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Happy Tuesday!

Nominations are officially open for our annual Startups To Watch list, which we will reveal at an invite-only event on Thursday, Sept. 29. Surely you’ll recall that we rolled out our inaugural list last fall, which included one startup that has already zoomed to unicorn-hood (JupiterOne). The criteria: it must be a tech startup (no life sciences/biotech/medical devices) HQ’d in the Triangle with annual revenue less than $3M. We encourage self-nominations from founders as well as third-party nominations.
 
The deadline for nominations is Monday, Sept. 12, at 5 p.m. ET. Thanks!
 


Buying Up

We don’t see many “partial acquisitions” in the Triangle—or elsewhere for that matter—but that’s what happened yesterday to RTP-based data management startup Zaloni. Charlotte-based Truist has acquired some key assets and team members from Zaloni, including the Zaloni Arena platform and founder Ben Sharma, who has been serving as Chief Product Officer. Truist, a top 10 U.S. commercial bank that was formed in 2019 by the merger of BB&T and SunTrust banks, will keep the team of about 20 HQ’d in the Triangle.
 
Meanwhile Zaloni will continue under CEO Susan Cook and the rest of the Zaloni team, which before this deal numbered about 50 in the Triangle and 180 worldwide. Our Suzanne Blake talked to Susan and also investor Topmark Partners about the deal; read the full story here. You can also see coverage from TechWire, TBJ, Triangle Inno and the press release by Truist. And for a look backward, here’s our 2019 feature story on Zaloni.


 


Spinning Out

It’s a tried-and-true path for a B2B software startup: start as a consultancy to get that revenue flowing from Day One to make bootstrapping possible, discover a common problem among your clients, build a software product to solve that problem, then launch that product as a standalone startup. We’ve got another example today in Wake Forest-based Cornerstone, which has spun out its TruStacks product as a startup. TruStacks is a DevOps orchestration platform that aims to make software delivery easier and more efficient. Read our full story here.


 


Road Trip

This is an item that’s hot off the virtual presses: CED has selected 10 CEOs of Triangle tech startups to attend the prestigious Business of Software conference in Boston on Sept. 26-28. The cost of the tickets and  is being covered by a donation by Bill Spruill, the CEO of Raleigh’s Global Data Consortium, which surely you’ll recall was acquired in April by the London Stock Exchange Group. The CEOs are: Hersh Tapadia, Allstacks; Allison Wood, DaVinci Education; Katy Jones, Food LogiQ; Ben Hartmere, MapMyCustomers; Ivan Barajas Vargas, MuukTest; Jeff Maze, Quinsite; Matthew Schmidt, PeopleLogic; Jon Sternstein, Stern Security; Dominick Blue, Trumi; and James Young, XForms. We’ve written about all but Trumo and XForms, which we will likely rectify shortly.
 
See CED’s release for more info. And thanks, Bill!


 


Product Hunt

Stashpad is in the news again. On Aug. 10 we wrote about the “virtual notepad for software developers” from wife-and-husband team Cara Borenstein (CEO) and Theo Marin landing a $1.8M pre-seed round. Today, Stashpad is live on Product Hunt, a popular and influential site to discover (and rate) new tech products. Can you spare an upvote?


 


Home Cooking?

Two weeks ago President Biden signed the CHIPS Act (not to be confused with CHiPs) with the intent of boosting the domestic semiconductor industry. That’s music to the ears of Durham-based Wolfspeed. TechWire drilled deep with Wolfspeed CEO Gregg Lowe in this story and an accompanying Q&A. They really tried to nail Gregg down on whether North Carolina would be the site of a planned new site expansion, and Gregg eventually gave a definite maybe.


 


Pendomonium Plans

As you might guess about the folks who brought you Grep-a-palooza, we’ve always liked that Pendo calls its annual conference “Pendomonium.” Late last week, Pendo released the agenda and keynote speakers for this year’s event, which will be held in person Sept. 12-14 at the Duke Energy Center in downtown Raleigh. The keynote speakers are neuroscientist/author Dr. Michio Kaku and Sophia Chang, a screenwriter, author and former manager of musical artists like RZA, GZA, Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest. Go to the Pendomonium site for all the information and to register.


 


Loading Up

Recently we mentioned that Raleigh's Loading Dock was not just a coworking space, but a cowarehousing location (thus the name). The national TBJ edition is diving deeper on cowarehousing as a broader trend, focusing the story on the Loading Dock and Atlanta-based Saltbox. Some observers think that cowarehousing—which basically means sharing warehouse space with others on a flexible basis—could see a similar growth rate to what coworking has seen over the past decade.


 


New Home

Fresh off his appearance on the Grep-a-palooza stage while he was still with Durham-based IDEA Fund Partners, Joe Darcy has joined global VC firm SixThirty. SixThirty has offices in St. Louis, Amsterdam and Singapore, and will now have a presence in the Triangle in the person of Joe, who is generally considered the second-best hockey player in the Triangle VC community (helmet tip to Cofounders Capital’s Tim McLoughlin). See TechWire for more.


 


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.

 

Because too much news is never enough.

 

Here's some helpful content from our partners.

You can find all our Partner Feeds here.

 

Here are some great jobs at Triangle startups.

To see all posted jobs, go to CronJobs. If you'd like your company to be listed, tell us at cronjobs@grepbeat.com and we'll do our best.

Supporter Spotlight


Today we recognize Lori Spivey, the grand prize winner among those who became GrepBeat Supporters the very first weekend, which led into our fourth birthday. As promised, that's a homemade, hand-decorated (by me) cake to go along with a GrepBeat mug and a "Pete" coaster, not pictured. Lori is the President of Cary-based Financial Directions, which among other things helps companies—including tech startups—implement employee retirement plans. Their office also features giant chocolate-covered figs. Check them out! (The company, not the figs.)

As the cake makes clear—especially in close-up—GrepBeat and Lori are now forever linked.

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