We’re just two days away from the final GrepBeat Happy Hour of 2022. Join us on Thursday from 5-7 p.m. at The Avenue Raleigh (3 Glenwood Ave.), where your first round of drinks will be courtesy of our sponsor, Fourscore Business Law. Bonus: I will bake something. Please RSVP so we know how many to expect.
The latest Friday Noonerfeatured the husband-wife team behind 2022 GrepBeat Startups To Watch honoree Built Story, Brian and Alexina Alonso. If you watch (and pause) the video version, you can catch a glimpse of Joe’s Coinbase account.
In Phase
Chris and Barbara Lehenbauer—the husband-and-wife founders of Raleigh’s Phase Dock—originally geared their WorkBench mobile project development kit for computer engineers and tinkerers who wanted to build cool mini-computers. But once they saw how young people gravitated to it when they attended Maker Faires, they pivoted to use the WorkBench to teach STEM education. That was the approach that helped Phase Dock earn a $50K SEED grant from NC IDEA last month. Read our full story on Phase Dock here.
Gobbled Up
Chapel Hill-based healthcare software startup TSI Healthcare has been acquired by publicly traded NextGen Healthcare in a deal that could be worth $90M if TSI hits certain financial targets in the years ahead. TSI was founded in 1997 and makes software for physician practices of various sizes and specialties. It has already worked with NextGen for more than 16 years, including developing specific software solutions exclusively for physician practices on the NextGen platform. See TBJ for more info.
New Fundraise
Raleigh-based startup ArenaCX has raised nearly $4.2M according to an SEC filing. We first profiled ArenaCX—a spinout from Republic Wireless, which was itself a spinout from Bandwidth—in June, 2020. The company makes software that “gamifies” customer support functions to increase efficiency and effectiveness. See TechWire for more info.
Adding On
It was May, 2020, when we first profiled Triangle-based Hatchit, a digital business M&A platform that aims to connect potential buyers to digital businesses (especially in the ecommerce space) that are looking to be acquired. Now Hatchit has added three new M&A firms to its business-for-sale directory to bring the number of brokerage companies on the Hatchit platform to 25. The three are Dragonflip (a leading European M&A firm), Sellerforce (a boutique tech brokerage) and BusinessforSale.eu (a platform for European ecommerce business acquisitions). The additions extend Hatchit’s reach into the tech and European market.
Teaming Up
Sports apparel giant Under Armour is going to invest more than $1M into a new collaboration center with NC State at its Centennial Campus. Under Armour employees will work alongside NC State researchers to develop new materials and fabrics. Tbh I’ve always been more of a Nike guy, but my mind is open to being swayed by free swag. See TechWire and Triangle Inno for more info, with the latter being a more detailed story.
Exec Moves
Jay Blandford was the president of Raleigh-based fintech Sageworks when it was acquired in 2018 by Austin-based Abrigo, which then established a major presence in Raleigh. Now Jay has been named CEO of Abrigo. See TechWire for more.
Meanwhile Triangle Inno/TBJ continues to keep us on top of the latest moves of Oliver Schabenberger, who was once the presumed heir apparent to Jim Goodnight at SAS. Oliver is no longer at Silicon Valley-HQ’d SingleStore, where he had led a growing Raleigh office. It’s not clear what his next step will be, but Triangle Inno confirmed that he hasn’t gone back to SAS.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Tech jobs—or their absence—have been in the news a lot lately, and this item will continue the trend. Posted job openings at NC tech firms have declined sharply recently, though local startup execs like Spiffy CEO Scot Wingotells TechWire that he and plenty of others are still hiring. On the much more micro level, TechWire catches up with recent Exit Stories guest Karly Pavlinac about her job search after the “resume-on-a-cake” she sent to Nike went viral. (tl:dr—the hunt is ongoing)
On the other hand, Wolfspeed and VinFast have announced plans to spend billions constructing high-tech production facilities in the Triangle. They are both taking a hands-on approach to help create their own workforce by partnering with Durham Tech and other community colleges.
Choo-Choo
I know that mass transit enthusiasts in the Triangle—of which I am one—may still feel burned by Durham’s light rail bait-and-switch a few years back, but more train talk is pulling into the station. This time it’s a discussion about commuter rail. TBJ has all the info.
Build Great Software
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