We’re two days from the (very outdoor) GrepBeat Happy Hour on Thursday, Aug. 12, from 5-7 p.m. at Bull McCabe’s in downtown Durham. The first round will be courtesy of our great sponsor, Dualboot Partners. Register now!
ICYM all of last week: here’s the latest version of GrepBeat’s The Week in 90 Seconds. Enjoy!
The Download
The latest subject of the Download Q&A is Chip Andrews, whose name has been most often cited in GrepBeat as the namesake of NC State’s Andrews Launch Accelerator, which we first wrote about in the summer of 2019. (We’ve also already published feature stories on three of the five startups in this summer’s cohort—Flux Hybrids, Docable and Rella—with the other two on the way.) The former CEO and later Senior Chairman of Raleigh-based FMI Corporation, a consulting and investment banking firm for the construction industry, Chip is now the Managing Member of investment firm Andrews Ventures. Read the full Q&A here.
Food + Fun
Rico Beans is much more than just a guy with a cool name. (Though it’s really cool.) He’s also the Founder of Raleigh-based Snack N’ Fun Box, a subscription box service for kids featuring healthy snacks and fun activities. A Director in mergers and acquisitions for Intel, Rico was inspired to create the company during the pandemic, when many working parents like himself (he is the father of a 4-year-old daughter) suddenly found themselves at home with their kids day after day. Read our full story about the startup here.
Officially Official
Hot off the virtual presses: Durham’s Spoonflower announced this morning that its $200M acquisition by Shutterfly is complete now that it has cleared all regulatory hurdles. That means, among other things, that Shutterfly’s 21 million users will be fully introduced to Spoonflower’s custom fabric, wallpaper and home décor products. Read the full release here.
New Funder
Raleigh-based insurtech startup InsureLife has raised a seed round (the amount was undisclosed) and signed two distribution agreements. InsureLife is an AI-powered “network orchestration platform” for insurers that digitally connects their financial services products with agents and consumers. The seed round was led by Charlotte-based VC firm CFV Ventures and the insurance company Nassau Financial Group. See TechWire for more details.
Gone Public
Publicly traded cloud services provider Avaya—which moved its HQ to Durham from Santa Clara, Calif., during the pandemic—has acquired Austin-based CTIntegrations. CTIntegrations focuses on contact center software and must be relieved to be rescued from Austin. TechWire has more info.
Now for news on a publicly traded tech company with deeper Triangle roots: Bandwidth CEO David Morken said that the company’s Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) revenue surged 57% year-over-year in Q2 to $105M. He attributed that especially to international growth fueled by the $527M acquisition of Belgium-based Voxbone. See TBJ for more.
Moving In
More from the company-coming-to-the-Triangle file: global consulting firm Slalom, which is HQ’d in Seattle, has opened a Raleigh office. The office, led by General Manager Todd Christy, already has 11 employees and plans to hire as many as 50 this year. Slalom is a technology and business strategy consulting firm. TechWire has a Q&A with Todd in which he discusses his long-ago startup making software designed for use on Blackberries, a device my interns have never heard of.
Sticking on a similar topic, TBJ has a story on how North Carolina’s economic development leaders feel they still have a strong pipeline for corporate relocations and expansions.
All's Well
TBJ’s latest “Executive Voice” feature profiles David Werry, the President and COO of Chapel Hill-based healthtech Well, which we first wrote about in May, 2020. Early last year the company agreed to invest $3M into a new HQ in Chapel Hill that would add up to 400 jobs; since the announcement Well has already scaled up locally from 17 to about 100 employees. You can read the full Q&A here.
Messrs Roboto
Apex-based robotics firm ATI Industrial Automation was recently acquired by publicly traded Novanta for $172M in cash, with potential additional contingent cash payments based on 2021 results. See TBJ for more details.
Bottled Up
If you’re looking for coworking space, you can always play it safe and glom on to a big chain like WeWork. And hey, they’re perfectly nice. But if you’re looking for something more local, gritty and—dare we say it—cool, then the soon-to-open Durham Bottling Company may be for you. Smashing Boxes CEO Nick Jordan bought the space at 506 Ramseur Street a few years back as a new company HQ but always had grander plans for the 16,000+ square feet. Enter Durham Bottling Company (DBC), which might sound like a new nightlife concept but is in fact a coworking and event space with a stated mission to create a more inclusive and diverse community. DBC offers all the usual amenities you’d expect (free coffee, hot desks, private offices, etc.) but also has a sister nonprofit entity that will help stage a monthly event series. You can get on the waitlist here.
Extra Bits
A few opportunities for jobs/internships/side hustles: 1) Durham’s Bull City Venture Partners is looking for a Chief of Staff and an Associate; 2) Attention undergrads and grad students: Durham’s IDEA Fund Partners is looking for fall semester interns for its Venture Fellows Program; 3) Startup Grind is seeking a new chapter director for the Triangle, a role that would take “not more than 20%” of chapter director’s time.
