The final Friday Nooner of 2022 will feature guest Katherine Manuel, the COO of fast-growing Triangle startup House of Blueberry, which “makes” fashion for digital avatars. Tomorrow's show will also feature the world premiere of the soon-to-be-classic holiday song, Walking In A GrepBeat Wonderland. You can watch live at noon tomorrow on LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook, or catch afterward on those platforms or in its podcast form.
Managing Up
Grad students working on a thesis or PhD dissertation soon find that in addition to their chosen discipline, they’re forced to take a crash course in wrangling the schedules of the multiple professors on the committee that oversees their work. Denise Wynn and Mike Lee discovered that while working toward their Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degrees at UNC-Charlotte—and they’ve done something about it. The pair have launched Durham-based Committees, a scheduling platform designed to manage the process of writing theses and dissertations.
If only Committees had been around when I wrote my undergrad thesis on the early political career of Martin Van Buren—because of course his later career had already been so exhaustively covered—in which I did not sleep when it was dark outside for eight consecutive days during the final crunch. Not my finest 192 hours.
In October, Committees was awarded a $10K MICRO grant from NC IDEA. Read our full story on Committees here. We have also now written feature stories on all of the Triangle-based MICRO grant recipients from this past cycle, including BCombs, Dojo Fresh, Tromml (from Tuesday), Givefinity and TSV Analytics.
Staying On Track
Wake Forest-based Revibe Technologies has received a new $250K investment from The Launch Place, the VC fund HQ’d in Danville, Va., which also has an RTP office. We first profiled Revibe in February, 2019, for its vibrating watch that helps people—especially young people—with ADHD better focus on tasks. Revibe is expanding its wearables line as part of what it calls a “nonpharmacologic software-as-a-medical-device (SaMD) approach” to treating attention and focus deficits. Hey, if the watch gave me a small electric shock every time I check Twitter while on newsletter deadline, sign me up.
Pats On Back
MedCity News, a national outlet that covers healthcare, wrote a feature story this week on Raleigh-based Feedtrail, a startup focused on tracking patient satisfaction and feedback. Specifically the story focused on a new clinician retention workgroup that Feedtrail launched this week with four providers, including the Cedars-Sinai system in Los Angeles and Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. The new imitative aims to battle the burnout felt by many healthcare workers by connecting them to positive feedback from patients, not just areas that can be improved. We first profiled Feedtrail in June, 2019.
Cleaning Up
In the tech-adjacent category, Durham-based cleantech NET Power intends to go public through a SPAC deal led by prominent energy entrepreneur Daniel Rice. NET Power was founded in 2010 and has developed what it calls an “oxy-combustion process” to decarbonize natural gas. The ultimate goal is to use natural gas to reliably generate electricity while capturing all emissions, which could have a significant impact on reducing global emission. The plan is to license the tech to utility plants. See TBJ for the full story.
Boomtown
It probably won’t shock you to learn that Raleigh is the second-fastest-growing metro in the U.S. for the years between 2016 and 2021, according to a new analysis. The Raleigh region—it was defined as Wake, Johnston and Franklin Counties—saw an 11.1% increase in net population. Durham-Chapel Hill grew 5.8%, which ranked 26th. The fastest-growing region probably won’t shock you either: the Austin metro at 14.1%. (Boo!)
In a related story showing one of the downsides of growth, another new report found that rents in Raleigh have been growing the fastest of any of the 50 most populous metro areas for the 12-month period ending in November—a whopping 21.8%. Ouch.
Hanging On?
It’s been a rough year for Avaya, the publicly traded cloud-based communications and collaborations solution provider that moved its HQ to Durham from Silicon Valley during the pandemic. As recently as August it warned investors that it had “substantial doubt” about its ability to survive. This week, new CEO Alan Masarek took a more positive tone in an SEC filing, writing that the company is “pleased” by ongoing discussions with stakeholders “regarding a comprehensive resolution to strengthen the company’s balance sheet.” See TechWire for more.
Though not everyone was impressed with the (relatively) happy talk. This morning a financial blogger posted an item with the headline: “Avaya - Secured Creditors Likely To Wipe Out Equity Holders In Bankruptcy.” It contends exactly what the title suggests—that Avaya is likely to enter Chapter 11 and the secured creditors will end up owning the company, not equity shareholders, so get out now for whatever price you can find.
End Of Road
Pour one out for Rock Band. Also Rock Band 2, Rock Band 3, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Green Day: Rock Band. Those are among the many titles owned by Cary’s Epic Games that the company announced yesterday it will drop all online support for by Jan. 24. Most of the titles will still be playable offline—and honestly I didn’t know you could even play Rock Band online—but it’s news that has shook up the video game industry. No Epic exec was quoted in the press release and CEO Tim Sweeney hasn’t yet mentioned anything on his Twitter feed, though he can probably figure out a way to blame it on Apple’s app store by the end of the week. See TechWire for more.
Build Great Software
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