Exit Stories

Hey, was someone talking about Kevin Mosley? Oh right, that was us. The recent Coffee & Conversation guest is back to (one of) his day jobs as the host of the Exit Stories podcast. In Episode 3, he chats with ApplicantStack founder Nathan Shackles about receiving an offer he couldn’t refuse for his bootstrapped startup in the HR/recruiting space. Here’s our teaser preview that outlines some highlights. Of course you could just trust us that it’s good and dive into the podcast here—don’t forget to subscribe!—or check out the YouTube video here.

Party Time?

Though sometimes it might not seem like it, this pandemic isn’t going to last forever. And when it ends, people will once more feel comfortable to gather in person for events, parties, and GrepBeat Happy Hours. (Remember them?) The husband-and-wife team behind memoryCrafters will be there to meet that pent-up need with a party-planning platform to help get you to the fun part as painlessly as possible. The startup is part of the newest cohort of the Launch Chapel Hill accelerator to help make sure it will be well-positioned to capitalize on the likely post-Covid hunger to party. Read our full story on memoryCrafters here.

Helping Out

Carrboro-based AI startup Tanjo—led by Download subject Richard Tanjo, its Co-Founder and CEO—has partnered with the Digital Health Institute for Transformation (DHIT) to help the state safely reopen during the Covid-19 crisis. Tanjo and DHIT are building an engine and dashboard that will sift through reams of data to provide policymakers and business leaders with actionable insights. TechWire has more details.

Catching Up

If you weren’t able to make last Thursday’s Startup Summit—which we had previewed here—fortunately TechWire and TBJ will make you feel like you were there. TechWire recaps separate talks by Red Hat Co-Founder Bob Young and former Cisco CEO John Chambers, as well as a web panel with VCs. Meanwhile TBJ offers its own take on the Chambers session.

Cash Infusion

You might recall that recent Pete Meets... guest Bill Spruill, the CEO of Raleigh’s Global Data Consortium, moved $3M of the company’s money to Durham’s M&F Bank and challenged others to do the same. M&F Bank is the second-oldest minority-owned bank in the country, and the more assets it has, the more it can lend out to the community that it serves—particularly the Black community.

Well, Bill says that the challenge has paid dividends as fellow CEOs at Triangle startups like Adzerk (James Avery), Pendo (Todd Olson) and K4Connect (Scott Moody, another Pete Meets... guest) all stepped up. In all, the effort netted roughly $6-9M for the bank, Bill reports on Medium. TechWire also has more details.

Welcome!

There is some early data that the much-discussed potential trend of people moving away from big cities, especially in the Northeast, in favor of places like North Carolina as a result of the pandemic and the related explosion in remote work is, in fact, a thing. United Van Lines reports that NC ranks No. 7 on the biggest influx of new moves between March and August of this year. The biggest outflows have been from New York and New Jersey, while just under half of those leaving New York went to cities in North Carolina, Texas, Florida and California. Don’t think we don’t see you, Austin.

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