The latest Friday Noonerfeatured an out-of-this-world guest—space-traveling, globe-trotting UNC entrepreneurship professor Jim Kitchen. You should also check out Jackie’s latest Week in 90 Seconds.
Venture Connect
CED’s Venture Connect summit is less than 24 hours away! The two-day event kicks off tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at GSK’s campus in RTP. GrepBeat will do our level best to help you be prepared. Today we are rolling out five features on startups that will be presenting, the last batch of the 13 such profiles we’ve published over the last month. Tomorrow morning we’ll send out a special edition of the newsletter that will point you not only to those 13 stories, but also to the 40+ we’ve written in past years on startups that will be taking the stage at Venture Connect.
First up today is PolyPV, a startup that is commercializing the solar panel tech developed by NC State professors Dr. Harald Ade and Dr. Brendan O’Connor. Their application of polymer materials to solar panels results in a more flexible and lightweight design that can increase power density. That makes it a good option for military uses (picture mobile vehicles that tap into solar power) and consumer applications for outdoors enthusiasts (such as hooking up RVs and tents to solar power). Read our full story here.
Speed Demons
The next pair of Venture Connect startups use AI and/or machine learning to speed up science to save major time and money. Raleigh-based Bay Nano has developed an “AI Chemist” platform that enables chemical reactions and experiments to be “run” digitally rather than manually. The first applications the Bay Nano team are working on are “smart glass”—think of “closing the blinds” but hands-free and with more energy savings—and quantum dots, which could be used to emit any color light from glass for high-tech windows or TV/tablet/phone screens. Read our full story on Bay Nano here.
Durham-based Avalo is using machine learning to dramatically speed up the process of developing new crop types by “testing” plant genes much more rapidly in the lab than the traditional trial-and-error-in-the-fields method. Given that the rapidly warming planet will soon call for new crop types that are better suited to the higher temperatures, there is no time to waste. Read the full story here.
Immigrant Aids
The final pair of today’s Venture Connect startups are targeted to markets that are under-served. RefundWiz makes a tax prep product (MásRefund) geared to the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community. As an immigrant himself—Founder Simon Karmarkar came to this country with his family from South Asia—he knows how byzantine and often frightening the U.S. tax system can be for newcomers, especially those who struggle with English and are afraid that any mistake could get them deported. Read our full story on RefundWiz here.
The brother-sister team of Charles and Angel Inokon watched their immigrant parents struggle to run their small business in pursuit of the American Dream. So they’ve launched Raleigh-based Cadence and its fintech app Cadence Cash, which helps small businesses—especially those run by minority founders—manage their cash flow. Cadence Cash essentially provides cash advances to businesses waiting for invoices to be paid. Read our full story on Cadence here.
First Citizens/SVB
The Silicon Valley Bank saga took a notably local turn this week with the news that Raleigh-based First Citizens Bank has acquired SVB—or what’s left of it, anyway. It’s the latest but largest foray that First Citizens has made into the discount bin of distressed financial institutions, and the bargain price it paid seems at first glance to be quite a steal. It could also help burnish the Triangle’s growing rep as a startup hub. If you want to read much more, here’s a sampling of stories:
Just in case there’s not enough going on this week in the Triangle tech scene, President Biden is swinging by this afternoon to visit Wolfspeed in Durham. The reason for the trip is a victory lap on Wolfspeed’s plans to build a $5B factory in Chatham County to make semiconductors, a project that will receive a healthy dose of financial support from the CHIPS Act, a piece of legislation pushed by the Biden Administration.
NC IDEA has named 24 semi-finalists for the Spring 2023 Grant Cycle for its $50K SEED grants. By our quick count an even dozen of them (i.e. half) hail from the Triangle. We’ve already profiled five of them: BCombs, CINCH, Mentorforce, Nanode and Tromml. The other locals are Blue Pencil Box, dataiq.io, Divergene, More Hair Organics LLC, Pearlita Foods, GQ Equine and Vetletics, though the last three likely skew outside our tech-forward coverage areas. See NC IDEA's site for the full list, and you can also expect feature stories on more of those startups in the weeks to come.
Women In Tech
Last Friday’s Triangle Inno had a deep dive on the extra challenges still faced by women in tech. Specifically, TBJ's Lauren Ohnesorge spoke to three women technologists at IBM to get their reactions on a recent Women in Leadership survey from the IBM Institute for Business Value as well as their broader experiences. It’s worth a read.
Build Great Software
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