We won’t be sending a full newsletter next Tuesday due to the July 4th holiday. Enjoy the break! Because we certainly will.
Revved Up
Last January, we wrote about Pendo Co-Founder Eric Boduch’s first post-Pendo initiative, launching the Raleigh-based startup venture studio 24 and Up. Now 24 and Up is spinning out its first startup, Revcast, armed with both a $3M seed round and Eric as its CEO. For now, anyway; Eric would like to find someone suitable to run Revcast so he can return his focus to 24 and Up.
Revcast is a B2B software startup that helps companies manage their revenue function, a vertical known as RevOps (revenue operations) that tries to look holistically at sales, marketing and customer success to drive revenue. The seed round was led by Palo Alto-based VC firm CRV with participation from multiple other VCs, including Triangle-based IDEA Fund Partners. Read our full story on Revcast here.
Career Charters
There are plenty of sites designed to help one find a new job, and that is also part of the mission of Morrisville-based startup Whomi. But Whomi’s main focus is helping people turn a job—present or future—into a career. Former IBM and Lenovo exec John Gordon launched Whomi last year to bring the type of career mentoring he long did on a one-on-one basis to a much wider audience. The startup was recently named the “Career Development Solution of the Year” by the 2023 EdTech Breakthrough Awards.
We’ve been talking for a few years—since late 2020, to be precise—about Epic Games’ plan to convert the former Cary Towne Center mall into a new HQ. The mall was demolished in 2022, but as a TBJ story from yesterday notes, Epic Games still hasn’t started building anything in earnest. The company had previously said it wanted to move into its new HQ in 2024, but has gone dark on those plans. One has to wonder if given the general de-emphasis on everyone-working-in-the-office since the pandemic, spending big on a sprawling campus might seem like much less of a priority.
Though I feel bad for mall walkers, who could have at least been using the empty aisles to get some steps in if the mall hadn’t been demolished to make room for (so far) nothing.
Fresh Funds
Chapel Hill-based healthtech Keona Health has raised nearly $4.7M, according to a recent SEC filing. Keona Health’s software is a CRM (customer relationship management) for healthcare services helping streamline patient processes including scheduling, triage, and knowledge and messaging resources. See TechWire for more info.
Fitful Progress
Cofounders Capital Founding Partner David Gardner focused his TechWire column yesterday on the Kauffman Foundation’s annual Trends in Entrepreneurship report. The report has some good news and bad news on the changing—or not—demographics of entrepreneurs over the past few decades.
Big picture: the percentage of new ventures started by minorities nearly doubled since 1996, from 22% to 42%. That’s good. But that growth was primarily due to Asian and Latino entrepreneurs, while the ratio of Black entrepreneurs barely budged. The percentage of women-led startups also failed to rise materially.
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.
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