ICYMI: The Friday Noonerreturned for 2023 last Friday with guest Jesse Jones, the Founding Partner of Raleigh-based Fourscore Business Law. Fun fact: One person who MI was Pete, who had a weird day touring some of greater Durham’s finer medical establishments for what turned out to be a case of treatable vertigo (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo or BPPV, to be specific) that, knock on wood, he’s already knocked out with some weird head-and-neck maneuver. You’ll want to tune in if only to see/hear how Joe and Jackie dealt with Pete’s unplanned absence.
Looking Sharp
Speaking of the Friday Nooner, the guest on the last episode of 2022 was Katherine Manuel, the COO of Wake Forest-based digital fashion house House of Blueberry. Today we’re back with a deeper dive on the startup founded by CEO (and serial entrepreneur) Gizem Mishi McDuff in 2012 in her native Turkey after she had an eye-opening experience attending a virtual concert in the multiplayer virtual world Second Life.
Mishi moved House of Blueberry to the Triangle in late 2018 and the startup recently closed on a $6M funding round to help “clothe” the best-dressed avatars in the metaverse. Read our full story here.
Save The Date!
We’re proud to announce that our full-day Grep-a-palooza conference will return for its second year—aka Grep-a-palooza II—on Thursday, June 1, at the Durham Convention Center. Stay tuned in the weeks and months ahead for announcements on speakers, panels and ticket information. For now, we’d just like to get on your calendar. Here’s our Grep-a-palooza page with more info and a recap of last year’s inaugural event.
Venture Connect
You won’t need to wait until Grep-a-palooza to gather in large numbers with the Triangle tech community because the grandaddy of local tech conferences—CED’s Venture Connect summit—returns on March 29-30. Though if you’re a startup founder who’d like a chance to present to the many investors who’ll be in attendance, be advised that the deadline to apply for the coveted slots is this Friday, Jan. 13.
Here’s the link to the application form, and here’s some invaluable guidance from CED’s Jay Bigelow on how to put your best pitch foot forward if you’re picked to grace the stage. Early-bird registration will open soon. You can find all the information on the Venture Connect page.
New Fund
Durham-based VC firm IDEA Fund Partners has filed the SEC papers necessary to establish its fourth fund—IDEA Fund IV—with a target of $50M. Eagled-eyed TBJ/Triangle Inno writer Lauren Ohnesorgespotted the filing. IDEA Fund is staying mum for the record, smartly following the legal requirement that they not publicly discuss ongoing fundraising lest it be construed as a pitch for the fund.
Though our ear to the ground has heard that for Fund IV, IDEA Fund is especially interested in the “Future of Home” and “Future of Work” as potential investment areas, as well as founders from under-served backgrounds. The VC’s third fund closed in 2020 at $25M.
On The Rails
Go Triangle has released a 45-page feasibility report on a commuter rail that could eventually stretch from Durham to Johnston County, connecting key points like RTP and NC State along the route. Surprise, surprise: it would cost a lot and take many years. The price tag is estimated at north of $3B, which is some $1B more than the initial estimate of $2B.
Go Triangle breaks down the project into three separate chunks and recommends focusing on two of them first—the Central section from downtown Raleigh through Cary to RTP, and the Eastern section from downtown Raleigh to Garner. Axios Raleigh has a good explainer story while WRAL.com covered the report here. For the record, I’m a big rail proponent.
Breaking Up
Raleigh-based tech firm MobileSmith had a tough day last week in bankruptcy court. The parties in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization had been unable to agree on a compensation arrangement for interim CEO Gleb Mikhailov, so he quit—and the board soon followed. That essentially left MobileSmith’s attorney Jeff Cook without a living, breathing client, so he asked for a Chapter 11 trustee to be appointed. The upshot is that the code-free mobile app development platform that was publicly traded on the OTC exchange until last year will likely be sold for scrap parts (especially its patents) on behalf of creditors like Comerica Bank. See TBJ for the full story.
Look Away
Put some points in Austin’s column in the perennial Austin v. the Triangle battle. Yes, Apple has quietly been filing permits for its planned RTP campus—TechWire has a story on that, following TBJ’s story last week—but it’s staying mum publicly. Now TBJ quotes UNC chief economist Gerald Cohen worrying aloud about the possibility that continued interest rate hikes could spook the likes of Apple and Google from following through on their big Triangle expansions. Oh no!
Meanwhile Apple is publicly full speed ahead on building more in Austin even as it gives the Triangle the silent treatment. Ouch! And to add insult to injury, Austin clobbers Raleigh in some new rankings. I might need a nap. (Actually, I recommend 26-minute naps for any occasion. Truth.)
Faces To Watch
TBJ’s 2023 Faces To Watch include two tech names, including one from the startup world. JupiterOne CEO Erkang Zhengmakes the cut, and with good reason—the cybersecurity startup went from launch to GrepBeat 2021 Startup To Watch to unicorn in about two years. (Here’s our profile on Erkang from July.) Wolfspeed CEO Gregg Lowe is another Face To Watch, and there will certainly be plenty of eyes on the multi-billion-dollar semiconductor factory that the company has pledged to build in Chatham County.
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