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Happy Tuesday!

We at GrepBeat would like to wish you and yours a happy—and safe!—Thanksgiving. Thursday’s newsletter will consist solely of the reveal of the “Where’s Pete?” winner. And maybe one added surprise. I've already said too much!
 


Seeing Clearly

The pandemic has pushed more and more businesses online, but for most, it’s still difficult to know if those added digital marketing dollars are driving sales. That’s where Durham-based startup Lumen Insights comes in by democratizing big data analytics for the little guy. Founder Meghan Corroon has an interesting background as the former technical director for UNC’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who also did data-science analysis for several African governments. Now she’s putting those skills toward helping local businesses. Read our full story on Lumen Insights here.


 


Pete Meets...

Can you believe we’ve already reached the final episode (Ep. 10) of Season One? Well, it’s true. But don’t worry, there won’t be any cliffhangers when Robbie Hardy sits in this week’s hot seat. You’ll surely recall that she recently founded xElle Ventures, North Carolina’s first women-only angel network. But that is just the latest achievement in a long and varied career, which includes once deciding to sell her startup on the advice of a Magic 8-Ball. You can find the teaser story on the episode here, listen (and subscribe!) to the podcast here, and visual learners can get the video here. Thanks as always to Season One sponsor TriNet, and come back in 2021 (exact timing TBD) for Season Two!


 


Female Founders

Speaking of xElle Ventures, it was the sponsor of last Thursday’s Female Founder Pitch Competition that we previewed a week earlier. Five female founders from local universities pitched in front of a virtual crowd of 150+. When the dust cleared, Duke’s Orion Brown was declared the winner for Black Box Travel, which makes travel-friendly hair and skincare products for women of color. TechWire has more details.


 


More Scoop

TechWire has more details on the recent sale of Durham’s RewardStock—you’ll surely recall its triumphant 2018 appearance on Shark Tank—to credit rating giant Experian. Though to be clear, it sounds like the deal went down months ago, before the pandemic-led travel shutdowns, and only recently became public. That’s good for RewardStock, because the travel-focused site—it helps you get great deals using rewards points from airlines, credit cards and more—faced understandably tough headwinds when the leisure travel industry cratered.

While RewardStock founder Jon Hayes hasn’t been talking publicly since news of the deal broke, TechWire did get some scoop from David Gardner of Cofounders Capital, which was RewardStock’s first outside investor and only slightly less famous than a later backer—Mark Cuban.


 


New Neighbors

TBJ has an exclusive interview with Jim Chirico, the CEO of publicly traded communications software giant Avaya Technologies, which recently relocated its HQ to Durham from Santa Clara, Calif. Of course these days moving an HQ is as much a state of mind as it is a physical shift of people going into a new office. But Avaya is here to stay, and Jim—a longtime Chapel Hill resident—said that when they compared the Triangle to three other locations under consideration, “the real differentiator was the talent.”


 


Tower-ing Deal

Moving from software to hardware, Morrisville-based wireless tower builder Eco-Site has been acquired by (and will be merged into) Florida-HQ’d Vertical Bridge. Vertical Bridge is the largest privately held tower company in the U.S. The surging demand for 5G is the main driver behind the deal. Eco-Site had drawn down on $275M of funding as of last year out of the $310M that was committed by investors. TBJ has all the details.


 


Call It A Comeback

The pandemic is definitely not over, so please, please double-down on staying safe because the virus continues to surge as we head into winter and the holidays. But especially with the excellent early results on vaccines, the business community is eagerly eyeing a hoped-for return to relative normalcy by, let’s call it mid-2021. That relative optimism is believed to be the cause of a big jump in demand for tech jobs across the state in October to levels not seen since before the pandemic. TechWire has the details here and here.


 


NC TECH Winners

We’d also like to circle back to recognize the winners from Day 2 and Day 3 of last week’s NC TECH Awards. Pendo took home top honors as the state’s “Company of the Year.” In the industry categories, GrepBeat story subjects Allstacks won for “Analytics + Big Data” while Green Stream Technologies took home the CleanTech prize.

Meanwhile Durham’s Validic won in the Healthcare Tech category and Raleigh’s insightsoftware was awarded top honors in the Software division. Of the 10 Startups to Watch, five were from the Triangle—GrepBeat feature subjects Blue Recruit and MuukLabs, and likely future GrepBeat feature subjects 374 Water (Durham), Fathom Science (Raleigh) and Chapel Hill’s Participate.

 

 

Extra Bit

Thanks to our new Director of Growth, Jeff Rimmer, GrepBeat is now on Facebook. But it turns out that we need to hit 25 followers in order to create a custom username. Won’t you help us? Of course you will, right? Then please click here.

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

There's only one way to win a coveted GrepBeat mug—and you know what it is. So send your guesses here!

 

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