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Happy Thursday!

Two quick things: 1) The invite for next Thursday’s (May 9) GrepBeat Happy Hour is out, so register now! 2) We want to welcome Cherry Bekaert as GrepBeat’s first-ever Supporter. Among other things, you’ll be seeing Cherry Bekaert’s logo at the bottom of each newsletter and on grepbeat.com for the rest of 2019. Oh, as a total aside, are you looking for a good accountant?

Small World

If you want evidence that the world is getting smaller, swing by the South Bank building in downtown Durham. If he’s not on a plane somewhere, you may find Pule Taukobong working out of what’s essentially the U.S. HQ of CRE Venture Capital. (You’ll also find GrepBeat in Colopy Venture’s world HQ on the second floor, though fair warning, I’m not real chatty on Tuesday or Thursday mornings.)
 
CRE invests in African tech companies and other startups that focus primarily on that continent, typically pre-Series A. So far CRE’s portfolio companies have gone on to raise more than $250M and created 13K jobs in Africa, and CRE is invested alongside the likes of Google, Tencent, Y Combinator, Mark Zuckerberg and Serena Williams. Read Jacquie’s full profile of Pule and CRE here. (Pule is also looking for a part-time executive assistant in Durham; you can email him at pule@cre.vc.)

Rocket Ride

Epic Games continues to swallow up the world of video games —indeed, the entire planet. This week the company announced it has acquired San Diego-based Psyonix, which makes the (evidently) wildly popular Rocket League game. Rocket League features cars playing soccer, which might be the only way to get Americans to watch the sport.
 
There are two main rationales for the deal: 1) Rocket League, which is currently sold on the game-store platform Steam, will eventually move to Epic’s newish store; 2) The deal increases Epic’s exposure to the online esports market, where Rocket League is a major player. Psyonix was actually founded in Raleigh in 2001 and built Rocket League on Epic’s Unreal Engine development platform, so they’re old friends. (Here’s more from Verge, WRAL TechWire, and TBJ.)

Red White Hat

Breaking news: Red Hat’s hat is now... white? (Checks notes.) Yes, that’s what I’m being told. Yesterday the company unveiled its new logo, which also adorns the roof of its downtown Raleigh HQ. The white fedora on a red background is a new “modern look” that replaces a logo that some folks unfamiliar with the company thought conveyed “sneaky, sinister, secret agent” and... yeah, I don’t really get the logo marketing game, sorry. I prefer to stick with the classics, like the beloved children’s tale, Little White Riding Hood.

SAS Succession

Breaking news: SAS has announced a new CEO who will start... someday, maybe? (Check notes.) Yes, that’s what I’m being told. Bloomberg came out with a story this week that 76-year-old Jim Goodnight is grooming 54-year-old Oliver Schabenberger, the company’s current COO and CTO, to eventually take over when he retires. The thing is, Goodnight is adamant that his retirement isn’t coming anytime soon, joking (we think): “I can’t retire yet—my golf game is terrible.”
 
As a former sportswriter, I have two things to say: 1) The best way to get un-terrible at golf is to play a lot, which is far easier to do after retirement than before; 2) When a college football team has named a “head coach in waiting,” he’s ended up actually becoming the head coach less than 50 percent of the time, typically because the top guy keeps extending his tenure. So with no offense intended to Schabenberger, if I’m betting on the next CEO of SAS, I’ll still take the field over him. (Caveat: I’m a terrible bettor. And all this wagering talk has me eager for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.)

High Energy

Cary’s Dude Solutions has come a long way from its School Dude roots of exactly two decades ago, when it formed to provide SaaS facility-management solutions to K-12 schools. On Tuesday the company announced it has purchased the EnergyCenter product asset from New Energy Technology (NET) to form a new energy business unit. Dude Solutions has already been selling and implementing EnergyCenter for two years, so it saw how it could help the company’s clients in education, local government and healthcare reduce their energy costs by better managing their energy needs. Dude, killer deal!

Lose Bigger

Apex-based Parhelion, which makes lasers including the commercially available Firefly, has filed for bankruptcy to restructure. The company founded by the “Laser Twins”—twin brothers James (53% ownership) and Richard (35%) Redpath—lists $3.6M in debt and assets of $357K. It’s a shame Parhelion isn’t losing billions or it could just file for an IPO.
Because too much news is never enough
See our full, ruthlessly curated calendar of Triangle tech events here.

                 
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