Tomorrow’s Friday Nooner guest is James Avery, the Founder and CEO of Durham-based adtech startup Kevel. Tune in to see if he lives up to his promise to drink a cerveza on air in honor of Cinco de Mayo. You can watch live at noon on LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook, or catch afterward on those platforms or in its podcast form.
Grep-a-palooza 2
We’re exactly four weeks away from Grep-a-palooza 2, our full-day conference focused on tech startups in the Triangle that will be held on Thursday, June 1 at the Durham Convention Center. Our keynote speakers will be Erkang Zheng (JupiterOne) and Bill Spruill (Global Data Consortium/2ndF).
Today would be a great time to register if you haven’t already. Registration is $199 for Startup Founder and Employees and $299 for Everyone Else. We’ve also just introduced a $99 Student Rate designed for fulltime undergrad or grad students. We look forward to seeing you there!
Moving Forward
It should be no surprise that two ex-D1 athletes know the power and value of physical movement. Former UCLA soccer players Belden Long and Rosie White have applied that knowledge to their startup justb, an evidence-based movement and mindfulness platform designed for teachers and families to help kids, especially those with developmental disorders. The platform currently offers more than 70 videos classified into three categories—activating, center or deactivating—for whatever the students’ “energy” needs are at the moment.
Belden is pursuing a PhD in occupational therapy at Duke and justb participated in the latest cohort of the Duke Innovation Studio accelerator. Additional fun fact: Rosie played professional soccer in the National Women’s Soccer League and represented New Zealand in three World Cups and two Olympics. Read our full story on justb here.
Finding Funding
Today’s Triangle Inno has a story on the funding challenges faced by female founders in the Triangle. As checkwriters’ purse strings have generally tightened across the board, the impact has been felt even more acutely by female founders. That’s unfortunately not surprising given that according to Pitchbook, companies founded solely by women secured just 2.1% of the total capital invested in U.S. venture-backed startups in 2022, and female-founded startups secured just $6.8B in total venture deals in Q1 compared to $15.5B in 2022’s Q1 (a 56% drop). Recent Friday Nooner guest Nichole Lowe is featured prominently in the story.
Inside Look
We don’t mention this (solely) because he’s a Grep-a-palooza panel leader, but serial entrepreneur Scot Wingo was recently interviewed by Grace Ueng at a Harvard Business School alumni event—as we’d mentioned in a previous newsletter. Well, Grace wrote about the interview in this TechWire column that dives deep into Scot’s entrepreneurial philosophy. One nugget: using animals as company mascots/logos. She’ll be back with a Part II next week. Grace also shared the full interview on YouTube.
Winning Pitchers
On Sunday, TriVent held a pitch competition at UNC that the newish organization founded by two Tar Heel seniors—Ilyas Colie and Manas Takalpati—billed as the biggest student-run startup competition in the state. (We first wrote about the event in the March 30 newsletter.) The more than 100 pitches were cut to 10 finalists that were then asked to make a second presentation, with seven of them landing investment checks of between $15-$25K from the investment firm Fusen.
We’ve written about two of the winners before: LiRA and Dia, which was previously called e-Sentience. You can find all the winners and more information in TechWire.
Chatbot Cash
The requirement of all public companies to report their earnings and revenue every quarter and hold a call with investors, research analysts and the media is, we guess, about as fun for those companies as a trip to the periodontist. (“Fun” fact: I’ve spent more than $3K at the periodontist in the last two months; I really don’t want to talk about it any more.)
Wait, where was I? Oh, yeah, Bandwidth's David Morken said something interesting during the Raleigh company’s call on Tuesday. Namely, that Bandwidth is cheering on ChatGPT and AI in general. That’s because Bandwidth charges its customers based on usage of its, well, bandwidth for data and voice. If ChatGPT and AI replace back-office jobs in areas like call centers, that’s good news for Bandwidth because it would likely mean more computing power and data demands, not less. I hadn’t thought of it that way. See TBJ (it was Lauren Ohnesorge who took the ChatGPT angle) and TechWire for more on Bandwidth’s earnings report.
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
The Duke Christensen Center and Knox Street Studios are partnering to help host a Techstars Startup Weekend for Tech in Health and Wellness the weekend of June 2-4. The specific location in the Triangle will still be announced, but teams will generally arrive on Friday from 5-7 p.m. and work through the weekend, capped by a Sunday pitch competition. They’re actively seeking participants with a passion for improving health and wellness through tech, including wearables, as well as judges and sponsors. See here for more info and to register.
Real talk: doing our best to serve you costs money. Businesses and organizations that would like to support our efforts should see our sponsorship opportunities here.