The Friday Nooner

This week’s  Friday Nooner —sponsored by  Whitley Recruiting —provided a look into the near future, at least once the GrepBeat Godfather finished talking about his chickens. (A new chick was allegedly eaten by a hawk.) Joe and Pete welcomed guest Archie O’Connor, the Co-Founder (with Chris Heivly) of  Raleigh-Durham Startup Week . RDSW returns for Year Three next week as a four-day, all-free event...

Welcome to the Good Friday edition of the  Friday Nooner —though in truth, any Friday with a new  Nooner  episode is a good one. This week, Primordial’s Jenn Summe sat in Joe’s chair (literally) because the GrepBeat Godfather is on a Spring Break trip with his kids to the nation’s capital. Our guest was Susan Mahlburg, the Founder and CEO of Durham-based DiffyQ, an edtech platform that helps teach...

With this past week’s Venture Connect 2024 now in the books, it’s no surprise that we discussed it plenty on this episode of  The Friday Nooner  sponsored by  Whitley Recruiting . That included with our guest Ivan Barajas Vargas, the CEO and Co-Founder of Raleigh-based MuukTest, which automates software testing for B2B customers; we first  profiled  them in August, 2019. Vargas was one of 120-some...

In a  Friday Nooner  first, this week’s episode featured a live concert. Sort of. MyMatR Founder and CEO John Starke (briefly) played the bagpipes, which he does as part of two groups. This is their busiest season with St. Patrick’s Day celebrations and then various Highland Games. John also talked plenty about MyMatR, of course. The Raleigh-based startup (we first  profiled them  in June 2021) is...

Warning: Alexa owners might want to be careful watching this week’s episode, especially around 13-15 minutes into the show, when GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy may or may not instruct your Alexa device to play a  specific song . Fortunately, guest Nate Branscomb popped in shortly after that to get this episode of  The Friday Nooner —sponsored by  Whitley Recruiting —back on track. Nate is the Co-Fo...

Pete and Joe welcomed guest Lee Whitley, the Founder of Raleigh-based  Whitley Recruiting . Not coincidentally, Whitley Recruiting is the sponsor for the next 10  Friday Nooner  episodes. Lee talked about how he first got into recruiting, then out of it, then back into it for good, as well as how his firm specializes in recruiting sales professionals for SaaS and technology companies in the Triang...

After talking Nvidia’s rocket-ship rise, Techstars changes and the newly redesigned Toyota Prius that the GrepBeat Godfather drove to the office today, Joe and Pete welcomed this week’s guest. She is Andrea Inokon, the COO of Raleigh-based startup  Cadence Cash . The fintech helps small businesses—especially those owned by minorities and women—access capital quickly. The startup was founded by And...

The GrepBeat Godfather is out of town so Pete is joined by guest co-host Melissa Crosby! On this week's episode, they spoke with Matt Schmidt, the Founder and CEO of Durham-based  Peoplelogic . Typically selling into the HR departments of organizations with between 100-1,000 employees, the startup bills itself as the AI for more effective scaling. Matt was also a Co-Founder of Triangle-based DZone...

This week’s episode had something for everyone. For viewers who tune in for the greatest hits, the GrepBeat Godfather brought up his Vespa unsolicited less than 10 seconds into the show. For those who like something new and different each week, guest Dezbee McDaniel more than fits the bill. He’s the Co-Founder and CEO of RTP-based CliniSpan Health, a 2022 GrepBeat Startups To Watch selection that...

Pete and Joe today welcome guest Scott Babweh Brennen, the Head of Online Expression at the UNC-based  Center on Technology Policy . It was an especially fitting time to discuss potential regulations in the tech world as four tech CEOs—including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg—were  raked over the coals  at a Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday. Before coming back to work at his alma mater, Brennen previousl...

On this week's Friday Nooner episode, the (post-Jackie) GrepBeat crew chatted with Doug Neumann, the Co-Founder and CEO of Arpio , a fully automated disaster recovery solution for workloads that run in AWS. The Durham-based startup was named to our 2023 GrepBeat Startups to Watch list . Before founding Arpio, Neumann previously worked for Cary-based Bandwidth and Microsoft. You can watch the full...

This week, the GrepBeat crew chatted with  Neal K. Shah , the founder and CEO of  CareYaya . CareYaya is a health tech and homecare company that connects pre-health university students with families for on-demand care. This show is also, sadly, Jackie (Sizing) from GrepBeat's last, as she ventures on to the next part of her career. The GrepBeat crew misses her already.

This week, the GrepBeat crew chatted with Jeff Soplop, the CEO of Nimble Energy, on the Friday Nooner. Located in Pittsboro, Nimble Energy helps building managers lower utility bills, reduce operating costs, and improve occupant comfort and productivity with real-time data. Previously, Soplop worked at Brightly Software and Recurve. You watch the episode live on Facebook, Youtube and LinkedIn.

The  Friday Nooner  gang returned for 2024 with guest Ben Wingrove, who is the Founder and CEO of Raleigh-based  SchedulePop , a scheduling software platform that was named to our  2023 GrepBeat Startups To Watch list . Designed originally for scheduling staffs at music venues and restaurants, just before the pandemic the startup found a niche with senior care facilities that it has leaned into fu...

The  Friday Nooner  closed out its 2023 programming today with a holiday special. It included the world premieres of the soon-to-be-classic song  Grep The Halls ; and the new GrepBeat holiday mockumentary  The Making Of: A GrepMas Carol . This is definitely a show to watch visually!! The GrepBeat team put a lot of work into these and really hope you enjoy watching them as much as we enjoyed making...

This week’s  Friday Nooner  might as well have been an episode of  Car Talk,  covering everything from classic British cars of the 1950s to Toyota minivans from the 2010s. That’s because our guest was Lauren McCullough, the CEO and Co-Founder of Chapel Hill-based Tromml, an ecommerce analytics startup geared to drop-shippers of aftermarket auto parts. (We first  profiled  Tromml last December.) We...

Are you smarter than an AI designed for a first-grader? That was (sort of) the question that today’s episode set out to answer. GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy has souped up a program for our internal admin site that uses ChatGPT to summarize GrepBeat stories in a few bullet points that are set at a first-grade level of reading comprehension. The results can be pretty cute. We then tried it live wit...

Joe may be back down to one Vespa after selling his yellow scooter this week, but  The Friday Nooner must go on. Fortunately the gang was joined by a great guest: Bernard Worthy, the CEO and Co-Founder of Durham-based fintech  LoanWell , a  2022 GrepBeat Startups To Watch  selection. Bernard discussed how LoanWell—which bills itself as the “Squarespace for lenders”—pivoted from its B2C roots to it...

This week's Friday Nooner featured Eric Boduch, the founder of 24&Up, CEO of Revcast and the co-founder of local unicorn Pendo. Tune in to learn more about Eric's career, latest ventures, etc.

Today, Made Trade CEO Cayley Pater joined the GrepBeat crew on the Friday Nooner. Eighteen years ago, Pater and Andy Ives met at a Fair Trade Club meeting at UNC-Chapel Hill. Much has happened to them since then including getting married and, over the past five years, turning their goal of creating ethically sourced goods into their own startup called Made Trade.

Austin Armstrong has built three million followers on social media who looked to his videos for tips on SEO and other ways to get their name and message out to the world more effectively. Less than a year ago, he turned that expertise into a startup, Durham-based  Syllaby , an AI-aided platform to create video marketing content. That all makes Austin an ideal guest for this week’s episode of the ...

Today, we chatted with John Gordon, the founder and CEO of Whomi, a local career development platform. John has been helping people shape their future for many years, working with esteemed companies such as Lenovo, Bose, GE and IBM to develop new strategies and open up new doors for their businesses.

Where’s Pete? Nope, not at some random coffee shop in the Triangle. He has been sailing around the Caribbean with his family this past week. Joe and Jackie had to hold down the fort today on The Friday Nooner (sponsored by  Big Pixel ). They were joined by Keith Daniel, the co-founder and managing director at  Resilient Ventures . It’s an early-stage capital fund that invests in African American f...

A Facebook message that Tai Huynh sent to fellow UNC students while a first-year—seeking others interested in working on a project to use tech to help local governments—ultimately blossomed into Durham-based startup Acta Solutions, which we named to GrepBeat’s  2022 Startups To Watch list. That was one big takeaway from this week’s  Friday Nooner , sponsored by Triangle dev shop  Big Pixel and hos...

Attention spans can certainly be addled by Friday afternoon, so it was fitting that today’s  Friday Nooner  (sponsored by  Big Pixel ) welcomed guest Belden Long. She is the Co-Founder of justb, a movement and mindfulness platform designed for teachers to help elementary school-age students manage their energy and attention levels. [We first  profiled  justb in May.] We were also reminded today th...