We’re a week away from the next GrepBeat Happy Hour on Tuesday, April 18, from 5-7 p.m. at Bull McCabe’s in downtown Durham. Your first round will be courtesy of our sponsor, Dualboot Partners. The happy hour will cap the first day of the three-day Raleigh-Durham Startup Week. Please register here so we can get a sense of numbers.
The guest on the latest Friday Nooner was Sophia Lopez, the Co-Founder and COO of Raleigh-based enterprise blockchain startup Kaleido who also, it turns out, has an eerily similar background to GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy.
Bionic Men
It was exactly three weeks ago that we mentioned in the newsletter that serial entrepreneurs Robbie Allen (Automated Insights) and Dr. Jared Pelo (iScribes) had teamed up to launch Durham-based Bionic Health, armed with a $3M seed round led by Durham’s IDEA Fund Partners. Today we’re back with a full profile of the tech-forward healthtech startup dedicated to preventative health and optimizing wellness.
Fun fact: we asked Robbie for a new picture rather than re-using some of the old ones we already had—including from his stint as the first-season host of our For Starters podcast—and naturally the Tar Heel superfan managed to take one with his current co-founder in front of both UNC’s and Michael Jordan’s Jumpman logos.
We first profiledSani—the Indian apparel brand founded by sisters Niki (UNC) and Ritika (NC State) Shamdasani—in April, 2019. Now Sani is the first South Asian fashion brand to launch at Nordstrom. Sani started with a focus on Indian wedding wear and has expanded to loungewear as well as clothes for more dressy occasions. One big breakthrough was getting Sani’s clothes on Rent The Runway in 2020, but Nordstrom is an even broader step into the mainstream.
Additional fun fact: the sisters were joint picks for Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for 2023 in retail and ecommerce, though we can state confidently that unlike some of the miscreants we discussed in the latest Friday Nooner, they are both upstanding, law-abiding members of the community.
New Funder
Cary-based 5G startup Simnovus has raised $3.2M from investors, according to an SEC filing. The company focuses on software-based validation tools for 4G and 5G Radio Access Networks (RANs). The round was led by Virginia-based Gray Ventures and San Francisco-based Dragon Capital. See TechWire for more info.
White Hats
Yesterday’s N&O had an interesting story on big tech companies—including local stalwarts Epic Games and Pendo—paying bounties to so-called “white hat” hackers who find bugs and other weaknesses and vulnerabilities in their software. In fact Epic Games has awarded a total of $3.16M to more than 550 people on the platform HackerOne since October, 2021, when it opened its “bug bounty” to the public. Pendo launched its own bounty program two years ago.
Brushing Up
Yesterday’s Triangle Inno ran a feature on Durham-based startup Bristles, which makes an app that allows DIY designers to play with different paint colors and other design elements on a screen before getting down to work. We first profiled Bristles in November of 2021, and the GrepBeat Godfather and I also had a nice chat with Co-Founder and CEO Tina Tang at the GrepBeat table during Venture Connect.
Top Employers
Fortune’s annual Best Companies to Work For list included Raleigh-based Red Hat at No. 67, down from No. 34 a year ago but one of only two Triangle-based companies on the list. (Engineering firm Kimley-Horn ranked No. 28.) Cary-based SAS was once a perennial presence on the list, but now hasn’t made it since 2021. But here’s some other SAS news: SAS suffers another setback in $79M copyright suit, is ‘weighing options’ about next steps (WRAL TechWire).
Triangle Talks
The Raleigh office of Slalom, a national consulting firm, is launching a new event series called Triangle Talks. The first event will be on Thursday, April 27, from 4:30-6 followed by a happy hour at the WeWork at 1 Glenwood Ave in Raleigh. The topic is “Total Experience and the intersection of customer and employee experiences” and the panel will include execs from Coinbase, Cisco and RiteAid. See more info and register here.
Build Great Software
Founded by serial entrepreneurs, Dualboot is a software and business development company. Their clients include tech and non-tech founders as well as Fortune 500 companies, so they can start small or scale fast depending on what you need. Every client is assigned a U.S.-based Product Director with years of experience bringing products to market, and they can manage the entire development process. They focus on how the software fits into your company to drive revenue and build the business. At Dualboot, they don’t just write your software—they help you grow your business. Intrigued? Email them here.
Extra Bit
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