Billy Marshall, the CEO of Durham-based ServiceTrade, had some things he wanted to say in the latest Friday Nooner and, by golly, nothing and nobody—certainly not Pete—was going to stop him. If you haven’t already seen (or heard) it, you should.
You may have been taking note of how much GrepBeat has grown its staff and amplified the depth and breadth of our content and wondered, how do we pay for it all? Great question! You can help us answer it by perusing our hot-off-the-presses sponsorship opportunities document.
Tech vs. Tech
There’s no denying that tech and social media has a dark side, from the siren call of Twitter doomscrolling that fights for my attention when I’m supposed to be writing this newsletter to the more malignant damage to the self-esteem of young people, especially when they compare themselves to the unrealistic perfection they see portrayed in social media. Today we take an in-depth look at how several Triangle tech founders—including The Social Institute’s Laura Tierney, Freedom’s Fred Stutzman and Six Wing Studio’s Gabe Pappalardo—are using “good” tech to tackle tech’s negative effects. We really think it’s worth your time.
Meet WorkDove
Hey Triangle, meet WorkDove! You might recall us profiling performance management software startup Performance Culture 362 days ago, not long after Durham-based Jurassic Capital (one of GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy’s other day jobs) made a $2.9M investment. Today the company is announcing a rebrand as WorkDove, to reflect the startup’s reboot after moving its HQ to Durham from Wilmington and its expansion into talent and human capital management alongside its core business of performance management.
Here’s our full story on the rebranding, which taught me something new: what “on fleek” means. (In this case, in the context of WorkDove CEO MelissaPhillippi’s nails.) One thing the story doesn’t mention is that Melissa has a spear-tossing setup in her backyard, but now you know that too. WorkDove also heralded the rebrand itself in this 95-second video.
Good Energy
While he worked on renewable energy policy for the U.N. and the Obama Administration, Andrew Joiner came to believe that converting waste—whether organic matter from animals or agricultural byproducts to inorganic plastics or rubber tires—into energy would be a potent weapon in a fight against climate change. So he founded Durham-based EnMass Energy in 2015 to help develop waste-to-energy projects overseas, only to discover that finding investment was very difficult because the process was too opaque.
So in 2018 the startup pivoted to become a B2B SaaS provider of a cloud-based platform that connects all parties in the waste-to-energy life cycle, providing visibility and measurable metrics at all stages. Read our full story on EnMass Energy here.
Model Startup
After a mis-entered Excel formula nearly capsized his last startup and led to major layoffs, Rami Essaid set out to build a better way for early stage startups to model their finances and projections. The result was Raleigh-based Finmark, which we first wrote about in October, 2020. Now Finmark has landed a fresh $6.5M in funding from American Express Ventures to finance its already rapid growth, led in part by its customer base going “up market” beyond early-stage startups to growth-stage startups and SMBs more generally—a market that American Express can surely help it tap further.
Read our full story from Friday on the new funding and Finmark’s progress here. And because we believe in rising tides, etc., here is Triangle Inno’s account on the deal.
Money Talk
Speaking of Triangle Inno, it did a deep dive into all startup financings in the Triangle in 2021. Tech accounted for the lion’s share, and GrepBeat readers will recognize plenty of familiar names. There are too many to list here, so just check out the story.
Two startups that we’ve previously profiled will be making the 2022 list, it seems, as SEC filings indicate that they’ve already banked some funding as part of a new (and potentially still-in-process) round. First is Raleigh-based SchedulePop, a restaurant schedule software startup that we first profiled in September, 2019, and is seeking $2M. The other is Durham-based AI startup Resultid, which has banked $3.2M. We wrote about the startup in its earlier incarnation as NanoVest in October, 2020.
Privacy Setting
Here comes the biggest number in today’s newsletter: $16.5B. That’s the value of the all-cash acquisition deal for Citrix, which is based in South Florida but has a substantial Raleigh presence. Citrix is being taken private by a group led by PE biggie Vista Equity Partners—a familiar investor in these parts—and will be combined with Vista portfolio company TIBCO to create one of the world’s largest software companies.
Triangle tech vets will recall that Citrix’s Oak City presence stems from its acquisition of (current Levitate Founder/CEO)Jes Lipson’sShareFile in 2011, and Jes’ vocal advocacy for his home city was a big reason that Citrix didn’t just stay in Raleigh, it expanded. See TechWire and TBJ for more on the deal.
"Big" Tech News
Here are two more items on big tech companies in the Triangle: 1) Laurie Krebs is stepping down as the CFO of Raleigh-based Red Hat, which is now part of IBM. Laurie will be succeeded by Carolyn Nash, a Cisco veteran who joined Red Hat in 2016. 2) Durham-based Wolfspeed is raising $650M in debt, $150M more than the target originally reported due to strong demand from investors.
Good Read
Over the weekend,Friday Noonerco-host Chantal Allam published an interesting feature on WRAL TechWire on Daisy Magnus-Aryitey. Daisy is the new co-director of Durham-based Code The Dream, a nonprofit that provides free training in tech development to those underrepresented in tech fields, including immigrants, low-income individuals, people of color and women. (We first wrote about Code The Dream in 2019.)
Daisy herself is a native of Ghana who was a single mom when she applied for and was accepted to Code The Dream in 2014. That led to a software development positing at Duke University. Now she’s back at Code The Dream in an executive role.
Build Great Software
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Extra Bit
Applications are now open for NC IDEA’s SEED ($50K) and MICRO ($10K) grant programs. There are few better ways to make sure you grace GrepBeat’s virtual pages than to win one of these. Oh, right, and they can also turbo-charge your startup.