Tomorrow’s Friday Nooner guest is Belden Long, the Co-Founder of justb, a movement and mindfulness platform designed for teachers to help students with developmental disorders, like autism. (We profiled justb in May.) You can watch live at noon on LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook, or catch afterwards on those same platforms or in its podcast form.
We’re excited to see folks a week from today (Thursday, Oct. 12, from 5-7 p.m.) at the Startup Community Mixer hosted by American Underground and Google For Startups, which will be held at AU. GrepBeat will serve as an event sponsor. In addition to drinks and food, there will be a short panel discussion on AI and Ethics in Entrepreneurship featuring a Duke professor and Google AI exec. You can find more info and register for the free event here.
Old Is New
Some 360 years ago, Francesco Lana de Terzi—known as the Father of Aeronautics—theorized that an aircraft could be created using vacuum lift, i.e. creating a vacuum such that a structure could become lighter than air and take flight. Picture a 17th century blimp. Unfortunately, mathematicians of the day “proved” that the idea was full of hot air (sorry) given the materials available at the time and the assumptions that Lana de Terzi made.
Fast forward to the present, when engineer and aviation enthusiast Jamie Little realized that a version of Lana de Terzi’s dream really could be achieved with modern materials and the innovative partial-vacuum lift (PVL) technology that she has developed, which just received a full patent. The result is Raleigh-based startup Anumá Aerospace. The PVL technology is enabling Anumá to make carbon-neutral (and, soon, carbon-negative) airships that are superior in multiple respects to the current industry standard of helium airships. The use cases include weather balloons, fire monitoring, surveillance, and eventually long-range shipping. It’s a big idea that has already come to life—and has an even bigger potential future.
If you’re anything like me, you get a ton of emails from people you don’t know who are trying to sell you something. I rarely open such emails. It turns out that’s very common, and it’s getting even worse now that AI has made it easier for people trying to sell you something to send seemingly personalized emails by the thousands.
This is all bad news for people trying to sell something. That’s where Apex-based startup Vectorcomes in. Its software processes trillions of rows of contact data to help a seller find a real human who is connected both to them and to a potential sales target, to help facilitate a far warmer personal introduction. It’s like looking on LinkedIn to see if you have any mutual connections but much more effective and productive.
Yesterday’s Triangle Inno included a story on three JupiterOne veterans who have raised money for a new startup, which became public due to an SEC filing connected with raising money. Details on the startup are scarce, because that’s how the founders want it at the moment. Here’s what I can tell you: 1) the three founders were Employees No. 2, 3 and 18 at JupiterOne, which as you likely know zoomed from its 2020 launch to unicorn-hood in just two years; 2) they don’t feel ready yet for their public close-up. We’ll circle back for a fuller story on them once they give us the go-ahead.
To be clear, I’m not trying to ding Triangle Inno for writing about the startup and its founders, since they’re simply reporting on a public SEC filing that is unquestionably of local interest, i.e. doing their job. Though it is a good reminder to startup founders who are determined to operate in stealth mode: it’s not always possible to stay as stealthy as you want for as long as you want, and there is probably less downside and more upside to sharing the word more broadly earlier on than you think. OK, stepping down from my soapbox.
NC TECH Winners
NC TECH yesterday announced its major individual award winners for 2023, and two names in particular will be very familiar to GrepBeat readers. Levitate CEO Jes Lipson landed the Tech CEO of the Year honor, while Spiffy CEO Scot Wingo has won the Beacon Award for “outstanding achievement.” The winners in other categories will be announced live at the NC TECH awards event on Nov. 1.
In other Scot Wingo news, yesterday he announced the Q3 investments of the Triangle Tweener Fund, which he oversees with fellow boldface name Robbie Allen. In Q3, the Tweener Fund made 18 investments totaling $875K (a little less than $50K per investment), with 12 going to startups that are new to its portfolio and the other half-dozen being follow-on investments. See all the info on the Tweener Fund site.
New To Us
Aampe, an AI-native user engagement platform for consumer mobile apps, has raised a $7.5M “Pre-Series A” funding round led by Matrix Partners India and Peak XV Partners. I put “Pre-Series A” in quotes because I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before; why not just call it a seed round? I'll also confess I'd never heard of Aampe.
Aampe says it is based in both Raleigh and Singapore—though its LinkedIn claims San Francisco. The Raleigh tie is Triangle-based Co-Founder Schaun Wheeler, a data scientist who is a veteran of MaxPoint Interactive. Co-Founder and CEO Paul Meinshausen is based in Singapore and other employees are based all over. See Triangle Inno for more.
The Big Three
Forbes named its annual list of the 400 Richest Americans this week and three Triangle names made the list. SAS Co-Founder and CEO Jim Goodnight is back at No. 1 in the state and climbs to No. 102 in the nation with an estimated net worth of $8.5B, $900M more than the last time Forbes calculated his wealth in April. Jim’s SAS Co-Founder John Sall pops up to No. 2 in the state at an estimated $4.2B. Meanwhile Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney had a big-on-paper fall from $7.4B on this list a year ago—when he ranked No. 1 in the state—down to No. 3 with $4.1B, the same dollar figure he had been at in 2021. See TechWire and the N&O for more.
Why the drop for Tim? Well, one big reason is that the massive investment that Epic Games has been making in the metaverse hasn’t yet been bearing as much fruit as hoped, at least in terms of revenue and profit. The N&O has a closer look.
Better News
In Tuesday’s newsletter we mentioned a Triangle-based game developer (Puny Human) that is shutting down. Better news in the same industry vertical: RTP-based Atomic Arcade is growing its team at 31 employees and counting. Atomic Arcade is owned by toy giant Hasbro and has been pretty tight-lipped on the G.I. Joe game it’s working on. See Triangle Inno for more on Atomic Arcade and the latest news on the Triangle’s game developers.
Angel Rules
By law, the Securities and Exchange Commission must review the rules on how one qualifies as an accredited investor this year and is expected to float its proposed changes very soon. So far nobody really knows what the SEC is going to do, but as expressed in this Triangle Inno story and this David Gardner (Cofounders Capital) TechWire column from last week, the fear in the startup community is that the net worth hurdle to qualify will be raised. It is currently $1M (excluding one’s primary residence) and the fear is that it could be raised to as much as $3-5M, thus significantly reducing the number of eligible angel investors and making it harder for early-stage startups to access angel money.
Though it's also possible the regulations could be loosened, such as allowing less wealthy investors to become accredited through a certification process. Or some good-news/bad-news splitting of the baby. It’s definitely worth watching.
Build Great Software
Founded by serial entrepreneurs, Dualboot is a software and business 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 years of 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.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Real talk: doing our best to serve you costs money. Businesses and organizations that would like to support our efforts should see our sponsorship opportunities here.
