Today is the final day for Early Bird rates for Grep-a-palooza 3 on Thursday, June 4, at the Durham Convention Center. You can see much more about that down in Item No. 1—including the full agenda.
But you don’t have to wait that long to see the GrepBeat team in person. We’ll be hosting our next GrepBeat Happy Hour on Thursday, May 16—two weeks from Thursday—at Bull McCabe’s in downtown Durham. Your first drink will be courtesy of our great sponsor, Hutchison law firm. Please register so we can plan accordingly.
ICYMI: the latest Friday Noonersponsored by Whitley Recruiting featured Dr. Jared Pelo, the Co-Founder (with Robbie Allen) of RTP-based Bionic Health. Jared ranks very high in the show’s alltime “visual backdrop” standings.
Today is the final day for Early Bird rates for June 4’s Grep-a-palooza 3. If you’re on the fence about pulling the trigger—or you’ve already signed up and want more details on what to expect—today we published the full agenda here. As you’ll see, it’s a jam-packed day of keynotes, panels, startup pitches, networking and much more, capped by an after-party starting at 4 p.m. at Bull McCabe’s. The keynotes are serial entrepreneurs Jes Lipson (Levitate, ShareFile) and Igor Jablokov (Pryon, Yap); check out this story about a speech Igor gave last Friday at a BusinessNC event. The after-party is open to all, though only conference attendees will receive drink tickets.
The Early Bird rates are $149 for startup founders and employees, and $249 for everyone else. They expire tonight at 11:59 p.m. From May 1 through the event, tickets will be $199 for startup founders/employees and $299 for everyone else. Here is the Eventbrite to buy tickets, here’s the Grep-a-palooza page, and here's another peek at the agenda.
We couldn’t put on Grep-a-palooza without our corporate sponsors, which include Robinson Bradshaw, Hutchison, Financial Symmetry and EisnerAmper; our university sponsors NC State, UNC and Duke; plus a grant from NC IDEA. You should stop by the sponsors’ tables at the event to thank them in person and learn more about them. You can still become a Grep-a-palooza 3 sponsor through Friday, May 17; email our Business Development Manager Cesar Romero for more info.
Cheaper Rx
Nearly one-third of Americans have not taken a prescribed medication because of the cost, according to one study. Non-adherence to medication leads to all sorts of other “costs” like poorer health outcomes, trips to the ER and increased hospital admissions. That’s why J.B. Powell launched Chapel Hill-based RxLink in 2023 to help patients find discounts to score the lowest possible price for prescription drugs.
RxLink works directly with health systems, including helping drive utilization of the health system’s own pharmacies if they have the best price. The startup recently landed financing from the Triangle Tweener Fund.
Many homebuyers like the idea of buying a newly constructed house as their potential dream home, but customizing something that doesn’t yet exist can be trickier than it sounds. Enter Holly Spring-based Anewgo, which Founder and CEO John Lee describes as a “Match.com for houses instead of spouses." (A very catchy tagline!)
While homebuyers are the ones who use the Anewgo platform to find and customize everything from screened-in porches to granite countertops to paint colors, it’s the homebuilders that are Anewgo’s primary customers and source of revenue. The builders embed Anewgo’s matching and customization tech as part of their own sites.
Morrisville-based cybersecurity unicorn JupiterOne has a new CEO. Erkang Zheng—the opening keynote at last year’s Grep-a-palooza 2—is moving “upstairs” to a new role as chairman. He’s handing over the CEO reins to Paul Forte, who joined JupiterOne last year as Chief Revenue Officer before stepping into the COO role in August. Paul has previously held executive roles at companies like ChannelAdvisor and SingleStore. He currently lives in Cleveland, but tells Triangle Inno (which has the full story) that he’ll be in the Triangle several times a month.
Under Erkang’s leadership, JupiterOne surged to unicorn status less than two years after it launched in 2020, and zipped past $10M in annual revenue in less than three years. We profiled Erkang in July, 2022, and wrote about JupiterOne multiple times, including naming the startup to our inaugural 2021 class of Startups To Watch. While Erkang has proven to be a terrific builder, Paul says his sweet spot is helping companies grow from $10M to $100M ARR, the leg of the journey that JupiterOne now finds itself on.
Funding News
Raleigh-based MuukTest has raised $2M from existing investors to fund its next stage of growth. MuukTest automates software testing for B2B customers. We first profiled the startup in August, 2019, and Co-Founder and CEO Ivan Barajas Vargas was our guest on the March 22 Friday Nooner. See Triangle Inno for the full story on the fundraise.
SAS IPO?
We have bad news for those of you who have 2024 in your office pool as the year when Cary-based SAS will go public in an IPO. CTO Bryan Harris tells TBJ that while “there’s no question that our CEO” Jim Goodnight still wants to go public, the company is probably at least 12 months away from being ready. Indeed, it takes a lot of prep for a nearly 50-year-old private company with annual revenues around $3B a year to get itself ready for the public markets, especially for quarterly reporting requirements. Another news nugget in the interview with TBJ: SAS will be positioning itself as an AI company.
Lotsa News, Part I
Wow, the news really piled up during my vacation, so we need to jam multiple stories per item. Here are two: 1) Durham-based cooling technology startup Phononic is laying off 54 workers as part of its shift from focusing on building hardware to more of an emphasis on software, TBJ reports. Phononic CEO Tony Atti was a Download Q&A subject and a Grep-a-palooza 2 panelist. The startup has raised more than $210M in its history and is generally considered on the short list of Triangle startups most likely to IPO. But don’t consider that betting advice for your office’s IPO pool.
2) As the FTC last week adopted a rule that effectively bans non-compete clauses for all workers—though the courts could hold that up—the N&O spoke to a former Prometheus employee who was one of three who battled the unicorn over alleged violations of their non-compete clauses. This particular employee, Randy Gibson, ended up winning in court, but only after spending $70K fighting the lawsuit.
Lotsa News, Part II
More stuff without transitions: 1) TBJ unveiled its annual 40 Under 40 list, which includes several Triangle tech names. The first batch includes former Friday Nooner guest Lauren Romer of Raleigh Founded, while the second batch includes Greenplaces CEO Alex Lassiter (another Friday Nooner guest) and Jenni Jernigan of Abrigo (formerly Sageworks).
2) American Underground (led by another former Friday Nooner guest, Tim Scales) is partnering with Raleigh Founded on an initiative to help people find tech jobs. They’re offering discounted memberships to those hoping to hook on at tech companies.
3) FemHealth Insights co-founder Brittany Barreto is the subject of the latest entry in TBJ’s “Project Life” series. Brittany is a two-time GrepBeat story subject, for FemHealth Insights and for FemTech Focus, a Triangle-based non-profit that looks to raise awareness for FemTech and provide resources for innovators in the space.
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