The latest Friday Nooner featured Austin Armstrong, the Co-Founder and CEO of Durham-based Syllaby, an AI-aided platform to create video marketing campaigns that was named to the 2023 GrepBeat Startups To Watch list. The GrepBeat team also gets to the bottom of the “new” holidays Grep-o-ween, Greps-giving, and Grep-mas.
Exit Stories Finale
We’ve come to the end of another season of Exit Stories—this is the 10th and final episode of Season Four—but host Kevin Mosley of Jurassic Capital fame is going out strong with guest Travis Milks. Travis is the Durham-based Managing Partner for growth equity firm Topmark Partners, as well as a former Download Q&A subject.
Read some show highlights here, then listen (and subscribe!) here. Thanks again to Robinson Bradshaw for being this season’s show sponsor!
School Safety
Many of the best startups are created to solve a specific problem, and that can include problems that everyone wished didn’t exist in the first place. Active Defender—one of NC TECH’s statewide 10 Startups To Watch for 2023—is in that latter camp. The Carthage-based startup helps schools be safer during shootings and other emergencies. Created by a team with deep experience both in the military and in education, the app helps teachers, staff and students communicate with each other and first responders during a crisis.
Raleigh-based diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) startup The Diversity Movement (TDM) has been acquired by Raleigh-based Workplace Options, a provider of wellbeing and mental health solutions to some 80 million people and 56% of Fortune 500 companies. TDM will continue to operate as an independent company; financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Led by CEO Donald Thompson—the former Walk West CEO was the subject of a GrepBeat feature story last July—TDM offers a SaaS employee experience platform that helps build and strengthen culture by tying real-world business outcomes to DEI initiatives. TDM Co-Founder and VP of Innovation Kurt Merriweather also talked about the startup as aFriday Nooner guest back on Dec. 3, 2021. The startup was backed by investors including Durham-based Resilient Ventures.
You can read more about the acquisition here. We’ll also have a fuller GrepBeat story later this week. Our sources say that Donald is unreachable at the moment because he’s on a flight to California for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year conference; he was previously named EY’s 2023 Entrepreneur of the Year for the Southeast. Congrats to Donald and the whole TDM team!
Bulking Up
Last week we mentioned Raleigh-based edtech Element451 raising $2M. Yesterday it announced it has acquired Virginia-based Enrollify, a media and content resource for higher education marketers. Element451 will roll Enrollify’s content into its digital media and resource library, Engage. The two startups have worked together in the past, collaborating on a podcast series on ChatGPT and Generative AI earlier this year. See Element451’s announcement for more info.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Cary-based Epic Games is battling in federal court with a tech giant over the rules of the latter’s app store, especially the fat cut it takes of any payment made within the store—and its requirement that all in-app payments be made within its walled garden. OK, yes, the Fortnite maker has been down this road for years with Apple, a case that may well end up at the Supreme Court after Apple (mostly) won the first few rounds. This is a same-but-different antitrust case with Google over the latter’s rules in its Android app store, which kicked off yesterday in federal court.
The Verge has a thorough explainer here. One key difference: this will be a jury trial as opposed to the Apple case, which was a bench trial (i.e. decided solely by the judge).
Moving On
Two-plus years after leading Durham-based Spoonflower as CEO through its $225M acquisition by Shutterfly that was announced in June of 2021, Michael Jones is moving on. A ChannelAdvisor and eBay veteran—not to mention aFriday Nooner guest andDownload Q&A subject—Michael took over the top spot at Spoonflower in early 2020, shortly before the pandemic. The pandemic turned out to be a boom time for Spoonflower as people suddenly spent a ton more time at home and many quickly got sick of their couch, drapes and other home furnishings, turning to Spoonflower’s unique custom-printing solution.
Michael tells TBJ that he always intended to stay two years post-acquisition, so mission accomplished. And while we doubt it ever materially lagged, this can only help Michael's impressive fitness level.
WeWork Walks?
In a move that shocks nobody considering they’d floated it for weeks (months?), WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. That means, among other things, that WeWork will be trying to get out of certain leases as it looks to reorganize its business. It currently has two locations in the Triangle: two floors at One City Center in downtown Durham and three floors at One Glenwood in downtown Raleigh. It’s too early to know if either or both will be among the leases that WeWork walks away from. See TBJ for more info.
Attn. Startups
Two things for Triangle startups to know: 1) Applications are now open for one of the coveted pitching slots at CED’s 2024 Venture Connect conference, which will be held on March 20-21 in Raleigh. The deadline to apply is Jan. 5. 2) On the weekend of Nov. 17-19, Knox St. Studios and the Foundit program at Duke’s Engineering School will host Durham’s Techstars Startup Weekend focused on sustainability. It’s 54 hours to dive into a new startup idea with like-minded people. See TechWire for more info.
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