We’re just one week away from the next GrepBeat Happy Hour—and this time we’re coming to Raleigh. Join us next Thursday, Oct. 14, from 5-7 p.m. (mostly outside) at the Lynnwood Brewing Concern at 1053 E Whitaker Mill Road. Your first round will be courtesy of the night’s sponsor, Fourscore Business Law. Register now!
We’re also only one day away from the next Friday Nooner. This week we’re not only welcoming a guest—Melissa Phillippi, the CEO of Performance Culture—but a guest co-host, Chantal Allam of WRAL TechWire and Hypepotamus. Yes, there will ultimately be four of us on the virtual couch. You can watch (and comment) live on LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube starting at noon, or afterward on those same platforms.
Exit Stories
Could it be possible that we’re already halfway through Season Two of our Exit Stories podcast, hosted by Kevin Mosley of Jurassic Capital? Short answer: yes. Episode 5 (of 10) features Silvia Aguirre, the co-founder of early Triangle fintech Tax Technology Services, which sold to Avalara in 2013. Silvia also did the Triangle a major solid by securing Avalara’s agreement to keep her team located here after the deal, which over time has led to Avalara’s 500-person-strong presence in Durham.
Read highlights of the episode here, then listen (and subscribe!) here. Thanks as always to our show sponsor, Vaco.
All Things Open
All Things Open, the East Coast’s largest conference on all things open-source, is returning in-person to the Raleigh Convention Center for a two-and-a-half-day event running from Oct. 17-19 (Sunday through Tuesday). There will be more than 250 speakers and oodles of live demos, highlighted by RIoT’s Demo Night on Monday from 5-8 p.m. Click here for our full preview of the event, including insight from featured speaker Peter Zaitsev, the CEO of Durham’s Percona and a former Download Q&A subject.
Going Global
Raleigh-based healthtech Feedtrail, which we first profiled back in 2019, has announced a major partnership that could help make the startup’s real-time patient feedback platform global. Well, at least 36 countries, for starters. That’s how many nations European medical diagnostics giant Synlab operates its 2,100 sites in. Feedtrail CEO Paul Jaglowski told Triangle Inno that the deal is “huge from a credibility standpoint.”
Cary’s Cofounders Capital is an investor in Feedtrail, and in a somewhat related story, Cofounders’ David Gardner penned a column for Triangle Inno in which he bemoaned the “slow sales cycles” in healthcare IT as ever-larger hospital systems take longer and longer to make decisions and implement new technology. Here’s a hunch that David’s take was influenced in part by Feedtrail’s experience, as the Synlab partnership talks started before the pandemic. As an inside-baseball aside, I suspect this means that David has taken his editorial musings from WRAL TechWire to Triangle Inno.
Lessons Learned
One thing I kinda missed while out gallivanting last Thursday-Sunday on my annual trip to a big-time college football game with my college buddies—we went to Notre Dame, thanks for asking—was news of the costly network attack suffered by Raleigh’s Bandwidth. Yesterday the company notified its shareholders that the DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack will cost it between $500K-$1.5M, as well as countless hours of sleep. TBJ followed up today with a story on what other companies can learn from what happened to Bandwidth.
One key takeaway is that while many companies have worked hard to beef up the security of their networks, the fact that so many more devices are connected—from your mobile phone to your fridge—to those networks means the chain has many, many more potential weak links.
Catchy Tunes
SongVest, a crowdfunding investment platform enabling unique participation in the music industry led by Raleigh-based CEO Sean Peace, has launched SongShares. (We profiled SongVest last May.) SongShares enables fans to own fractional shares of music royalties from hit songs of major recording artists for as little as $20. Shares are being offered for the royalties of songs from the likes of Travis Scott, Beyonce, 2 Chainz and Kanye West, Meek Mill, Cardi B, Migos and plenty of others I haven’t really heard of, which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not popular, because I’m kinda old. Though GrepBeat Social Media Manager Jackie can attest that, on multiple occasions, I have told office Alexa to play the Olivia Rodrigo channel. Olivia and I have a lot in common, especially the fact that we both have a driver’s license.
Taste Test
Cary-based beverage startup Tribucha has branched out from kombucha to a new, healthy-soda-like spin it calls SuperB. Tribucha co-founder Adrian Larrea, a former tech entrepreneur, tells Triangle Inno that SuperB has been in the works since April, 2020, and was recently rolled out to 300 Publix stores. It’s a carbonated, zero-carb, high-probiotic drink that’s trying to target the 44 percent of people (their stats) who dislike kombucha, which includes me. (Blech.) Getting shelf space in the beverage aisle—or any supermarket aisle for that matter—is notoriously difficult, but with an estimated $2M of revenue in 2021, Tribucha is off to a solid start. See the full Triangle Inno story for more.
Looking Up
This week, TechWire’s “future Raleigh unicorn” series spotlights AI startup Pryon and CEO Igor Jablokov. I feel like we've mentioned Igor and Pryon in multiple consecutive newsletters, so I’ll say no more here except: 1) they do seem like a solid guess if you’re trying to predict future unicorns; 2) here are links to TechWire’s main story and a Q&A with Igor.
Decidedly not part of its future unicorn series is this TechWire story with the headline: Tech ‘unicorns’ like Epic, Pendo, AvidXchange, aren’t as rare these days, report says. That’s right, unicorns, you’re not even all that special anymore so don’t be gettin’ all full of yourselves! (Maybe we should start calling billion-dollar startups “horses”? Just spitballing here.)
Ecommerce Tools
On Oct. 12, RTP-based ChannelAdvisor is launching the ChannelAdvisor Commerce Network to help brands and retailers identify new selling channels, amplify their brand presence and expand their global footprint. See TechWire for more info.
Build Great Software
Founded by serial entrepreneurs, Dualboot is a business and software 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 at least 10 years 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
Hey Jim Goodnight, those footsteps you hear behind you are probably Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney gaining on you as North Carolina’s richest person. But don’t worry, they’re both doing just fine according to Forbes’ latest rankings of the super-rich, as Jim’s net worth has swelled to an estimated $8.8B while Tim’s worth $7.5B. Those figures are a whopping $2.3B and $2.7B, respectively, more than Forbes’ last estimates just five months ago.
To see all the available jobs on our (beta) CronJobs page, click here. If you'd like to list a job, contact us at cronjobs@grepbeat.com and we'll do our best.
Guess where Pete is and (maybe) win a GrepBeat mug!
This week’s winner is Mike Wagner, who correctly identified my location as Liturgy Beverage Company in the Durham Food Hall. Let’s give Mike the floor: “After 13 years of trying to make the world a little better by launching and leading international NGOs in the US, the Philippines, and the Netherlands, I now aim to make the world (or at least a couple people’s lives) a little better through for-profit entrepreneurship and investing. As part of this pivot, I am now avidly reading GrepBeat and earning an MBA from Duke. Thank you to Pete and the GrepBeat team for your part in my move! Shout out to one of my favorite espresso bars in Durham—Liturgy!” Welcome to the Triangle, Mike! Glad we could play a small role in luring you.
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