We’re hosting a holiday edition of the GrepBeat Happy Hour next Thursday, Dec. 14, from 5-7 p.m. at Lonerider’s Durham location (708 Ramseur St). Your first round will be courtesy of our sponsor, Fourscore Business Law. Please register so we can get a sense of numbers.
The latest Friday Nooner guest was Bernard Worthy, the Co-Founder and CEO of Durham-based fintech LoanWell and the first person in show history to receive a live compliment on their hair from a viewer in the comments section.
Circle Of Life
The souped-up batteries that power EVs are a marvel of modern engineering—and can become a pretty big headache when they’ve reached their “end of life” by giving their last charge. Raleigh-based ScoutIt has stepped forward to create a two-sided marketplace to handle just such a problem, which is expected to grow dramatically as EV adoption surges.
ScoutIt connects those looking to dispose of used EV batteries with those looking to buy them so they can be recycled for new uses, helping to create a true circular battery economy. ScoutIt CEO Davide Giacobbe was one of 20 founders that CED paid to send to this fall’s Business of Software (BoS) conference, which was held in Raleigh for the first time.
You know who might be interested in the above story on a startup helping give a new life to used EV batteries as part of the broader move away from fossil fuels—the students on the College To Climate (CTC) platform. CTC helps connect college students interested in careers in climate-related fields to job opportunities, climate professionals, educational opportunities and a sense of community. Duke senior Casey Goldstein is one of CTC’s three co-founders, and Casey and CTC are part of this year’s year-long cohort of Duke’s Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs Accelerator.
GrepBeat sister company Primordial has launched a rolling fund through AngelList to turbocharge its investments into early-stage Triangle startups. Primordial has made eight investments since it launched in April, and next year—with the rolling fund up and running—it plans to increase that to about 3-5 checks each quarter starting at $50K each. Triangle Inno and TechWire each wrote about the new fund.
This also, of course, means that Primordial is looking for angel investors to fill the fund. If that sounds interesting, you can find a lot more information on Primordial’s investor page. The minimum commitment is $5,000 per quarter for four quarters. If you do come aboard I’m sure I’ll see you before too long since I typically drop in on Primordial’s quarterly Investor Meet & Greet sessions, held in Colopy Ventures World HQ in downtown Durham.
Brewer Boosters
Durham-based startup Precision Fermentation has raised nearly $6.1M for its IoT tech that more accurately monitors and controls the fermentation process. It was designed first for the beer industry, but its BrewIQ system can also be used for other fermented beverages such as distilled spirits, dairy, kombucha, and bio-ethanol. We first profiled the startup—which spun out of the biodata company Mimetics—early in GrepBeat history in November, 2019. The startup has now raised a total of $12.1M.
Thanks to TechWire for sharing a story from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering that clued me in to something that happened last month that hadn’t heretofore crossed my radar screen. Namely, that Durham-based startup Tyrata—a spinout from Duke that we profiled in August, 2021—was acquired by Bridgestone. Tyrata uses sensors to measure tire tread so their owners know when it’s time to change tires.
That’s especially an issue for large fleets of vehicles, such as city buses, where the problem has tended to be that officials are too quick to change tires before they’re fully worn, costing real money and creating significant tire waste. Tyrata created a device that looks like a speed bump that can measure the tread precisely without removing the tires. The tech was invented by Duke professor Aaron Franklin, who has served as Tyrata’s CTO.
Quant Jocks
Even though I still can’t explain in 20 words or less exactly how quantum computers work, I do know that they are (potentially) very powerful and that the Triangle is one of the key hubs of such work, thanks in significant part to separate groups of researchers at Duke and NC State. Yesterday’s N&O has an interesting story that brings you fully up to date on the Triangle’s place in the quantum computing boom.
Updates I
Two updates on topics we mentioned in last Thursday’s newsletter: 1) Triangle Inno wrote about Raleigh-based Phinite raising $3M to help turn hog waste into fertilizer, including quotes from Australian-born Founder Jordan Phasey. We first profiled the startup in December 2021.
2) TechWire wrote about the Capitol Hill appearance of Howso CEO Mike Capps and Cynthia Rudin, the Director of Duke’s Interpretable Machine Learning Lab and a computer science professor. The pair spoke at a Senate panel on AI.
Updates II
Three updates on longer-boiling stories: 1) Both the N&O and Business NC wrote about NC’s Commerce Secretary, Machelle Baker Sanders, writing a letter to NC’s Congressional delegation to implore them to block a change in Section 174 of the Internal Revenue Code. The new rule wouldn’t allow companies to deduct their R&D expenses immediately and instead force them to spread out the deduction over future years—years that some startups will never see if they’re saddled with big tax bills in their earliest days.
2) Yeah, it’s not looking like Epic Games is actually going to build its new HQ on the site of the former Cary Towne Center mall anytime soon, with TechWire sharing the latest evidence (or lack or evidence).
3) Durham-based Wolfspeed has officially completed the $135M sale of its radio frequency business to Macom as part of its strategy to be a pure-play silicon carbide semiconductor chip company.
Build Great Software
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Extra Bit
It’s worth reading this TechWire piece on Teresa Spangler, the Founder and CEO of Triangle-based innovation consulting firm Plazabridge Group and a 2023 inductee of The North Carolina Women Business Owners Hall of Fame (NCWBOHOF). Teresa is battling a diagnosis of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also called Lou Gehrig’s disease.
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