In The Soup

If you're looking for advice for early-stage founders from North Carolina ecosystem leaders, don't fret! In The Soup will continue in your earbuds through The GrepBeat Podcast , where we will continue to share the latest and greatest stories, advice, and news for the tech startup communities—all from one place. The podcast includes several of our shows every week. Not sure what they are? Give it a...

Have you been too busy prepping for the holidays that you forgot to set some goals for the new year? Do you need even more resolutions to think about? In this special holiday edition episode of In The Soup 🍲, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures explore the different kinds of new year resolutions you can pick up whether in your professional or personal life. They'r...

In this final episode for the fall season of In The Soup 🍲, hosts Jenn Summe and Melissa Crosby are actually sitting down with a experienced ecosystem leader to talk about all things NC entrepreneurial ecosystem. They discuss how much the ecosystem has grown, what makes our ecosystem different and what is next for the ecosystem's future. For this live edition of In The Soup, they sat down with Ja...

Happy In The Soup 🍲 Wednesday! For their penultimate episode before the end of the fall season, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures discuss why startups should think about creating a talent pipeline with graduates from local universities. The Triangle is home to some of the nation's top research universities and high-performing technical community colleges. That's...

Another Wednesday, another episode of #InTheSoup 🍲! In today's episode, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial Ventures and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures are talking about what kind of and how to utilize product feedback as an early stage company. They especially ask the question of how does feedback change and evolve as your company changes and evolves. On to answer these questions are Jonathan Roll...

Happy Wednesday and welcome back to another episode of In The Soup 🍲 !  Life as a one-founder startup has its pros and cons, but at the end of the day, it's always going to be a little difficult running a company by yourself. That's why in today's episode, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures hear from founders who are running their companies solo.  They are joined...

It's Wednesday, Wednesday, gotta get down on In The Soup 🍲 Wednesday! In today's episode, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures are taking a deeper dive into one route your company might take: pivoting. What exactly defines a pivot? When and how would you know to take one? These are the questions they answer with the help of Brandon Kashani of Raleigh-based TRAKID a...

Happy #InTheSoup 🍲 Wednesday! Whether you are a very early-stage startup or a far off company, you are always having to discover what your customers need as they (and your business) evolve. That's why in today's episode, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures are joined by local customer discovery experts to break down customer discovery and what it consists of. They...

Happy #InTheSoup 🍲 Wednesday! Hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures are continuing this series on demystifying venture capital by talking about alternative funding models for your business. In today's episode, they'll be discussing equity crowdfunding as another option in case VCs aren't writing enough checks. Joining them are crowdfunding experts Will McGuire of In...

In today's episode of In The Soup 🍲 , hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures are continuing their mini-series on demystifying the world of venture capital. One of the reasons a VC might pass on a early stage startup is because they don't think it is a "venture scale" business. What does it really mean to be venture scale? Our hosts hear from Kevin Mosley of Jurassic...

Happy #InTheSoup 🍲 Wednesday! In today's episode, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures discuss the different factors that influence how and when a fund deploys capital. They are joined by local Triangle investors Jan Davis of RTP Angel Fund and Scot Wingo of the Triangle Tweener Fund.

Are you still hungry for the ingredients needed to build a successful startup? Well, good news! In The Soup Wednesdays are back to give you just that and much more! In this week's season opener episode, hosts Jenn Summe and Melissa Crosby of Primordial are stirring the pot on how to build your brand with early markets and adopters. Helping them cook are Lauren McCullough of Tromml and Susan Wall o...

In their final episode of the spring/post-winter season, In The Soup hosts J enn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures are wrapping up and getting ready for the summer! And what's summer good for? Doing nothing but read and listen to podcasts. And they want to help you do just that by speaking with local founders about their favorite or most recommended books and podcasts that...

In this special, penultimate episode of In The Soup, hosts Jenn Summe and Melissa Crosby are actually sitting down to speak with a very local VC (as in local to the GrepBeat office) to talk about how and when to start a VC fund for startups in their early stage. They also talk about favorite Christmas songs and who this investor's animated twin can be. For this live edition of In The Soup, they ar...

Happy In the Soup Wednesday! In this week's episode, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures are chatting with some artificial intelligence (AI) experts about when you should leverage open source AI versus building your own models. Plus: some discussion and advice on how to avoid chiggers. Their guests this week are two Primordial-invested founders who both have AI as...

Happy Wednesday aka In The Soup day! Hope you're ready to do some thinking because in this week's episode, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures are talking numbers. They are joined by local numbers experts (aka an investor and chief marketing officer) to talk about specific metrics that matter for growing your company, whether it's business or marketing metrics. Thi...

Ageism is an issue that every industry faces, but for young founders in the tech startup space, it can potentially make or break a company and its founders' worth. That's why in today's episode of In The Soup, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Ventures discuss with local, younger founders about experiences they've felt were manipulated or commandeered by their age. They a...

Happy Wednesday and happy In The Soup day! Since May 1st is "Law Day," hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby of Colopy Venture are discussing with local lawyers who's worked with startups to give you the best advice on what to look for when finding legal representation – which was a totally intentional move and they definitely did not find that out on the day of the episode. They're jo...

To wrap up Stress Awareness Month, hosts Jenn Summe and Melissa Crosby are back with another In The Soup episode to talk about how to manage your mental health as a founder. Being a founder holds many hats that come with many responsibilities that lead to many stresses. That's why they're joined by Doug Kaufman, the CEO and Founder of Belongly , a free, secure space for mental health professionals...

In recognition of April being Stress Awareness Month, In The Soup hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby are back with another episode to tackle founder burnout. They are joined by local entrepreneurs Tina Tang of Bristles and Dr. Sarah Glova of Reify Media to talk about ways founders can identify and deal with burnout within their personal and work lives.

Since April is Stress Awareness Month, In The Soup hosts Jenn Summe from Primordial and Melissa Crosby chat with founders about how they manage their stress while managing a company. For this week's episode, they discuss with Akash Ganapathi from Opine and Lucy Kosturko from Social Cascade about how they balance their companies with, arguably, the hardest thing in life: babies. Not that babies alw...

Happy In The Soup Day! Taking investment from VCs can be a tricky process, especially when you don't know what to look out for. That's why hosts Jenn Summe from Primordial and Melissa Crosby from Colopy Ventures are joined by experienced startup leaders to relay some lessons learned before and after working with VCs. This week's guests are Brian Reale of ProcessMaker and Susan Wall of Corevist . ...

We are back with another episode of In The Soup ! Since it's the last week of March, hosts Jenn Summe of Primordial and Melissa Crosby wanted this episode to go in tandem with Women's History Month. That's why they are joined by Cara Marin of Stashpad and Lauren McCullough of Tromml to talk about what it's like being a female founder in tech spaces and industries that are normally male dominated.

Conference season is revving up in the Triangle, with CED's Venture Connect starting next Wednesday. In The Soup will be taking a break to celebrate the summit, but don't worry! Hosts Jenn Summe and Melissa Crosby are taking this week to share advice on how to network effectively not only in general, but especially at conferences. In this last part of their special edition conference season tips s...

In today's episode, hosts Jenn Summe and Melissa Crosby are continuing their conference season theme by talking with investors on the importance of having an advisory board when raising pre-seed and seed rounds—something to keep in mind when making a pitch deck for potential investors.  They are joined by familiar local investors: Abby Phillips from Wolfpack Investor Network and Jason Caplain from...