The latest edition of the Friday Nooner featured Lauren McCullough—the CEO and Co-Founder of Durham-based Tromml—and more talk about moving vehicles than your average episode of Car Talk. This Friday’s show (the last of 2023) will be a holiday special that will feature the world premiere of both our new GrepBeat holiday movie (the mockumentary The Making Of: A GrepMas Carol) and a new holiday song, Grep The Halls.
Also, thanks to all who attended last Thursday’s holiday-themed GrepBeat Happy Hour, sponsored by Fourscore Business Law! Here are some pictures from the event as well as the holiday-movie-themed trivia questions.
Power Savers
Some 30 percent of energy use is wasted in commercial buildings across the U.S., costing some $42B, and the energy market is getting more complicated all the time due in part to the rise of renewable energy sources. That’s the problem—and opportunity—that Pittsboro-based startup Nimble Energy is targeting. Founder and CEO Jeff Soplop, who has 20+ years of experience in the energy sector, launched the startup this year with the platform going public in July. It already has a half-dozen or so paid customers, early traction that has attracted seed investors like GrepBeat sister company Primordial.
Read our full story on Jeff and Nimble Energy here.
Piecing Together
When Amy Young first developed the idea for Raleigh-based Jigsawdio’s picture jigsaw puzzles with audio elements, she thought they would be fun for families to share memories. It turns out they can do much more than that. Jigsawdio’s puzzles have proven to help seniors improve their scores on cognitive tests. That’s why the National Institute of Health made a $500K grant and Jigsawdio is pursuing a Phase Two NIH grant for further research and product development.
A fairly stealthy Durham-based startup called ValueBase (legal name Geo Land Solutions) has raised nearly $6.3M according to an SEC filing, including investments from a fund co-led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nat Friedman, the former CEO of Github. ValueBase uses machine learning to make property assessments more accurate. Triangle Inno and TechWire have more info, though not much more because the ValueBase team—including Co-Founder Will Jarvis, a UNC grad—has been pretty mum.
Crash Landing
What’s been a weird year for Raleigh-based drone company PrecisionHawk has ended in, well, the end of the company. PrecisionHawk filed last week for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation, citing assets of about $3.8M and debts of nearly $17.6M, including $243K of unpaid rent at its Glenwood South HQ.
A few of this year’s PrecisionHawk “highlights”: 1) then-CEO Jim Norrod announced on his LinkedIn that PrecisionHawk had been acquired; 2) another top PrecisionHawk exec said there had been no acquisition, adding that Norrod had actually been let go and didn’t speak for the company; 3) the company announced that it had indeed been acquired and/or merged with the Norwegian company Field. Indeed, it was Field’s CEO who signed the bankruptcy filing. See TBJ and the N&O for more.
On the brighter side, a few PrecisionHawk vets who flew the coop before this year’s carnage have launched a new startup in a drone-adjacent space called Cloneable that we profiled last month.
Fair Bargain?
Fresh off his court victory over Google, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney yesterday blasted the $700M settlement that 50 state attorneys general made with Google over antitrust complaints. Basically, Tim argued that the states should have driven a far harder bargain. The terms of the settlement were reached in September—before Epic’s trial victory over Google—but weren’t disclosed until yesterday. Google may well feel relieved they made that deal before taking the courtroom L in the Epic case.
New Owners
Houston-based developer Hines has paid $66M to acquire the IBM 500 Campus, which borders RTP. IBM will lease the four-building campus on the land from the new owner, so at least in the near term it won’t impact their workforce levels in the Triangle. Hines is also behind the Fenton development in Cary, the Market District at American Tobacco in Durham and Waverly Place in Cary. It sees mixed-use potential for the land, which is the direction that RTP and its environs are already heading as the corporate campus model is falling out of favor, while live-work-play developments are all the rage. See TechWire, TBJ and the N&O for more info.
Quickie Updates
Two quickie startup updates: 1) The N&O ran a story (written by past Friday Nooner co-host Chantal Allam) on four couples that have teamed up as one of the first to co-own a vacation home using Durham-based startup Plum Co-Ownership, which is led by serial entrepreneur (and frequent GrepBeat guest) Matt Williamson. We first profiled Plum last March. Fun fact: one of the couples includes our own Jenn Summe of Primordial, who not coincidentally once worked with Matt at Windsor Circle.
2) TBJ featured sisters Niki and Ritika Shamdasani, who lead Raleigh-based South Asian-inspired fashion startup Sani. We first profiled Sani back in 2019 and Niki was a panelist at this June’s Grep-a-palooza 2.
Second Act
Kevin Barry was part of one of the more notable Triangle startup successes of the past decade or so as the Co-Founder of FilterEasy, which he started while still in college with fellow NC State student Thad Tarkington as a subscription service for HVAC filters. The company has diversified and is now called Second Nature, with Thad still leading it, but after a nice exit last year, Kevin was looking for something new.
He's found it by opening Umbrella Dry Bar in downtown Raleigh, which will specialize in zero-proof cocktails and other alcohol-free beverages. See Triangle Inno for the full story on his second act.
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