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Sales Pitch

Chapel Hill-based RepVue, an employment platform for sales professionals, announced yesterday that it has raised a $5M seed round. We first profiled the startup and Founder Ryan Walsh in October, 2019. Among the new investors in this round is Scot Wingo’s Triangle Tweener Fund. That’s no surprise, and not just because RepVue checks all the classic “Tweener” boxes—Ryan previously spent 16 years in various sales roles at ChannelAdvisor, starting when Scot (as ChannelAdvisor CEO) hired him fresh out of college. Read our full story on the fundraise here.
 
TechWire and Triangle Inno also wrote about the funding round. Though of course you should read our story first.

Long Game

Twenty years ago, Jason McGinnis talked his way into an unpaid internship with a cybersecurity startup led by Richard Dobrow, who had just taught Jason in a grad school class on cybersecurity. Fast-forward 20 years and Jason is the President and COO of Morrisville-based SilverSky—the straight-line successor to the company Jason first joined, and where Dobrow is the CEO. A lot else happened to Jason in those two decades, plus the two-plus decades before it. We think our profile of him is worth your time.

Fido Finder

One of every pet owner’s greatest fears is losing their furry friend. When Stephen West learned that even those microchip collars have a very low rate of helping find lost pets, he decided to build a better way. That was the inspiration for Raleigh-based Pet Video Verify. It’s a video-verification software that helps connect lost and found pets, plus an ecommerce store for pet owners. Read our full story here.

Successful Journey

Raleigh-based Security Journey, an educational platform to teach cybersecurity, has been acquired by Pittsburgh-HQ’d HackEDU. (The terms were not disclosed.) Security Journey Founder and CEO Chris Romeo founded the startup in 2016, and the ultimate goal was always an acquisition.
 
HackEDU is very much in the same space; it helps tech companies train their developers to write more secure software. It has local corporate customers and even dipped its toe directly into the Triangle before with a local hire—we wrote about it last January—before retreating. Now with the Security Journal acquisition, HackEDU is back here in a much bigger way. See TechWire for more info.

Dental Dollars

Durham-based software-for-dental-practices startup CureMint has raised a new convertible note of $550K on top of the $2.2M equity round it closed in October. We first wrote about CureMint in May, 2020, and last year we tabbed them as part of our inaugural Startups To Watch class. Cary’s Cofounders Capital was the earliest backer of the startup.
 
And while this isn’t really in their wheelhouse, I’m hoping that at some point CureMint Co-Founders Brandon McCarty and Christopher Rathgeb can tell me why dental insurance seems about as useful as wisdom teeth. Seriously, does it cover anything? Where was I... oh, right, you can read more about the newest CureMint cash infusion in TechWire or Triangle Inno.

Angelic Expansion

Likely because VentureSouth Co-Founder Paul Clark had such a great experience as a Friday Nooner guest, the angel network HQ’d in Greenville, S.C., is ramping up its Triangle operations. To wit: the hiring Brett Danforth as the director of VentureSouth Triangle. You may well recall that Brett was formerly the managing director of the Wolfpack Investor Network (WIN), the NC State-affiliated entry in the Triangle Venture Alliance. (We wrote about the TVA in July, 2020.) See TechWire for more info.

Workforce Builders

RIoT is launching a workforce development program called DigitalBridge in partnership with the Town of Wake Forest and the W.E.B. Dubois School. The goal is to connect community members to high-paying tech jobs, especially among so-called “middle skill” jobs that often go unfilled. These jobs don’t necessarily require a college degree, but many do require a technical certification. So DigitalBridge will provide free training, with certifications upon completion of the program, and then help match with employers. See TechWire for more info.

Blast Off

When SpaceX’s Falcon9 rocket launched yesterday afternoon, its included a payload from Red Hat and IBM that will take cloud services into space. The goal is to “democratize access to space,” says Naeem Altaf, IBM’s CTO of Space Tech. Our goal is to mention SpaceX without also mentioning Elon Musk and his super-annoying “takeover” of Twitter. Wait, what?
 
For more on Red Hat, IBM and their CubeSat, check out TechWire or TBJ.

Build Great Software

Founded by serial entrepreneurs, Dualboot is a business and software development company. Their clients include tech and non-tech founders as well as Fortune 500 companies, so they can start small or scale fast depending on what you need. Every client is assigned a U.S.-based Product Director with at least 10 years experience bringing products to market, and they can manage the entire development process. They focus on how the software fits into your company to drive revenue and build the business. At Dualboot, they don’t just write your software—they help you grow your business. Intrigued? Email them here.

Extra Bit

Bunker Labs, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping military veterans and their families become entrepreneurs, is hosting a national showcase on June 1 (next Wednesday) in Raleigh. There will be a virtual element featuring 400 entrepreneurs pitching from 23 cities, plus plenty of in-person networking. Find more information and register here.

Because too much news is never enough.

• Epic demands judge ‘order relief’ in its continuing antitrust battle with Apple (WRAL TechWire)
• Nash County set for economic expansion as Raleigh-based SinnovaTek buys, builds facility – with others on the way (WRAL TechWire)
• RDU's newest airline takes off with just one route. But CEO says more could follow. (TBJ)
• Study belittles NC for millennial appeal – but ‘reality seems to be the opposite, economist says’ (WRAL TechWire)

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Guess where Pete is and (maybe) win a GrepBeat pint glass!*
 

This week’s winner is Joe Peck, who correctly identified my location as Durham’s Jetplane Coffee. This is Joe’s second victory; he previously won right at the start of the pandemic in a special contest for best home-office setup, sending a picture with his (then) two kids under his desk. Well, he now has a third kid, pictured in the mass of celebratory humanity below. Says Joe, “I only pray I don't win a few more times, I don't know if I can handle that many kids.”
 
More about Joe, in his own words: “Joe is a senior software engineer at Durham's rising fintech company, Spreedly. When he's not crunching the keyboard, he can be found playing sports outside with his kids or whipping up some homemade hot sauce. He recently published a book (Data Dump) for people who are just getting into software development.” Good luck, Joe! Though maybe not too much luck when it comes to Where’s Pete?, amirite?