We hope to see many of you at tonight’s GrepBeat Happy Hour, which will be held at Raleigh Founded’s Gateway location (2409 Crabtree Blvd., Suite 107) from 5-7p.m. The beer taps will flow freely—literally and figuratively—thanks to our sponsor, Wyrick Robbins, plus our beloved (by some) trivia questions with swag on the line. Please register so we can make sure we’re properly prepared.
The Friday Nooner will also return tomorrow after a brief Thanksgiving break. Pete and Joe will be joined by guest co-host Vickie Gibbs (a former Friday Noonerand Pete Meets... guest as well as a Download Q&A subject). Then the three will make room for guest Kurt Merriweather, the Co-Founder and VP/Products & Innovation at Raleigh-based The Diversity Movement. You can watch us live at noon on LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube or afterward on those same platform, while audio learners can catch the podcast version.
Salesforce Pros
Raleigh-HQ’d DynPro has acquired Santa Clara, Calif.-based Cloudalyze Solution, a Salesforce systems integrator. DynPro is an IT solutions and services company that also has offices in India, the UK and Morocco. DynPro says that the acquisition (terms were not disclosed, natch) positions it as “a digital, data and cloud market leader with extensive capabilities across the entire Salesforce product suite.” See TechWire or DynPro’s release for more.
Turkey Talk
Raleigh-based Reveal Mobile has reportedly raised a shade under $600K in debt, according to an SEC filing (and TechWire). Reveal Mobile uses geo-fencing to help advertisers reach their ideal customers based on location data. Loyal GrepBeat readers might also recall that Reveal Mobile CEO Brian Handly ran a 10K in 21:38 in 2019 while dressed as a turkey. Why that’s not in the first paragraph of his company bio and LinkedIn profile is beyond us, but we made sure to get into it when he was a Pete Meets... guest.
Heavy Apps
Launch Chapel Hill has a Dec. 8 deadline (next Wednesday) for the spring cohort of its accelerator, which will run from mid-January to mid-May. We’ve written about a number of Launch Chapel Hill alums over the years, including Acta and Sani, which were just named winners of NC IDEA’s $50K SEED grants.
And while you’re in the applying spirit, consider tossing your startup’s hat in the ring for Capital Connects, Launch Greensboro’s annual pitch competition. The event is open to all North Carolina-based startups, and Triangle companies have won in the past. There is $20K in cash and in-kind prize money for the taking, plus the opportunity to get in front of check-writing investors. The event will be held on March 9, hopefully in person, but you should apply now.
WRC ==> FCC
Matthew Bauer, a vice president at Wake Forest-based Wireless Research Center (WRC), has been appointed to a two-year term on the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Communications Equity and Diversity Council. The council makes recommendations to the FCC on the best way to advance equity in the provision of and access to digital communication products and services, which dovetails with the WRC’s mission. See more info here.
Cleaning Up
The Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster (RTCC) has narrowed its list of finalists for its third annual Cleantech Innovation Awards, which will be held next Wednesday night. (We covered the broader list a few weeks back.) Of most relevance to the Triangle startup community, the two finalists for the “Cleantech Impact: Water” award are two startups that we’ve previously profiled—Durham-based NALA Systems and Duke spinout 374Water. See TechWire for more.
Fine Print
In Tuesday’s edition we mentioned two lawsuits involving Triangle startups uncovered by TBJ’s Lauren Ohnesorge. Yesterday for Triangle Inno, she recapped those two and topped them with a third case, involving GrepBeat Startups To Watch honoreeAlcove. The startup was founded by then-Duke students as a way to rent individual rooms in furnished apartments or houses, with its app first launching in January, 2018. By that point, they had hired Gerald Gallagher—who had graduated college way back in 2011 and was thus a virtual “gray hair” by Alcove standards—as COO, sweetening the deal with 500,000 shares of equity with a vesting schedule.
When he left a little over a year later, Alcove (its legal name is LivingLab) bought back the 400,000 unvested shares, and that’s where the dispute lies. Alcove paid Gallagher $4K for the shares because it says the agreement the startup gave Gallagher to sign set the price for repurchasing said shares at 1 cent/share—and accuse Gallagher of altering the document without their knowledge to make the price “market value.” Since Alcove has raised $2.7M in VC money at what we’d guess is a valuation of $10M or more, that difference means real money. Personally I don’t quite understand why non-vested shares would need to re-purchased, period, but maybe someone from tonight’s GrepBeat Happy Hour sponsor Wyrick Robbins can explain it to me. Anyway, this one bears watching, and serves as a good reminder to make sure you’ve legally buttoned up everything with those first key hires.
Dip In Chips
While images of giant container ships idling off West Coast ports and other transportation bottlenecks have been the headlines—at least visually—of the supply chain woes hampering the economy, a shortage of semiconductor chips is gumming up the works in multiple industries. That’s why Gregg Lowe, the CEO of Durham-based Wolfspeed (formerly Cree) is among 59 CEOs and other senior execs who signed a letter to Congress urging for funding for the CHIPS Act, which sadly has nothing to do with Officer Poncherello. Instead, it stands for Creating Helpful Incentives for the Production of Semiconductors, because few love acronyms more than Congress. The CEOs of other big tech companies with sizable Triangle presences like IBM, Cisco and Microsoft also signed on. See TBJ for more.
Venture Fellows
Attention undergrad and grad students with an interest in VC and startups: Durham’s IDEA Fund Partners is recruiting another class of Venture Fellows for the spring semester. The deadline is Dec. 24. You can find more info and apply here.
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.
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!
Brian Reale is this week’s winner after correctly identifying my location as Durham’s Oak House. Loyal GrepBeat readers will likely already know who Brian is; after all, he’s been a GrepBeat story subject, a Download interviewee, and his Durham-based startup raised $45M in funding in February. But we'll let him put it in his own words: “Brian Reale is the CEO and Founder of ProcessMaker, a low-code process automation platform company. During hurricane season, Brian spends a good deal of time tracking hurricanes to see when the perfect surfable swell will hit the Carolina coast.” He’s too modest to note that he’s also an avid rock climber, but that’s what we’re here for. Congrats, Brian!
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