Apologies if we seem a little sluggish today but we have a sugar hangover from all the cake and ice cream we indulged in yesterday to celebrate GrepBeat’s fifth birthday. Thanks to you, our loyal readers, for making the GrepBeat community what it is! We look forward to many more years of telling the stories of the Triangle tech community, especially its startups.
No Names
A good company culture is more important than ever for employers in an increasingly competitive job market. But to maintain one, execs need to know about issues before they fester—and employees need to feel encouraged and comfortable sharing their concerns. That’s where Suggestion Ox comes in. The startup enables employees to give feedback anonymously to help leaders have candid conversations with their team members.
Co-Founders Andrew Berkowitz (CEO) and Wade Minter (CTO) are both veterans of Boulder, Colorado-based TeamSnap, a platform that manages youth sports teams and had a successful exit. You may well also know Wade from his main “day job” as a Raleigh-based product director at dev shop (and GrepBeat newsletter sponsor) Dualboot Partners, as the PA announcer for the Carolina Hurricanes, or as a 2018 GrepBeat Q&A subject.
Universities and colleges spend a lot more time and money than you might think getting and maintaining accreditation. With an early focus on the health science field such as dental schools, XComP Analytics’s SaaS platform helps institutions streamline the process to save time and money while also improving the educational experience. The startup is a spinout from East Carolina University and is led by Raleigh-based CEO Alex Bloom, a Triangle tech vet with a long track record including a stint as COO at Appia.
Durham-based organizational success platform Peoplelogic has acquired Plai, a people and performance management platform founded by Ukrainian entrepreneurs with a team working in Ukraine. Peoplelogic will integrate Plai into its platform and is currently offering 30% off the Plai monthly fee. We first wrote about Peoplelogic in March, 2020, and then again when it raised $1.9M in March 2022; and Peoplelogic CEO and Founder Matt Schmidt has been an Exit Stories guest for his prior experience as the co-founder of DZone/Devada.
See Peoplelogic’s post on the deal here, and a story from Central/Eastern European tech publication AIN.Capital here.
New Fund
Durham could soon see a new venture debt fund that will provide another potential funding source for startups in the Triangle and beyond. Longtime Triangle venture bankers Dhruv Patel and Zack Mansfield are launching the fund, reports Triangle Inno. Both Dhruv and Zack are veterans of Signature Bank’s Triangle-based venture banking group—before Signature Bank was taken over by federal regulators five months back to save it from a bank run—and before that at Durham’s Square1. Dhruv is also known for working at CED, while Zack (of course) is a former winner of Where’s Pete?
New Digs
We’ve mentioned several times over the last few years that Bandwidth has been building a sprawling new corporate campus in Raleigh that includes sports fields, walking paths, an open-air amphitheater and a Montessori-inspired day care center. Well, it officially opened to the public on Friday and “Bandmates” will be shifting fulltime to the location in the next few weeks.
Bandwidth is well-known for its commitment to an in-person work culture that it has leaned into even harder since the pandemic. CEO David Morken explains why he believes this approach is the best one for Bandwidth in this Q&A with WRAL TechWire.
New Name
Red Hat has named longtime IBM vet Andrew Brown as its new Chief Revenue Officer. IBM, of course, acquired Red Hat in 2019 for $34B. See TechWire and TBJ for more.
STEM Grant
NC State’s Juntos program has received a $7.8M grant to improve STEM participation, persistence and career readiness among Hispanic and Latino youth in the states of North Carolina and Washington. (“Juntos” means “together” in Spanish, we are told.) The grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). See TechWire for more.
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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