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Happy Thursday!

We’ve got another star-studded lineup set for tomorrow’s Friday Nooner, presuming you’re willing to overlook Joe and Pete. TechWire’s Chantal Allam is back for another spin in the co-host chair, while Leigh Day—recently named Red Hat’s CMO after 20+ years there—will be the guest. You can watch live on LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube starting at noon ET.
 
If you’re more of an IRL sort, perhaps the next GrepBeat Happy Hour on Thursday, Dec. 2—two weeks from today—is up your alley. We’ll be hosted by Raleigh Founded’s Gateway location (2409 Crabtree Blvd in Raleigh) from 5-7pm. The beers will be courtesy of our gracious event sponsor, Wyrick Robbins. Register now!
 


Exit Stories

Every good thing must come to an end—at least for a while—and that’s the case with both the second season of Exit Stories and the extended interview with Bronto Co-Founder Chaz Felix. Today we bring you Part II of that convo with host Kevin Mosley, which is also the Exit Stories season finale. Kevin is another Bronto alum, natch, as is one of the co-hosts of The Friday Nooner. (No, not Pete; the other guy.) Today’s episode focuses on Bronto’s culture and a behind-the-scenes look at the negotiations for and execution of Bronto’s $200M acquisition by Netsuite in 2015.
 
Read some episode highlights here, then listen to the episode (and the other 10 this season) here. And one final thanks to this season’s sponsor, Vaco!


 


The Convoy

The serious kinks in the supply chain that we’ve all been reading about are even worse for small businesses, which even in the best of times typically need to wait in line behind corporate giants to land supplies. That’s what Raleigh-based startup The Convoy is aiming to fix. It works like Groupon, but for independently owned business rather than consumers, by pooling their buying power for better deals.
 
The Convoy’s Co-Founder and CEO, Yasin Abbak, sold his previous startup, Fantasy Life, earlier this year. (We featured Fantasy Life last July.) His inspiration for The Convoy was watching his dad, a Turkish immigrant, run a series of small businesses, with all the underdog struggles that often entails. OK, that’s more than enough of a teaser—read our full story now. (Bonus: a great baby pic!)


 


Suggestion Ox

Wade Minter has been mentioned in these virtual pages wearing several different hats, including as an early Q&A subject (from November, 2018), which highlighted his moonlighting gig as the PA announcer for the Carolina Hurricanes as well as his ongoing career leading tech development teams. More recently, you might know him as the leader of the Triangle branch of loyal GrepBeat sponsor Dualboot Partners. (The sponsor of this very newsletter, in fact.)
 
It turns out Wade has been wearing another hat as co-founder of the software startup Suggestion Ox, which he’s been working on for a few years with Co-Founder Andrew Berkowitz as a side project. Wade and Andrew were previously co-founders of TeamSnap, a sports team/league management platform that had a successful exit. Now Suggestion Ox has joined the accelerator program TinySeed, which includes an investment as well as a cohort of very experienced fellow founders and mentors. Suggestion Ox facilitates anonymous online suggestion boxes to help make companies a better place to work. (As Wade says of the name, it’s “Suggestion Box without the ‘B’! And with a large bovine.”) Here’s more info.


 


Fast Company

Three Triangle-based tech companies are among the seven from North Carolina that have made the cut on the Deloitte 2021 North America Technology Fast 500 rankings. The three: Raleigh-based Pendo at No. 174; Raleigh’s FM:Systems at No. 368; and Durham-based Sift Media at No. 414. This is Pendo’s third appearance on the list. TechWire has more info.


 


Worth Reading

We sorta poked fun at Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney earlier this week for his relentless sword-tilting at Apple and Google. But he and Epic Games are unquestionably at the forefront of the development of the Metaverse, which is something we should all school ourselves on because there will be many great business opportunities (and busts) in the years ahead. He gave a relatively rare in-depth Q&A to CNN this week. It’s worth a read.


 


Keep It Together

On Tuesday morning, TBJ sponsored a panel discussion on the State of RTP that focused especially on the $2B Hub RTP project that will significantly reshape RTP. Hub RTP is a 43-acre, mixed-use urban district with as much as 1 million square feet of office space plus retail, residential and hotel space. The last two items are especially noteworthy, as they mean—in the words of Scott Levitan, the president and CEO of Research Triangle Foundation—the “first heads in beds in RTP.”
 
Though we were even more struck by something else that Scott said. Namely, that in his experience the Triangle has never really functioned as a cohesive region. “We are a little provincial,” he said. “Raleigh is Raleigh. Durham is Durham. We celebrate the unique culture of those regions.” He’s advocating learning to speak with a more cohesive and influential “business voice” for the Triangle as a whole. As I’ve discussed before in this space, I very much agree. Yes, I’m not even from here, where do I get off, blah blah blah. But IMO the Triangle—and certainly the tech and startup communities—are far stronger when we are intentional about working together as a region. (Here are accounts on the event from TBJ and TechWire.)


 


Cleaning Up

The Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster has announced a slew of nominations for its third annual Cleantech Innovation Awards event, which is set for Dec. 8. Several past GrepBeat story subjects were nominated. NALA Systems was nominated in the Cleantech Impact: Water category and its CEO Sue Mecham (also a “Where’s Pete?” winner) is up for the Cleantech Research Innovation Award. Up in the same two categories are 374Water and Co-Founder Marc Deshusses. Meanwhile, The Climate Service is one of the nominees for the Equity in Cleantech Award.


 


I Know, I Know!

Adwerx has reportedly raised $2M in debt. I mention that mostly to state for the record that, yes, I know that it was Adwerx that spun out of eMinor/ReverbNation, not Adzerk (now Kevel). I mixed them up in last Thursday's newsletter, which judging by my inbox, every single GrepBeat reader noticed and felt compelled to point out. Oh, like you’ve never made a mistake!


 


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 available jobs at great Triangle startups.
Product Manager
Posted Three hours ago by Insightsoftware
Sales Enablement Specialist
Posted Three hours ago by ServiceTrade
Managing Director, EMEA
Posted Three hours ago by Pendo
Support Engineer
Posted Three hours ago by Spreedly
Data Conversion Engineer
Posted Three hours ago by GrowPath

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

Guess where Pete is and (maybe) win a GrepBeat mug!
 

I had to go to Twitter this week to find a winner, but find a winner we did. Trevor Davidson correctly identified my location as Durham’s EverLou Coffee Co. Here’s Trevor: “I'm a mechanical engineer at SportsMEDIA Technology in Durham and recently moved to the Triangle. I'm a Georgia Tech grad who loves ice cream and board games.” He’s also the first Where’s Pete? winner who offered to pick up the mug in person within 24 hours of winning. Congrats, and thanks!

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