Clerdata CEO Meghan Corroon unveiled some hard-edged Peace Corps trash talk (seriously) in her star turn as guest on the latest Friday Nooner. That came about 17 hours after we wrapped up our first GrepBeat Happy Hour of 2022 at Raleigh’s Lynnwood Brewing Concern, sponsored by Thompson & Prince. See pics here!
Farm To Table
Today marks the first of the double-digit profiles we’ll be running in the weeks ahead of Triangle startups that will be presenting at CED’s Venture Connect Summit on April 7 on the Cisco campus in RTP. (We’ve previously written feature stories on all the other Triangle tech startups that will present.) Up first is Chapel Hill-based Seal The Seasons, which works with farmers to brings fresh, flash-frozen fruits and vegetables to local consumers. It started with N.C. farmers and now extends to six regions across the country.
Read our full story to learn more, including how Founder & CEO Patrick Mateer was motivated by his weekly trips to the Carrboro Farmers Market when he was an undergrad at UNC. And remember that you can see Seal The Seasons in person at Venture Connect—if you register. Oh, and CED unveiled the full schedule yesterday!
Fast Study
I launched zero startups as a college student, which puts me three behind UNC’s Devin Street. Devin currently runs two tech startups—ByteBlocks, which enables fans and collectors to purchase NFTs from underground artists; and Melody, which makes a safer vape device that doesn’t use nicotine. Devin went through the Launch Chapel Hill accelerator with ByteBlocks last fall. He actually took a break from fulltime classes this semester, which he is spending in Los Angeles working on his startups—including trying to chase down funding. Read our full story here.
Pandemic Pivot
Lots of entrepreneurs displayed admirable hustle and quick adaptation during the pandemic, but Raleigh native Caleb Musser is definitely near the top. He launched Craftom in January, 2020, as a B2B Etsy-like marketplace for companies to find branded swag, like the koozies that have piled up in my kitchen drawer. When the pandemic scuttled those plans, Caleb spent a weekend furiously building out a shipping system. Craftom re-emerged as a way for companies to ship most anything, whether to their own employees working from far-flung homes or to customers. The startup has its logistics HQ in Charlotte and its tech presence in Raleigh.
Next Wednesday’s space flight by Blue Origin—the rocket company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—is headlined by actor/comedian Pete Davidson. While he’s an invited guest, the flight will also include five paying customers—one of them from the Triangle startup ecosystem. Jim Kitchen is a serial entrepreneur and a professor of entrepreneurship at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler. Our Suzanne Blake had a nice conversation with Jim this morning, so look for our story on the lifelong space lover coming very soon. If you can’t wait, here’s a piece from Triangle Inno (which hadn’t yet been able to speak to Jim).
Home Makers
It seems like every day brings another story about rising home prices in the Triangle. Brian Lora, the former CTO of Live Oak Bank and the CIO at Raleigh-based Sageworks, believes that a spin on the sharing economy is the answer. The result is the Holly Springs-HQ’d startup SocialEquity, which just emerged out of stealth mode with $750K in funding and a crowdfunding campaign to raise additional capital. TechWire profiled SocialEquity on Friday. Essentially, the plan is for individuals to pool their purchasing power to acquire ownership in a primary residence via group buying. The fintech is also introducing a new loan product—the co-ownership loan.
Listen Up
Raleigh-based podcast production startup Earfluence is opening a new studio in Durham’s American Underground to go along with the one it launched in Raleigh Founded in 2019. Earfluence will kick off the new studio with a live eight-hour podcast marathon tomorrow that will feature a number of Triangle tech boldface names, including Momentum’s Jessica Mitsch Homes and The Diversity Movement’s Donald Thompson (who is also an Earfluence investor). Friday Nooner co-host Chantal Allam has the full story for TechWire, plus a Q&A with Jason. (And here’s a shameless plug for the podcast version of the Friday Nooner!)
Taking Care
TBJ’s Lauren Ohnesorge wrote on Friday about two more Triangle-based tech companies dealing directly with employees in war-torn Ukraine. One is Percona, which was co-founded by Russian native Peter Zaitsev (a formerDownload Q&A subject) and Ukrainian-born Vadim Tkachenko. Percona has 23 employees in Ukraine, plus 13 in Russia and two in Belarus. Also impacted is SingleStore, which has 22 people in Ukraine. SingleStore is HQ’d in Silicon Valley but has a significant Raleigh presence—led by last week’s Download subject, former SAS bigwig Oliver Schabenberger, who is now SingleStore's Chief Innovation Officer.
Build Great Software
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Guess where Pete is and (maybe) win a GrepBeat pint glass!*
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(*Remember that we re-set all eligibility requirements at the start of 2022, meaning that even anyone who won a GrepBeat coffee mug pre-2022 is once again eligible to guess and win a pint glass.)
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