There’s a lot of focus in the academic world about how AI could helps students cheat, but as Academic Insight Lab Co-Founder Jessica Parker says, cheating has been around much longer than generative AI. Most students want to learn, especially at the graduate and post-doc levels. That’s why the Raleigh-based startup—which is soon rebranding as “Moxie”—uses AI to help grad students and post-docs research and write more effectively. The startup was recently named a semifinalist for one of NC IDEA's $50K SEED grants.
Read our full story on Academic Insight Lab/Moxie here.
Make An Offer
Married couple Douglas Kinnison and Kendall Totten are the founders of Raleigh-based Reffo, which will publicly launch its platform enabling restaurants to offer customized deals to diners at the end of April. Reffo—the name is “offer” spelled backwards—allows restaurants to offer deals when demand is low, then turn them off when they’re busy. The customization tools even enable restaurants to offer real-time deals pushing meals with specific ingredients that they’ve ordered too much of before the food goes bad, reducing food waste and improving margins.
Raleigh-based Karma Wallet—a fintech that helps sustainability-conscious consumers find brands that reflect their values—has acquired Denver-based DoneGood, an ecommerce platform with over 100 ethical brands. Karma Wallet is the dba (“doing business as”) name for ImpactKarma, the father-and-son-founded startup from Jayant Khadilkar and Kedar Karkare that we first profiled in April, 2020. It has grown its platform and offerings steadily since then, including the January launch of the Karma Wallet card, a prepaid, reloadable debit card.
Karma Wallet didn’t release the terms of the acquisition, though today’s FinTech Global calls it “a significant step in consumer finance.” You can also read the press release here.
Pivot-ers
Today’s Triangle Inno has a cool story on three local entrepreneurs who successfully executed a pivot in their business. One is Rachael Classi, the Founder and CEO of Durham-based Tiny Earth Toys, which we first profiled in January, 2021. Rachael has been a frequent GrepBeat podcast and Friday Nooner guest and will also be a panelist at Grep-a-palooza 3 on Tuesday, June 4. Tiny Earth Toys started as a toy subscription business that basically recirculated used wooden toys, but has now pivoted to selling toys directly.
Phononic CEO Tony Atti—Tony has been a Download Q&A subject and was a Grep-a-palooza 2 panelist—is also among the trio. Phononic’s “pivot” was more of a shift in emphasis, seeking recurring revenue from data services and other software-driven offerings as well as the more one-time revenue it gets from selling hardware like its advanced cooling and refrigerator units.
The third entrepreneur is Eric Boggs, the CEO of RevBoss and a Bronto veteran (the GrepBeat Godfather’s old stomping grounds). We haven’t talked much about RevBoss because it started as a product-driven startup but pivoted to being a successful services business. Generally speaking, we write about the former, not the latter. But shifting to a services business is what enabled RevBoss to survive, and then thrive. (Also I know Eric from F3, where he goes by Banana Split.)
Wish List
It's been about four months since Cary-based Epic Games won a federal jury trial against Google for the rules of its app store violating antitrust laws. Judge James Donato asked Epic to recommend what changes in Google’s app store rules they would propose, though the judge will make the final determination. Last Thursday, Epic Games filed its proposal. Google has until May 2 to reply, and it has already signaled that it will appeal whatever the judge ends up deciding.
Basically, Epic Games wants to make it easier for third-party developers like them to have much more freedom within the app store, including its own payment systems—which won’t need to share a huge cut with Google. See the N&O for the full story.
Near-Miss
RIoT’s Tom Snyder wrote for WRAL TechWire about a near-miss that I hadn’t heard anything about: a hiding-in-plain-sight piece of Linux code that could have led to a crippling cyber-attack if it hadn’t been caught just in time. It’s a relatively complicated story, so read Tom’s piece and this one from Dan Goodin of ARS Technica. But it points out how reliant many large companies are on open-source software, which is generally policed by unpaid volunteers.
Not For Us
NCInnovation has launched its pilot round targeting six to eight grants in the six-figure range to back university research with commercial potential. But sorry, Triangle research universities, it’s not really meant for you. NCInnovation’s four regional partners are NC A&T in Greensboro, East Carolina University in Greenville, Western Carolina University in Cullowhee and UNC Charlotte.
The goal for this first round is in part to lift up state’s universities beyond the Triangle’s Big Three in terms of turning research into startups, jobs and tax revenue. There’s a not-unfounded feeling that the Triangle’s universities can take care of themselves, given that one study found that 87% of all in-state R&D expenditures have gone to UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke and NC State. See WRAL TechWire for more.
Building Out
Raleigh Founded Co-Founder Jason Widen’s Blue Co. Warehousing is opening its second building in Raleigh and is looking for two more. Blue Co. is a spin on co-working geared toward companies that need things like warehouse space, loading docks, room to park commercial vehicles and more. See TBJ for the full story.
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