We want to thank everyone who came to last Thursday’s Grep-a-palooza 2! We especially want to thank our sponsors—Robinson Bradshaw, NC IDEA, Wyrick Robbins, Bank of America, ExtensisHR, NC State and the City of Raleigh—and the 29 speakers and panelists. If you missed it or want to re-live some of the highlights, here’s a recap from TechWire. We’ll be back next June for Grep-a-palooza 3!
The latest Friday Nooneralso served as something of a Grep-a-palooza recap, as guest Scot Wingo was just 24 hours removed from leading a growth-stage panel before returning to (one of) his day jobs as Spiffy CEO.
Winding Path
Soap opera actor-turned-tech entrepreneur isn’t a path we see every day, but that is indeed the route taken by Triangle native Cooper Harris. The University of North Carolina School of the Arts grad launched ecommerce startup Klickly in 2018 and the California-based, venture-backed company has now opened an East Coast HQ just outside Durham. Read our full story on Cooper and her return (in part) to her North Carolina roots here.
It’s also the first story by our summer intern, Lauren Zola. Item No. 2 is her second, and many more will be coming by the time the summer is out.
Flood Prep
Today’s breaking news that a major dam in southern Ukraine has collapsed—with early evidence pointing toward an explosion—is a timely and dramatic reminder of the damage that flooding can do. Most flooding, of course, is the result of natural causes, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating for those caught in its path.
Corey White has founded Durham-based startup OpenPlains to provide municipalities and individuals with a geospatial modeling platform to help predict potential flooding effects so that proactive steps can be taken. OpenPlains is participating in the current cohort of the RIoT Accelerator Program (RAP). See our full story here.
In The Stars
Here’s another GrepBeat first: an item on an astrology startup (astroltech?). Triangle Inno has a feature on Chapel Hill-HQ’d Ephemeris, which is led by Daniela Vianna, a Brazilian native by way of Australia and California. Ephemeris started by selling birth chart talismans—jewelry, essentially—and posters, and is now using the $1.5M in revenue that generated to develop an AI-powered app called Sol that will offer users an on-call astrologist.
Teaming Up
We’re not entirely clear whether it’s a consultancy (which we generally don’t cover) or a tech platform (which we do) or something in between, Raleigh-based Amalgamation certainly has a worthy mission: helping minority-owned businesses secure government contracts. Today’s Triangle Inno features Amalgamation and its founder Kristin Williams, a former sociology professor at NC State. The idea is to connect minority-owned businesses into collectives that can pitch for contracts as a combined unit, thus being better able to compete against larger players.
Robot Builders
Durham-based BotBuilt also gets the Triangle Inno treatment for the startup’s use of robotic arms to build houses more efficiently. We first profiled BotBuilt last December and also welcomed CEO Brent Wadas as a Friday Nooner guest in January.
Heap O' Trouble
Raleigh-based tech consulting firm Brooks Bell Interactive—founded by, you guessed it, prominent Triangle entrepreneur Brooks Bell—is suing San Francisco-based Heap, a near-unicorn that has raised more than $218M. The suit is over the use of the brand name “Illuminate” for a software product.
Brooks Bell has owned the trademark rights for the use of the name in connection with website optimization software and analytic services since 2018, the lawsuit alleges, and Heap knows that because the two companies had a business relationship dating back to 2017. See Triangle Inno for all the details.
Band-ing Together
At a CiscoLive! Event in Las Vegas, the tech giant with a sizable presence in RTP announced a partnership with Raleigh-based Bandwidth to expand connectivity in the cloud. As part of the deal, Cisco Webex calling will use Bandwidth’s “Maestro” platform and the broader Bandwidth network. See TechWire for more.
Sport-y Deal
GrepBeat sister company Jurassic Capital has made its fifth investment, leading a Series A into Reston, Virginia-based Zoomph. The B2B software startup is focused on sports marketing intelligence, helping companies measure the value of brand sponsorships and enrich their understanding of and engagement with their audiences. See the Jurassic site for more info.
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
Grep-a-palooza sponsor the City of Raleigh will launch its new Small Business Insights Tool in a free webinar next Tuesday, June 13, at 10:30 a.m. The tool will allow local small businesses to access powerful market research insights through Big Data analytics. Sign up for the webinar here and see more info in TechWire here.
One dirty little secret about the late, great "Where's Pete?" contest is that we were better at picking and announcing winners than we were at actually getting the actual mugs to said winners. (Do you have any idea how expensive it is to ship a single mug? Hint: higher.) But we're happy to say that Brian Reale, the Co-Founder and CEO of Durham-based Processmaker, was able to score his mug at Grep-a-palooza, where he spoke on a panel.
Looking good, Brian! And a mere 18 months after he won for recognizing that I was at the Oak House in downtown Durham.
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.
