well, Virtue Labs is back in the news again, this time for adding actress Jennifer Garner to its team. Which reminds me—next time you see me, ask me to tell my True Hollywood Stories tale about her. (Bottom line: she really is as nice as she seems.)
Extra Bit
Hey, tech-savvy teens: the Google Fiber Space in Raleigh will host the Oak City Teen Hackathon tonight from 5-8 p.m. Participants will be asked to address the problems brought about by Raleigh’s increased gentrification, especially its impact on neighborhoods and the sense of community. You can contact the City of Raleigh’s Bradley Upchurch for more info.
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