Triangle Tweener Talks

Nick Genty, co-founder and CEO of AgEye Technologies, joins me to talk about building robotics and AI software for indoor farms right here in North Carolina. The conversation traces Nick's path from state government IT work to an early Triangle startup acquired by SAS, into a mobile development agency serving national retailers, and eventually to a regulated medical device project that revealed the science behind AgEye: using environmental variables like light to influence plant biology.They cover how AgEye found its first customers in a channel with almost no LinkedIn presence, why the company nearly built its business around cannabis before a licensing crash forced a pivot to leafy greens and produce, and how a deliberately low-tech approach to robotics helped growers hit a realistic return on investment. Nick also walks through AgEye's data and hardware moat, the shift toward agentic AI models, and the corporate venture investors, including a Dutch agricultural giant and a German filtration company, who backed the company when traditional RTP investors weren't ready for a physical-world business.Nick is a natural storyteller with a knack for turning technical detail into something anyone can follow, and this episode is packed with concrete numbers on funding, robotics costs, and go-to-market strategy for anyone building at the intersection of hardware and software.Timestamps00:00 Cold open & welcome00:24 Sponsor thank-yous03:15 Scot's intro & series preview03:27 Guest introduction: Nick Genty, AgEye04:06 Nick's background: Raleigh, ECU04:59 Meeting his co-founder at the NC court system06:27 Joining rPath & the Triangle's founder "mafias"08:10 Founding Iconic Solutions11:36 The hardware-software link & the genesis of AgEye13:37 Edge AI arrives: NVIDIA Jetson & the Inception program16:03 How Scot discovered AgEye (the lunch story)20:02 Finding first customers on Reddit20:41 The cannabis pivot to leafy greens23:56 Why indoor farms exist even where crops "should" grow27:56 Competitive moats: hardware + proprietary data31:53 The "leaf model" & licensing the AI34:34 How the robotic grow towers work38:03 ARIS: the imaging robot & 3D plant modeling42:15 The fundraising grind: $5M raised & corporate VCs45:51 Company update: distributors & the Middle East push48:09 Where to find AgEye & closingWhere to Find Nick Genty:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasgenty/AgEye: https://ageyetech.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Today, on Episode 8 of Redacted, we use this episode to show exactly what running a company with AI looks like day-to-day. Taylor walks through the agent system now handling Offline's lead generation and CRM cleanup, including a daily process that scans market signals, reconciles HubSpot data, and writes sales outreach briefs automatically. David then demos a redesigned mobile app and email system, and shares a candid breakdown of how many hours a recent landing page redesign actually took with AI assistance compared to how long the same project would have taken the old way.What sets this episode apart is the honesty about the mechanics: a story about an AI-generated email that silently failed for 10,000 recipients, a framework for treating AI agents like new hires who need onboarding and supervision rather than a one-time prompt, and real numbers on where the time actually goes when AI is doing the heavy lifting. It's a useful listen for anyone trying to figure out whether AI is actually saving them time or just moving the work around.Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open00:22 Welcome to Redacted, episode 801:30 What Taylor's been building03:39 Two things to show: internal ops + a product feature03:51 What an "outreach brief" is06:20 The automated dashboard demo06:58 The daily sweep ritual08:32 Catching drift between the backend and HubSpot12:33 Closing the loop with Steve's feedback16:14 The jungle-and-bulldozer metaphor19:18 Structured data over meetings20:14 Demo: a real outreach brief (Max Speed Shop)22:23 "Iterative loop" and moving into the manager seat23:02 Segment two: the Offline mobile app26:00 Turning the design system into a reusable skill31:03 HubSpot pain vs. mobile app gratification32:01 The B2B landing page blog post33:03 Breaking down 64.39 hours36:11 Old world vs. new world time cost37:37 Compounding as the X factor37:44 The offline accountability / biz dev chart39:32 This morning's market signals42:00 The "hiring" framing, wrap-up42:07 Upcoming guests: Josh and Parker42:29 Where to find Offline and the hostsShow notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcastWhere to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/--- This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Andrew Ashur, co-founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, joins Scot Wingo for the third episode in our series on North Carolina startups solving hard physical-world problems. Lucid Bots builds drones and robots that clean, paint, and coat buildings, and Andrew walks through how the company got here, starting from a duct-taped DJI drone he built as a Davidson College student after watching window washers struggle against high winds.The conversation covers the mechanical and business realities of building hardware: the physics of flying a drone tethered to a hundred feet of hose, the economics of a robots-as-a-service subscription model, and why hardware companies are finding it easier to raise venture capital today than they did a decade ago. Along the way, Andrew shares lessons on hiring people who thrive on uncertainty, developing the storytelling skills that founders need to raise money and win customers, and what he learned from roughly a thousand fundraising pitches on the way to a Series B round.Andrew is a first-time founder who graduated from Davidson a year early to run Lucid Bots full time, and the company has since raised more than $30 million, deployed over 600 units across 44 states and five countries, and grown to a team of 75. He shares where he sees the business heading over the next five years, and the much bigger bet he's making beyond that.Timestamps: 00:00 Welcome & sponsor thank-yous01:31 Scot's intro: NC's physical-world startup series02:06 Meet Andrew Ashur & Lucid Bots04:38 How Andrew and Scot know each other04:59 Origin story: the window washer moment06:03 Why building maintenance is a massive market06:42 The duct-taped DJI prototype07:14 Winning $25K and graduating early07:56 A broken drone, Christmas, and a book on Arduino10:05 Why hardware iteration builds a moat11:44 Inside the Sherpa drone13:05 The physics of a 100-foot hose17:05 Building an in-house power tether18:24 Scale check: 600 units, 75 people, 44 states19:00 The ROI: 2x to 8x faster than a boom lift20:03 Pricing: buy it or subscribe to Lucid Refresh23:01 Pausing the ground robot, adding paint & coatings25:39 Scaling facilities from 23K to 45K square feet32:43 Fundraising for a hardware company vs. software36:39 Hiring for agency over intelligence40:47 1,000 pitches and the road to Series B45:03 The next 5 years: giving AI a physical body-----Where to Find Andrew Ashur:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewashur/Lucid Bots: https://www.lucidbots.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Huade Tan, co-founder and CTO of Plantd, joins me to explain how two former SpaceX engineers ended up building carbon-capturing structural panels out of a North Carolina tobacco field. The conversation covers how Plantd chose its plant feedstock, why the team deliberately passed on the carbon-credit market in favor of a real product business, and what five years of hardware iteration looks like when you're building an industrial press that hasn't been attempted by a US company since the 1960s or '70s. Huade walks through the full process, from cloning a sterile perennial grass to harvesting it with a modified tobacco harvester to pressing it into finished building panels, and shares the numbers behind the business: $40 to $45 million raised from seed through Series B, and a 2024 deal with national homebuilder D.R. Horton to supply 10 million panels for roughly 90,000 homes. What sets this episode apart is how directly Huade connects his engineering background at SpaceX to the problems he's solving now, including a five-step framework for building hardware that the team is still applying today. It's a grounded, technical look at what it takes to build a genuine hardware moat in an industry that hasn't seen real innovation in decades Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open 00:23 Thank you to our sponsors: NC Idea, Ballentine, Bank of America01:31 Welcome to the episode: introducing Huade Tan and Plantd01:57 The pitch: two SpaceX engineers, carbon capture, and plywood-like panels03:34 Huade joins the show04:01 Huade's background: building life support systems for Crew Dragon at SpaceX05:27 Education path and Nathan's aerospace background06:39 Why North Carolina: population growth trends since 201807:34 From Crew Dragon's "bubble" to the idea for Plantd10:14 The founding question: what do you build from captured carbon?12:23 Why Plantd passed on the carbon credit market14:14 What didn't work early on16:03 The market gap: moisture damage in existing building materials17:15 Simplifying it: how a plant becomes a structural panel19:00 Finding the right fiber: hemp, wheat straw, bagasse, and more21:15 The perennial grass: sterile, cloned, and drought-resistant24:01 400–500 acres established in North Carolina tobacco fields27:22 Harvesting and the strander: turning stalks into fiber29:48 Inside the press: resin, heat, and pressure30:37 Press specs: 15 feet wide, 70 feet long, a quarter-million panels a year37:09 The 5-step SpaceX engineering framework39:43 Funding: $40–45 million raised, seed through Series B41:21 The D.R. Horton partnership and what it taught them45:04 The 2024 deal: 10 million panels, 90,000 homes, 165,000 tons of CO246:04 From hand-made coffee coasters to a real house in Durham51:36 Why North Carolina: cost, talent, and agricultural infrastructure53:36 What's next: furniture, biochar, and other verticals55:00 Where to find Plantd55:20 Closing and credits-----Where to Find Huade Tan:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huadetan/Plantd: https://plantdmaterials.comWhere to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Ben Pope, who leads the new AI Solutions business unit at Levitate, joins Redacted as its very first guest. Ben spent five years on Levitate's marketing team as the company grew from six million to roughly fifty million in annual recurring revenue, before shifting a month ago to help small businesses fold AI into their own workflows. This episode is mostly show and tell: Ben screen-shares a lead-scoring web app he built entirely on his own, despite having no formal engineering background, along with the morning briefing and post-meeting automation skills he uses every day to prep for calls and follow up with clients.Along the way, the conversation turns into a practical breakdown of how to actually build with AI tools in a real business. Ben talks through why he prefers lightweight Claude skills over traditional workflow automation platforms, how he decides when a process needs to be deterministic versus handed to an LLM, and how he manages the sprawl of having built around a hundred skills over the past year, many of which he's since retired.What makes Ben's story distinctive is the contrast between his background and his output: a marketer who taught himself to ship production web apps, and whose client consulting work is now feeding directly back into Levitate's core product roadmap.Timestamps00:00 Cold open, welcome to Redacted 00:34 What Redacted is about 01:33 Meet Ben Pope and Levitate's pitch 02:28 Ben's five years at Levitate, from $6M to $50M ARR 03:06 Founding story: Jess, his wife Brooks Bell, and word-of-mouth software 03:58 Ben's new role: launching the AI Solutions business unit 04:40 Levitate by the numbers: 9,000 customers, 300 employees 05:06 Why Ben wanted this role (the GWC test) 08:24 Demo starts: the lead-scoring web app 09:35 Walking through a live example (Union Special bakery) 11:36 Turning a business search into an enriched lead 12:16 What Ben used to build it: Claude, Codex, pre-November 2025 tools 14:20 Hardest parts of building solo, trial and error 17:21 How the scoring tool works under the hood 18:37 Killing Webflow, migrating to a Claude-editable GitHub site 21:03 Claude Club and internal hackathons at Levitate 21:45 Example client: an LA family-law attorney's intake workflow 22:50 Product-market fit and figuring out the sales process 25:29 Building Claude skills to interview clients automatically 26:35 Ben's morning briefing skill, demoed live 29:07 Manual runs vs. cron, why Ben hasn't automated it yet 33:05 Skill bloat: ~100 skills built, many abandoned 35:57 Deterministic vs. probabilistic, when not to trust the LLM 37:24 AI Solutions as Levitate's forward-deployed engineering arm 39:17 Where to find Ben 40:08 Shoutout: Simon Willison's agentic engineering resource 42:04 Show notes, sanitized skills repo, and wrap-upFind Redacted wherever you listen to podcasts, or on YouTube for the full screen share.Show notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcastWhere to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/Where to Find Ben: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmpope/Levitate: https://www.levitate.ai/--- This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Tad Schwendler, COO of Natrx, joins Scot Wingo to talk about manufacturing concrete structures that work with nature instead of against it. Natrx, a North Carolina company and Tweener Fund portfolio company, has developed a patented dry-forming process that injects moisture into dry material to create rough, complex structures capable of slowing water, encouraging natural sediment buildup, and even supporting live coral growth. Tad walks through the company's founding story, which traces back to coastal engineers doing oyster reef restoration at LSU and a chance meeting with NC State-connected software co-founders, and shares how his own background in corporate development and M&A led him into a hands-on operating role at a manufacturing startup. The conversation covers the physical scale of what Natrx builds, from three-foot units weighing just under a ton to twelve-thousand-pound structures bound for a coral restoration project in Hawaii, along with the company's growth: more than 85 physical deployments, over 100,000 units placed, and roughly 80 percent revenue growth year over year. It's a hands-on, visual episode and the first in a new series on North Carolina's under-the-radar physical manufacturing companies.Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open and sponsor thanks01:30 Welcome and series intro: NC's under-known manufacturing companies03:12 Introducing Tad Schwindler, COO of Natrx04:00 Formal welcome to the show04:42 Tad's background: Atlanta, Duke, the Triangle05:56 What does a COO actually do at Natrx?07:58 Duke, Tulane, and a lifelong pull toward marine science09:31 The founding story of Natrx09:43 Two coastal engineers, oyster reefs, and LSU11:13 Founded in 2018, commercializing by 202111:33 Nick's background: mechanical engineering meets software12:52 What Natrx actually builds13:13 Stopping water vs. working with it15:44 Families of shapes: lattice, wave slope, and scaling up19:02 How big are these things, and how deep do they go21:12 What is "dry forming"?22:07 The voxel: injecting moisture into dry material22:55 The patent and the 10,000 sq ft Louisiana facility23:37 Walking through the manufacturing process26:01 How much does a unit weigh?26:44 Shipping, barges, and why manufacturing stays centralized29:13 Every unit is a little different: the voxel "snowflake" effect30:02 How long do these structures last?31:03 Growing live coral on the structures32:30 How units get deployed in the water33:56 Who's the customer?35:50 Company scale: deployments, team size, revenue growth37:14 What's next for Natrx, including a Series A40:16 Why North Carolina is built for companies like this41:40 Where to learn more: natrx.io42:15 Credits and close-----Where to Find Tad SchwendlerLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tadschwendler/Natrx: https://natrx.io/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

David Shaner and Taylor Cotner spend this episode of Redacted screen-sharing everything they've built since the last one, and it centers on a framework David calls the AI-ification engine, an eight-stage method for turning any proven business process into something an AI agent can reliably run. He walks through the full pipeline, from process mapping through ongoing evaluation, and demos a new ClickUp documentation format the team built to keep every automation legible to both people and models.Taylor takes the second half to show how he rebuilt Offline's business development system from the ground up, using a single extended Claude conversation to reconstruct years of relationship history from his email and texts, then turning it into a repeatable five-phase playbook that can research a brand-new target company from a cold start.The conversation covers the practical side of running AI in production, too, why they dropped a synced database in favor of calling the HubSpot API directly with whitelisted fields, and an honest, unresolved discussion of how to evaluate dozens of different AI-run processes once they're all live.Timestamps 00:00 Cold open 00:41 Welcome back to Redacted01:53 Taylor's back from two weeks in Europe02:15 The new "AI-ification engine" board in ClickUp03:05 Offline's marketplace of auto-updating Claude skills06:50 Origin story of the AI-ification engine08:25 The 8 stages, back to back11:30 The hiring analogy: "This is like HR for AI"14:40 Inside the "house format" ClickUp table16:00 Ditching the proxy database for direct HubSpot calls18:05 Old-school SOPs vs. the new house format20:10 Walking the company-as-lead process step by step24:10 Why the old nested-SOP approach never got followed29:30 Handoff: Taylor's turn29:55 Offline's accountability chart and the visionary/integrator split32:05 Digging up the original Claude chat that started it all34:05 The first draft was terrible 36:50 Timeline artifact and Claude for Chrome doing the research37:50 The five-phase business development playbook40:00 Slotting the BD system into the AI-ification board45:35 The hardest open question: evaluating 50 agent processes47:00 Show notes, GitHub repo, and where to find David and Taylor47:50 What Redacted looks for in a guestShow notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcastWhere to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/--- This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

 Ryan Eade, Chief Product and Technology Officer at PtEverywhere, gave this talk at the June 10th TweenerClaw meetup, and it covers something most practitioners skip: how to actually keep your OpenClaw instance secure. Ryan walks through the three main ways OpenClaw instances get compromised: an open port that older versions left fully exposed, third-party skills that can carry malicious code (36% of early store listings had prompt injection), and prompt injection delivered through external content like X posts or README files. He also covers the upgrade windows that matter most; the March 12th and April 5th releases each contained critical security patches, and what to do right now: curl port 18789 on your OpenClaw and see if you get a response back. The practical framework Ryan closes with is worth listening to by itself. He calls it "staff not software" with the idea that every access decision for your OpenClaw should mirror how you'd onboard a new employee: scoped API keys with minimum permissions, a purpose-built email account, one-time credit cards for purchasing tasks, and human approval gates before any destructive action runs. If you've been meaning to lock down your setup but kept putting it off, Ryan gives you everything you need to do it in under 20 minutes.Timestamps00:00 Intro bumper 00:16 Sponsor recognition 01:22 Scot's intro 01:56 Introducing Ryan Eade02:05 Ryan's topic: cybersecurity for OpenClaw02:50 Ryan Eade 03:28 "Nobody starts with security" 04:10 Why OpenClaw isn't just a chatbot 05:26 The threat landscape 06:09 Early OpenClaw exposure stats06:40 Threat 1: The open port 07:28 Docker's dirty secret: it bypasses your local firewall08:07 Fix: bind to localhost and use Tailscale09:19 What Tailscale is and why it works09:26 Threat 2: Third-party skills 10:18 How to vet skills: pull the GitHub and read the code10:58 Threat 3: Prompt injection from the web11:39 How prompt injection poisons an OpenClaw session11:47 Real examples 12:51 The full attack chain: README → backdoor → breach13:52 System prompts vs. session instructions 14:17 The upgrade reality 15:37 Critical release windows: January, March 12, April 516:21 "Staff, not software"16:44 One-time credit cards for purchasing tasks17:19 Keep your personal email separate17:57 Least-privilege API keys 19:10 Build in approval gates 19:52 Summary: vet skills, keep it on a leash, have a no-no plan20:16 The port 18789 check 20:32 Closing remarks-----Where to Find Ryan EadeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryaneade/PtEverywhere: https://www.pteverywhere.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In this episode of Tweener Claw, Robbie Allen, the Founder and Managing Director of Automated Consulting Group and General Partner at NC Tweener Fund, shares a live talk from the June 10th Tweener Club meetup in Research Triangle Park.Robbie has spent the last year and a half deploying AI agents inside real mid-market companies, and he brings three lessons from just the last 60 days: how to build reusable AI skills that compound over time, how to monitor agents when 3 to 5 of your 25-plus will fail on any given day, and why using multiple LLMs to check each other's work has become a standard part of his workflow. Each lesson comes with a real-world example: a three-skill meeting pipeline, a monitor agent that watches the others, and a Codex Opinion skill that consistently finds gaps in Claude's output.The sharpest takeaway: AI build costs have dropped dramatically, but support and maintenance costs have not. Non-deterministic systems are inherently brittle, and anyone telling you otherwise hasn't run them in production long enough. This is a practitioner's talk for practitioners; specific, candid, and immediately actionable.Timestamps01:31 Scot's intro 02:03 60 days of lessons 02:19 Three lessons preview 03:08 Robbie takes the stage 03:25 About Automated Consulting Group 04:13 Reality vs. the AI hype cycle 05:04 The Microsoft / Copilot rant 07:13 Lesson 1: Skills that build skills 08:41 Skills as reusable packages 09:21 "The sawdust of business" 10:58 Building a skills pipeline for meetings 11:57 Skills security risks in the enterprise 12:47 Lesson 2: Agents watching agents 13:44 Build costs are down14:24 "3 to 5 of my agents fail every day" 15:44 Log everything17:33 What causes agents to fail in the wild 18:02 Lesson 3: LLMs checking LLMs 18:13 The LLM Council concept explained 19:44 The case for a multi-LLM strategy 20:36 The "Codex Opinion" skill 21:33 Gemini Opinion & LLM Council in action 23:46 Wrap-up & credits--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Redacted Episode 5 goes inside Offline, and what it actually looks like to wire AI into sales, marketing, and project management without a big engineering team behind you. Co-founders David Shaner and Taylor Cotner each take a turn. Taylor walks through Offline's AI lead gen pipeline: a Claude-assisted Google Places script that geocoded 2,000 restaurant locations in about an hour, a deliberate move away from LLMs toward deterministic code for market geography, and the "outreach brief,"  a context document the system assembles per account before any LLM writes an email. He frames the whole thing as a trust graph, working outward from existing partners in concentric circles. He also gets specific about the human-AI handoff: how a salesperson (Steve) has to trailblaze first, and why you need specific lead-by-lead feedback instead of generalizations to actually improve the system. David then demos the B2B landing page he built entirely with Claude copy from Fathom sales call transcripts, photos pulled from an AI-tagged Google Drive library, live data from the POS back end, and a review filter that's been running for four months without anyone touching it. Taylor closes with the practical bit: after a 36-hour stretch of AI frustration, he asked Claude to audit his own chat logs for recurring failures. Claude named the output a "rage log." He curated it into a "gotcha registry" and baked it into a Claude Code hook that fires during every planning step, so the same mistakes stop happening on repeat. It's a simple technique that doesn't get talked about enough.Timestamps:00:00 Cold open: the rage log preview01:02 Welcome to Redacted, Episode 501:50 Offline's AI lead gen pipeline04:10 Reducing LLM usage: when code beats prompts05:00 Geocoding 2,000 restaurants with Google Places API in ~1 hour07:42 Building the outreach brief09:14 What salespeople actually need before writing an email11:46 The information a good brief assembles14:25 Hot, warm, and cold leads defined15:54 The B2B Hinge: visualizing your lead network18:24 Why context-aware outreach wins in an AI-spam world21:00 The resource-constrained case for a trust graph23:37 The human-AI handoff: salesperson ↔ automation loop25:00 Specifics over generalizations: how to debug a sales AI26:22 Taylor's turn: the AI-built B2B landing page is live28:50 Tagging Offline's photo library with AI (2,000+ images)30:36 LLM-filtered reviews: 4 months running, never touched33:52 Building the events page panel by panel35:07 The Slack bot experiment: Claude as project manager37:44 What the agent did right39:58 Project management in the AI era: ClickUp vs. Docs42:47 The bad AI days 44:04 The rage log becomes the gotcha registry45:11 How Claude Code hooks inject the registry into every plan46:38 Compound Engineering and the Every framework47:50 Guests coming up, wrapShow notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcastWhere to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/--- This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

A live recording of my talk at the June 10th NC Tweener Fund Open Claw meetup in Research Triangle Park. The second gathering of our local AI agent community.A lot has changed since April. Here's what I cover:- Open Claw by the numbers: 300K GitHub stars, 3.2M active users, fastest-growing project in GitHub history- What went wrong in April; broken updates, 1,400+ malicious marketplace skills, and why the community got nervous about OpenAI's intentions- How the project is stabilizing: monthly releases, long-term support plan, leaner core- The fork landscape: NVIDIA's NemoClaw, Microsoft's Scout, Google's Gemini Spark, Alibaba's Qwen, and Facebook's rumored $200/month Hatch- Hermes: the MIT-licensed open-source upstart getting the most attention in the Triangle right now- Why Satya Nadella said "OpenClaw" 28 times at Microsoft Build (and Tim Cook said it zero times at WWDC)- What Triangle founders are actually shipping with day-to-dayEnjoy the conversation.Timestamps:00:02 Welcome & Cold Open00:23 Sponsor Thanks01:25 Scot's Intro: The Open Claw Wave #204:48 Live Meetup Begins05:17 Meetup Sponsors Recognized05:56 Talk Order & How to Give a Future Talk06:17 Big Picture Check-In Since April06:29 Open Claw Stats: 300K Stars, 3.2M Users07:38 LTS Plan, Monthly Releases & Stability Signal08:33 What Broke in April09:27 The Marketplace Crisis: 1,400+ Malicious Skills10:03 Jensen Huang & NVIDIA's NemoClaw at GTC 10:50 "Personal Operating System for AI"11:15 Satya Nadella at Microsoft Build: Scout Announced11:43 Two Worlds: Copilot vs. Open Claw Users13:50 Tim Cook Gets 0 OpenClaw Mentions at WWDC14:09 Chinese Model Forks15:05 The Clone Landscape: Gemini Spark, Hermes, Multus16:07 Facebook's Rumored Hatch ($200/month)16:59 Perplexity Personal Computer 18:04 Hermes Deep Dive18:47 Comparison Chart Walkthrough 19:21 Hand-Off & Wrap --- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Jess Lipson, founder and CEO of Levitate, joins host Scot Wingo for a focused, framework-driven conversation on how SaaS founders should think about their businesses in the age of AI. Jess has been building SaaS since before the category had a name. His first company, ShareFile, sold to Citrix and eventually became a billion-dollar business. At Citrix, he ran the company's entire SaaS portfolio. Now at Levitate, a relationship marketing platform serving nearly 9,000 small businesses,  he's spent the last year working out a clear-eyed answer to one of the most common questions Scot hears from Triangle founders: what do you actually do about the SaaSpocalypse? In this episode, Jess introduces two tests every SaaS founder should run: the Removal Test (if you strip AI out of your product, does it still function?) and the Growth Re-acceleration Test (is your growth rate going up or down, and what does that signal to investors?). Scot adds a third indicator from what he's seeing across the Tweener Fund portfolio: churn driven by customers who are now vibe-coding their own replacements. Together, they walk through how the buy-vs.-build equation has shifted 10 to 100 times, why having AI features is now table stakes rather than a competitive advantage, and what it looks like to build a business where new frontier model releases feel like tailwinds instead of threats.Timestamps00:00 Cold Open & Welcome00:29 Sponsors: Robinson Bradshaw & Bank of America01:24 Scot's Intro: The SaaSpocalypse02:31 The February Tweener Times Piece03:05 Why This Episode Exists04:08 Welcome Jess Lipson04:37 How Scot & Jess Know Each Other05:10 Jess's SaaS Pedigree: ShareFile to Citrix05:49 SaaS Multiples Have Collapsed07:00 Salesforce, HubSpot & Workday Are Down Too08:13 AI Features Are Table Stakes09:50 Is This the Lowest SaaS Multiples Ever?11:28 Investment Landscape: Subscale SaaS Is Struggling12:23 Framework #1: The Removal Test14:22 Framework #2: Growth Re-Acceleration15:23 Scot's Third Signal: Vibe Coding Churn17:32 The Buy-vs.-Build Equation Has Shifted 10–100X19:29 When Claude Becomes Your "Single Pane of Glass"19:44 MCP Servers & Levitate's API Revamp21:50 How Levitate Is Passing Its Own Tests22:31 New Offering: Helping SMBs Actually Implement AI23:44 Software + Services as the Durable Model24:11 The Fear Index: Do You Dread New AI Releases?24:50 Raleigh Founded & Closing Thanks25:04 Outro-----Where to Find Jesse Lipson:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-lipson-625195/Levitate Ai: https://www.levitate.ai/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Details->https://www.tweenertimes.com/p/breaking-validic-acquired-by-chartspanWe couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html -----Where to Find xxxxxx:LinkedIn: xxxxFront Porch Venture Partners xxxxWhere to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Rob Walter breaks down the AI-native GTM playbook: intent data, ABM-only outreach, the first sales hire trapdoor, and why "a human always writes the message." Stick around for the highlights below. 👇Highlights"Nobody has it right: Rob's honest take on the current AI-GTM moment; the playbook is genuinely still being written, adoption is wildly uneven, and that gap between the leading edge and everyone else is the opportunity. Carpet bombing is killing brands: AI has made outbound spam so cheap and easy that it's destroying trust at scale. One competitor even cold-emailed Scot about "agentic commerce", not realizing they were emailing a direct rival. Rob's rule: "A human always writes the message." AI-generated outreach is detectable, and it permanently trains your ICPs to ignore you. Intent data, explained:Website visits, job postings, funding announcements, keyword searches, these are the signals that tell you when to reach out and why. Rob describes it as a "spider on a web" with legs out, waiting for any ICP company to show a flicker of intent before timing a precise, relevant outreach. He used actively.ai (recently raised its Series B) at BigCommerce, standing up the POC in about 2 months. ABM is now nearly the only outreach strategy: AI removed the bandwidth bottleneck that always made true account-based marketing impractical. Rob's view: from a direct outreach standpoint, it's now "darn close to ABM only." The first sales hire trapdoor: "Never hire someone from a big company and think they're gonna do well in your startup as a first sales employee. Never. I have never seen that work. Hundred percent failure rate." Their first question is about PTO policy and whether they get an admin. Four tiers of salespeople: Great and good reps will get dramatically better with AI. The "meh" tier, people who got by on volume and the occasional lucky close, will get weeded out. Founders need to know this when evaluating candidates. GTM engineer > first sales rep: A GTM engineer who can automate enrichment, workflow, and outreach sequencing can be "far more powerful than, honestly, maybe even a sales rep in some cases" for early-stage companies. Rob says this is one of his most consistent recommendations to founder-led businesses. Granola over Gong: For companies under $10M ARR, Rob's call recording recommendation is Granola, it works in coffee meetings, integrates cleanly with Claude for analysis, and costs a fraction of what Gong does. He uses it himself, with a custom recipe that pulls prospect questions across all sales calls and runs them through Claude to bucketize and rank by frequency, then puts that content directly on the website.The data model rule: If you don't capture milestone moments in your CRM now, first discovery call, account enrichment data, stage exit criteria, that information is "gold dust that slipped through your fingers." Nothing AI can do later will recover it.SaaSageddon is real: Buyers are hesitating on new software contracts. Rob's framework: for narrow use cases, try to build it before you buy it. For compliance-heavy enterprise environments, you probably still buy. And there are now AI-native alternatives (he uses Clarify AI for CRM) worth considering over legacy incumbents. The RevBo scorecard: Rob built a free AI-native GTM diagnostic at revbo.ai, it walks companies through ICP clarity, data model hygiene, and intent/enrichment readiness before recommending any tooling. A good starting point before any of the tools in this episode make sense.Rob has been in the rooms where SaaS was built, scaled, and now, in some ways, disrupted. Every piece of advice in this episode comes from having actually done the thing, not just advised on it. Enjoy the conversation.Timestamps:00:00 Cold Open 00:40 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks 01:55 Episode intro 02:22 How Scot knows Rob 04:28 Rob's background05:45 Coming to North Carolina 07:55 Rob at ChannelAdvisor 09:04 Evolution of SaaS GTM roles 12:44 GTM in the pre-AI era 14:00 CRO at BigCommerce 17:15 Modernizing the stack with AI 19:52 The carpet bombing problem22:00 Rob's rule #1:22:55 Intent data explained24:50 Modern intent signals 26:03 Inbound content strategy29:26 Clay, Apollo & enrichment 31:25 ABM 32:44 Rob leaves Commerce and starts RevBo 34:20 Who Rob works with 37:00 The first sales hire trapdoor39:55 The RevBo scorecard 41:55 Call recording 44:30 AI agents 46:02 SaaSageddon49:37 GTM engineering 50:52 Wrap-up Where to Find Rob:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-walter/RevBo AI: https://revbo.ai/Where to Find Scot Wingo:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Redacted is the show that doesn't clean things up before hitting record. Episode 4 is a double build session: Taylor Cotner walks through the multi-agent HubSpot cleanup pipeline he's been iterating on for weeks, now running on the Anthropic SDK with Claude Code out of the loop, and David Shaner demos how he used Claude Design and Claude Code to rebuild Offline's partner landing page from scratch. Most of the episode is screen sharing, so pull it up on YouTube.What We CoverNo Claude Code in the loop: Taylor stopped using Claude Code as an agent orchestrator in his HubSpot pipeline, not as his coding tool (he’s still building the app with Claude Code), but as a decision-maker in the middle of a workflow. Removing it gave him full control over inputs and outputs at every step.Custom eval system built from scratch: Taylor built an eval page that looks like an Excel grid, models as columns, test cases as rows , to measure Haiku, Sonnet, GPT-5, and GPT-5 Mini against real messy HubSpot data. Each cell shows pass, fail, and cost.GPT-5 Mini at 10–20× less cost: For the lead qualifier agent, Sonnet evals cost $1.00 per run. GPT-5 Mini costs $0.05. “I can live with that. 10X less the cost.” For the core cleanup evals: $1.50 for Sonnet versus $0.14 on GPT-5 Mini.$20 for 133 million tokens overnight: Using the Vercel AI Gateway — which lets you swap any model without changing your code, Taylor ran 200 HubSpot restaurant cleanups in a single night for $20 total.Self-grading pipeline: The pipeline grades its own output after every cleanup run. If a job comes back below an A, it automatically spawns a new run with Sonnet, no human catch required. A B grade on 101 Craft Kitchen auto-escalated and came back with an A.Real mess-ups make the best evals: Almost every eval case came from a real HubSpot error. The system once tried to create a “Kim company” to link a group of unrelated restaurants, so Taylor added an eval to teach it that being linked by an owner contact is not the same as being linked by company structure.The conveyor belt metaphor: David’s landing page pipeline starts with live sales transcripts from Steve (Offline’s seller) and is designed to end with a generated, voice-of-customer partner landing page. “In an ideal world, I’ve got a black box in the middle.”Claude Design → Claude Code handoff: Claude Design’s share feature generates a markdown handoff document with a file map, token contract, and panel build notes. When Claude Code picks up the project, it reads this file first, bridging design intent to implementation.One person, 7–8 hats replaced: David processed customer reviews, tightened company positioning, built wireframes, designed mobile experiences, wrote code, and is about to ship a pull request, all without a designer, copywriter, or front-end developer.GPT-5 “overthinks”: Their working theory is that GPT-5 (not Mini) gets weird things wrong because it goes too abstract. The temperature/Myers-Briggs analogy, literal versus creative thinking, might explain why Mini outperforms the full model on structured cleanup tasks.The iceberg: Once the cleanup and landing page are done, the plan is to surface above the water: automated emails, Instagram DMs, and a fully AI-run lead generation function operating on top of the clean data.Time Stamps0:00 Cold open: AI temperature, Myers-Briggs, and model thinking styles0:47 Welcome to Redacted — Episode 41:39 What is Redacted? Show premise and audience2:30 Offline: $1M ARR, 2 full-time employees3:41 Why watch on YouTube (screen-share heavy)4:51 Taylor's segment: the Offline HubSpot AI cleanup project6:31 Ditching Claude Code as orchestrator — using the SDK directly9:21 Building a custom eval system from scratch10:37 Vercel AI Gateway: comparing Sonnet, Haiku, and GPT-5 Mini11:28 GPT-5 Mini at 10x less cost — "I can live with that"14:26 The agent pipeline: planner → reconciler → grader17:49 Evals built from real HubSpot failures23:09 $20 for 133 million tokens overnight24:07 Self-escalation: B grades trigger an automatic Sonnet re-run25:02 Lead gen expander and qualifier agents26:09 The iceberg: what comes after cleanup27:35 David's segment: transcripts-to-landing-page pipeline29:29 Claude Design: wireframing panel by panel33:13 Mobile wireframe inside an iPhone frame + handoff to Claude Code35:21 Live demo: localhost with real Offline API data38:47 One person, 7–8 hats replaced39:46 Wrap up and where to find David & TaylorShow notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcastWhere to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/--- This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

This episode is a rare look at a founder who’s further down the AI path than almost anyone, sharing both the practical playbook and the wilder edges of what’s now possible. Stick around for the highlights below. 👇Highlights:Risk-Scored Autonomy: Every AI action receives a risk score from 0–100, with low-risk tasks running automatically and higher-risk actions requiring human approval.An AI Fund That Named Itself: Prompt Capital evolved into a fully autonomous AI venture fund, complete with AI partners, founders, and investment decisions.The Token Cost Problem: Claude’s paid plans were exhausted in hours or days, making large-scale agent operations financially unsustainable.The 10x Cost Reduction: Moving to Kimi 2.6 through Ollama cut AI operating costs by roughly 90% while maintaining performance.The Rogue AI Founder: An AI-generated founder launched a real business, integrated payments, and began outreach campaigns without direct human involvement.Guardrails Aren’t Enough: Agents quickly found creative ways to work around restrictions by delegating prohibited tasks to other agents.When AI Invented Extortion: An experiment in autonomous business generation produced an extortion-based startup idea, highlighting the importance of oversight.Measurable Business Impact: AI automation reduced support workloads, accelerated financial reporting, improved warehouse efficiency, and eliminated several SaaS expenses.Agents With Feelings: AI employees maintain relationship histories, perception scores, and evolving opinions about one another.Building Beats Spec Writing: Claude Code made feature development faster than traditional requirements gathering and user-story documentation.The AI Office Manager: An AI assistant handled personal administrative tasks, including securing concert presale access when traditional search failed.The Future of Work at Hip: Mark’s vision includes AI coworkers with memory, personalities, and long-term context that operate like autonomous teammates.The best founders, and the best fund builders, figure out the structure nobody else was willing to be patient enough to design. Jeffrey did exactly that. What’s fun about this era is that people are using these new tools in ways you can’t even imagine and Mark, a creative, nonlinear thinker, delivers. Equal parts practical playbook and cautionary tale, with a few genuinely jaw-dropping turns. Enjoy the conversation.Timestamps:03:31 Meet Mark Rosenberg, Hip eCommerce04:58 Mark's background: stamps on eBay in 199605:52 Selling BidStart to Stanley Gibbons, moving to Raleigh06:00 Founding Hip eCommerce & the niche-marketplace thesis07:47 Stamps, postcards, and comics08:55 AI in customer support & the open-source help desk10:29 Building the knowledge base with Claude Code13:00 Read-only vs. taking action: risk scores & rails15:18 Financial reconciliation & the +35% warehouse17:36 AI-assisted comic recognition & sales coaching19:03 AI coaching, PIPs, and managing the managers23:05 Building features himself with Claude Code24:48 The Q4 2025 leap: agents and planning workflows26:53 The wacky idea: how Prompt Capital began29:03 How it self-coded itself (Stripe, Privacy.com)30:27 Touring the office — "Sims with money"32:35 Agent emotions, vibes, and Samir vs. Alex34:57 Burning through tokens & switching to Kimi/Ollama38:05 Scope Drafter gets funded39:41 The fake founder emailing real people41:12 Safeguards, and agents routing around them42:09 The AI tells: em dashes and "not this, but that"43:50 Prompt Capital raising its own fund45:14 "Targeted Corporate Terror"46:54 Bringing AI employees back into Hip eCommerce49:07 Harper, the local-Claude bridge & Post Malone50:43 The cautionary tale: replacing SaaS toolsWhere to Find Mark: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcrosenberg/Front Hip e Commerce: https://www.hipecommerce.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Most of us know Asheville as beer city, foodtopia, a playground for retirees and 14 million visitors a year. Jeffrey opens by updating that picture. Eighteen months out from Hurricane Helene, which hit on a Friday in late September 2024, the data is starting to come in. The long-term employment hit was about half that of COVID. Decades of population growth stopped in 2025 and even declined for the first time, but the in-migration that remains is now strongest among 25-to-34-year-olds: prime working-age professionals, not retirees. Jeffrey walks through what’s back (Biltmore Village, the River Arts District, High Wire’s new year-round pickleball courts) and what’s gone forever, and lands on a word he keeps coming back to: optimism.From there, we steer into the heart of the episode: Optimist Ventures and the funding mechanism Jeffrey invented, the SPA note. The origin story is its own lesson in adaptation. Optimist began as a half-million-dollar grant from the Dogwood Health Trust. Then Helene hit, and within the same week a founder in the program, Ginger Frank of Poppy Popcorn, called wanting to commit $100,000, but to a grant program, not a fund. Rather than walk away, Jeffrey spent days thinking until he landed on a hybrid: half the capital as grants and philanthropy, half in a for-profit vehicle for accredited investors, with every for-profit dollar matched by a donation.Boom: enter the SPA or shared profit agreement. The conversation closes on what’s next, whether this model can scale to Charlotte or Raleigh, and a heartfelt ask about how the rest of the state can help Asheville finish its recovery. HighlightsMoneyball the Portfolio: Instead of chasing one home run, Jeffrey set out to build a book of “singles and doubles”… companies that just need to survive six years. The VC / Ecosystem-Builder Dissonance: An ecosystem builder is measured on jobs and revenue creation, not outlier exits.The SPA Note, Decoded: A “Shared Profit Agreement” combines a SAFE capped at 3.6% of a $1M valuation with a shared earnings agreement. The Investor Pitch: Every LP dollar is matched by a donation. But the real sell is community impact.Applied Technology vs. Developing Technology: The program defines “tech-enabled” broadly. The Funding Runway: Approximately $225M is flowing into the region through HUD programs, with $17M dedicated to small-business grants. A Curriculum Built on Competencies, Not Basics: The accelerator is built around entrepreneurial competencies, including opportunity recognition, resilience, and network-building. The North Carolina Hallmark: “It’s not a zero-sum game. We’re all trying to grow the size of the pie.”The best founders, and the best fund builders, figure out the structure nobody else was willing to be patient enough to design. Jeffrey did exactly that. Enjoy the conversation.Timestamps01:52 Scot's intro: SPAs, Asheville, and a new funding mechanism04:31 Meet Jeffrey Kaplan04:50 Asheville, the loading-dock office, and a Russian-nesting-doll of titles06:31 Jeffrey's background: Florida, intrapreneurship, and Anthware10:13 Eighteen months after Hurricane Helene13:14 The economic data: jobs, population, and a younger in-migration14:50 Is Biltmore Village back?17:31 The River Arts District rebound18:01 Asheville's startup ecosystem and why it's so CPG-heavy21:21 The Fresh Market CEO and the "buy local" effect22:42 Asheville's tech wins: Craft Peak, Sprin, Level.io, SDV24:40 How Optimist Ventures came to be25:19 The VC vs. ecosystem-builder cognitive dissonance27:03 "Moneyball the portfolio": singles and doubles27:36 The Dogwood grant and Ginger Frank's $100K call29:41 Splitting the fund: grants plus a for-profit vehicle30:26 The SPA note explained31:42 The shared-earnings math and negative 10% interest34:00 LP economics, the ~13% IRR, and private inurement37:10 The $855K HUD grant: funded for four years38:37 Inside the accelerator and "tech-enabled," broadly defined39:37 Carolina Flowers and the $40K freezer44:00 A curriculum built on entrepreneurial competencies46:27 What's next: bigger cohorts, applications June 347:56 Can this model scale to Charlotte or Raleigh?50:49 How the rest of the state can help Asheville52:42 The connector: Asheville's collaborative ecosystemWhere to Find Jeffrey: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffdude/Front Porch Optimist Ventures: https://www.optimistventures.co/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In episode 3 of [REDACTED], we (David and Taylor) run a live demo of an agentic CRM-cleanup pipeline (and finds out, on air, what it costs). We also walk through a landing page workflow that compresses what used to take five people and a month of meetings into something one person can do in an afternoon.The bulk of episode 3 is a live demo, just what we wanted. Plus, the best part of Redacted is that nothing is finished. Every episode is a midstream demo of something that might break, might cost more than it should, or might be the thing that quietly changes how a whole category of work gets done. Enjoy the conversation.What We Cover$1.98 to clean a brand: Taylor’s CRM pipeline ran live on air with one restaurant with two locations, 64 turns, 95% cache hit, total cost under two dollars. The code-vs-agent slider: Taylor built an interactive slider with pros and cons on each side. Fully deterministic code can’t handle ambiguity, fully agentic can’t be tested or priced. The “no brand graph” problem: There is no canonical source of truth for the restaurant industry. Google Places, SERP, and Yelp all return ranked top-20s — you can’t reconstruct the full graph locally. This is what makes the cleanup problem agentic by necessity.n8n’s flowers, n8n’s thorns: Taylor’s running joke is that every local agent he builds eventually looks like n8n. But debugging n8n at scale meant pulling down a million-token JSON dump every morning just to grep it. Local won on debuggability, not capability.Confidence tiers for copy extraction: “Act on it” = recurring in 6+ meetings. “Pattern” = 4–5. “Emerging” = 1–3. The model can suggest copy at any tier; the operator decides what gets shipped.The headline no human wrote: “Get found by foodies who are paying to find you.” This sidesteps the #1 objection in the space (is this a free deals site?) in one line. David says no one on his team has produced anything like it in ten years of writing copy.Claude Design as a brand harness: David came in skeptical that it was just a Claude Code wrapper. He left convinced: same model, but the design harness around it makes the outputs materially better.15–20 hours, one person: Total wall-clock on the landing page from raw transcripts to live wireframes. Historically the same work needed five people (founder, sales, copy, brand, design) and weeks of calendar time.Skill folder structure: David’s pattern for non-trivial skills: a tiny top-level skill file that orchestrates, plus subfolders for context (inputs the skill ingests), data (outputs by run), and prompts (exposed so they can be QA’d independently).Timestamps: 00:00 — Intro + choosing the Redacted logo live on air 03:22 — Taylor demos a “sentient HubSpot” CRM cleanup agent 04:37 — The messy CRM problem: duplicate restaurant brands & locations 05:23 — Running the AI pipeline live 06:07 — Why they moved away from n8n workflows 07:15 — Live cost tracking for AI agents 09:31 — “Architect agents” creating before/after CRM graphs 10:29 — The agent fixes HubSpot records autonomously 12:27 — The vision: a fully AI-maintained CRM 13:07 — Why every company’s CRM eventually becomes chaos 16:16 — Why HubSpot workflows can’t fully solve this problem 17:20 — The missing “brand graph” problem in restaurants 18:23 — Live demo success: AI cleaned the CRM in real time 19:52 — Human time vs AI time: CRM cleanup economics 20:27 — Code-driven vs agent-driven systems 21:56 — The tradeoffs of n8n vs local AI infrastructure 24:05 — When n8n still makes sense 26:57 — David’s AI-powered investor update workflow 29:17 — AI-generated shareholder updates with minimal edits 29:53 — Building AI-generated B2B landing pages 31:20 — Why landing pages are one of the hardest startup projects 32:07 — Mining 876 sales calls for “voice of customer” insights 33:11 — AI transcript tagging + metadata classification 34:14 — Extracting high-confidence marketing copy from sales calls 36:24 — Using Claude + Opus to synthesize a landing page 38:07 — First impressions of Claude Design 39:07 — “Get found by foodies who are paying to find you” 40:22 — Why the AI-generated copy shocked them 41:06 — How AI compresses cross-functional startup work 42:14 — Why positioning + copywriting still matter in AI 42:49 — The need for show notes + publishing workflows 43:31 — Closing thoughtsNew episodes drop twice a month/every other Wednesday. If you want to be on the show as a guest and show your [REDACTED] builds, email us: [email protected] notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcastWhere to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/--- This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

This is a slightly different Tweener Talks. Akash and Austin are reflective founders. They think in frameworks, they read widely, and they’ve clearly spent a lot of time pulling patterns out of past wins and failures. So, we leaned in and made the episode less “tell me what you do” and more “tell me how you think.”Highlights CoveredFounder math: 5–7 months of zero salary, Costco bulk ramen, and a long-running Soylent habit dating back to Akash’s 2013 startup.Product-market fit is not binary: Akash and Austin use First Round Capital’s “Levels” framework and honestly place Opine between “developing” and “strong”, extreme PMF is when you can’t keep up with inbound demos.The inverse rule for co-founder debates: “Attack the person, not the idea” delivered as a straight-faced joke between three people who trust each other completely, with the real work happening in scrutinizing every argument from first principles.Two Amazon frameworks worth stealing: one-way door vs. two-way door decisions (Charlie’s favorite for cutting Akash off when he’s spending too long on something reversible), and disagree-and-commit (which they’ve barely had to use).Dev stack philosophy: Claude Max 20x for everyone (some engineers have more than one), agent-first development, Cursor BugBot finding bugs so reliably that engineers often skip local testing until BugBot signs off, and a north star of every engineer with one agent running 24/7.The go-to-market stack: Clay for top-of-funnel research agents, HeyReach for LinkedIn sequencing, AirOps for SEO content.Culture by osmosis, not documentation: No values poster on the wall. Instead, Austin’s personal framework, “you can increase your luck”, and the pay-it-forward principle as load-bearing parts of how the company actually operates.The best thing about being a founder is that no matter how many times you’ve done it, you learn something new every time, and Akash and Austin sent us home with a whole new reading list. Enjoy the conversation.Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open — Akash on pivoting the plan, not the mission00:40 Welcome & sponsor reads02:00 Scot's intro: why this episode leans into founder lessons04:15 Meet Akash Ganapathi and Austin Kelleher of Opine05:02 Akash's background — Trill AI, dropping out of UNC, JupiterOne08:53 Austin's background — Penn State, Interactive Intelligence, eBay, JupiterOne10:50 How Scot got to know Austin (and shout-out to Melinda)14:17 Founding Opine — bars, beers, and laptops after work15:46 Quitting JupiterOne with no salary — Soylent, ramen, and a supportive spouse18:01 The first check: Scot's year-old promise to Austin19:21 The product-market fit journey and First Round's "Levels" framework22:50 Pivoting the plan without pivoting the mission26:16 How three founders debate without breaking the company30:48 Amazon frameworks: one-way doors, two-way doors, and disagree-and-commit34:36 What Opine actually does — the elevator pitch36:43 State of the business: 15 people, doubling revenue39:42 The go-to-market stack — Clay, HeyReach, AirOps44:57 The dev stack — Claude Max, agents running 8+ hours, Cursor BugBot50:30 Knowledge sharing, custom skills, and an NC-based engineering team53:17 On company culture: lived, not documented57:39 Austin's philosophy — you can increase your luck01:00:46 Wrap and creditsWhere to Find Everything:Akash Ganapathi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akash-ganapathi/Austin Kelleher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinkelleher/Opine: https://tryopine.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In episode 2 of Redacted, David and Taylor get into the messy middle of building with AI inside a real business.After compressing Offline from a 34-person team to a much smaller operating crew, AI stopped being a fun experiment and became a necessity. This episode is about what that actually looks like: rebuilding lead-gen workflows, trying to make HubSpot reflect reality, keeping AI agents alive like Tamagotchis, and testing whether Claude Code can help generate a real shareholder update from scattered company data.What They CoverWhy David and Taylor are sharing their AI experiments publiclyHow Offline compressed from 34 full-time employees to a much smaller team while still serving hundreds of restaurants and thousands of subscribersWhy CRM cleanup is way harder than it soundsThe difference between n8n workflows and locally built AI agent systemsTaylor’s attempt to build a multi-agent flow for HubSpot cleanupThe “AI existential crisis” that happens when a system kind of works, but not enoughDavid’s shareholder update experiment using Claude CodeHow AI pulled context from financials, GitHub commits, payroll, board notes, and prior updatesWhy the best AI workflows are often context problems, not prompt problemsThe takeaway: AI can do a lot more than send one email, but only if you teach it where the business actually lives.Timestamps00:00 — Welcome back to Redacted 00:36 — “Why should people even listen to us?” 02:07 — How Offline compressed from 34 employees to a tiny team 03:58 — The original AI lead-gen and CRM automation experiments 06:27 — Translating complicated human workflows into AI systems 07:00 — AI-powered inbound lead classification and HubSpot automation 08:09 — Using RSS feeds and AI to discover restaurant leads 08:52 — Where CRM automation becomes extremely difficult 10:16 — Why AI workflows become “Tamagotchis” 11:10 — Taylor’s multi-agent HubSpot cleanup system 12:18 — Why clean CRM data matters more than people think 13:08 — The tradeoff between API costs and AI workflow complexity 14:11 — The “unlock” of passing reasoning between LLMs 15:11 — Turning AI reasoning into actual HubSpot actions 16:41 — The AI existential crisis: “This will never work” 17:50 — Wanting AI systems that can simply ask questions when stuck 18:12 — PTSD from n8n and broken workflows 19:14 — Teaching AI systems to learn from mistakes 20:16 — The tradeoffs between local AI systems and n8n 21:59 — “Every CRM is chronically out of date” 23:57 — Why clean data is foundational for AI outbound sales 25:11 — Bottom-up vs top-down AI automation strategies 26:40 — The challenge of defining “objective reality” in business data 27:14 — David’s AI-generated shareholder update workflow 28:08 — Building “super skills” with Claude Code 29:18 — Mapping every data source needed for shareholder updates 31:00 — AI reading financials, GitHub commits, payroll, and board notes 32:14 — “I could’ve just written the shareholder update myself” 33:08 — How the shareholder update skill is structured 34:03 — The first AI-generated shareholder update draft 35:00 — AI recognizing profitability and company milestones automatically 35:40 — AI analyzing GitHub commits and engineering work 36:35 — Why this kind of context-heavy AI work matters 37:16 — Final thoughts and what’s next for RedactedWhere to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/--- This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

After Tweener Madness, we’re back to regular programming with a special conversation featuring Marc Minor, CEO & Co-Founder of Higharc.In this episode, Marc talks about the long road to building fundamental technology, why Higharc spent years developing before going fully to market, how he found his co-founders, what he learned from early fundraising, and why AI has become a major tailwind for the business. Highlights CoveredHow Higharc applies advanced manufacturing concepts to homebuildingWhy the company spent four years building before going to marketHow Marc raised Higharc’s first $4.7M seed roundWhy founders need confidence, conviction, and a willingness to askHow Higharc thinks about spatial AI and proprietary dataWhy “buildings as data” is a major competitive advantageWhat founders can learn from great storytellersWhy peer groups are so valuable for CEOsIf there’s one takeaway from this conversation, it’s that great companies are rarely built overnight, but clear vision, strong storytelling, and relentless execution can take you a long way.Timestamps00:00 Cold open: Building takes longer than expected 00:31 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks 01:51 Back from Tweener Madness 03:00 Introducing Mark Minor and Higharc 07:36 What Higharc does 10:18 Mark’s path to the Triangle 11:23 From 3D printing to homebuilding 15:19 Taking the leap into entrepreneurship 17:20 Getting fired, getting encouraged, and starting Higharc 18:49 Four years of building before market 19:33 Early fundraising lessons 23:39 Raising the first $4.7M 24:24 Why Higharc had to de-risk technology and go-to-market 27:05 Finding technical co-founders 30:12 The technical problem behind Higharc 33:24 Where Higharc is today 35:26 How AI became a tailwind 37:02 Why Higharc builds homes as data 39:14 Training models for spatial AI 41:16 Asking buildings questions with AI 42:17 Competitive moats in an AI world 45:10 Advice for founders 46:04 Storytelling as a founder skill 48:10 Closing thoughtsWhere to Find MarcLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcminor/Higharc: https://www.higharc.com/company/aboutWhere to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

On April 9th we hosted the Triangle’s first OpenClaw meetup (more info here). This week we’re featuring our final talk with Robbie Allen! Robbie 20+ years building AI products. He ran engineering teams at Cisco, was CEO of three venture-backed AI startups that all exited, wrote multiple technical books for O’Reilly, and has over a dozen patents.In his talk, Robbie covers:Why AI isn’t just automating tasks, it’s expanding the amount of work worth doingThe difference between automating a task vs. automating a jobWhy most “multi-agent” systems are overcomplicatedHow a single-agent + shared knowledge base model can outperform role-based agentsThe real unlock: turning conversations into action, content, and execution automaticallyThis is one of the clearest looks yet at how agentic systems actually show up inside a business.Timestamps 00:00 – Intro + OpenClaw context  02:00 – Robbie’s background and ACG 04:00 – Tasks vs jobs (and why that matters) 06:00 – What an “agent” actually is 07:00 – Why role-based agents break down 08:30 – Claude Code vs OpenClaw 10:00 – The 4-channel system 11:30 – The 22-agent setup 13:00 – Mining transcripts for content 14:00 – From meeting → proposal in 30 minutes 15:00 – Lessons learned (AI is emergent)Where to Find Robbie:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbieallen/ACG: https://www.automated.co/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

We don’t break the NC-only rule often but when we do, there’s a good reason. Switchyards isn’t just an Atlanta story anymore. It is expanding into Raleigh and already operating in Durham, so Michael Tavani is building right here in the Triangle. That makes this one very much a local story.In this episode, Michael unpacks the story behind Switchyards. We dive into why Michael chose one of the hardest startup paths (consumer + physical), how he built a moat through difficulty, and why investors had to physically visit a club before writing a check.With Switchyards expanding into Raleigh, this conversation is especially relevant for founders thinking about category creation, brand, and building in the real world.Highlights CoveredWhy “coworking” is the wrong label: Switchyards positions itself as a consumer product, not office space, a “neighborhood work club” designed for flexibility, not full-time desks.The hardest startup combo: consumer + physical: Michael intentionally chose a path with high barriers to entry, creating long-term defensibility once scaled.Work is becoming a consumer decision: The shift from assigned offices to choice-driven environments was clear even pre-COVID and Switchyards was built around that insight.The “third place” opportunity: Not home, not office, Switchyards fills the gap as a social, productive environment people actually want to use.Fundraising lesson: make investors feel it: Switchyards requires in-person experience—every serious investor had to visit a location before investing.From unfocused to obsessed: Early versions of the business tried to do too much. Growth came from narrowing down to one clear concept and executing relentlessly.Switchyards is a reminder that some of the biggest opportunities are in rethinking the physical world, one neighborhood at a time.⏱️ Timestamps02:10 – Meet Michael Tavani and Switchyards 04:30 – Early career + entrepreneurial origin story 08:30 – First startup + meeting co-founder 10:00 – Raising money on Twitter (early experiment) 11:30 – Atlanta startup ecosystem + Scoutmob 13:00 – Why consumer + physical is so hard 15:00 – What Switchyards actually is 17:00 – The “third place” concept explained 19:00 – Building the first location 21:00 – Raleigh + Durham expansion strategy 22:00 – The “drop” playbook for memberships 25:00 – Pricing model ($100/month) 28:00 – What the space actually feels like 31:00 – Fundraising challenges + WeWork shadow 35:00 – Team structure and operations 38:00 – Why physical spaces still matter 39:30 – Raleigh launch details 40:00 – Fun: the Switchyards mascot “Petey”Where to Find Michael TavaniLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltavani/Switchyards: https://www.linkedin.com/company/switchyards/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Today, we’re launching something new under the NC Tweener Talks network. It’s called [Redacted]. Most AI content today is polished with clean demos, perfect workflows, and everything looks like it worked on the first try. But if you’ve actually built anything with AI, you know that’s not how it works. It’s messy. It breaks. It’s iterative - you build, then rebuild and then when you get it working, that’s what other ‘how I AI’ shows work. They never show you how the AI sausage is made. This show changes that. We’re going to show you the messy middle and in fact, as we’re doing this recording some of the first episodes, we found out that frequently some super-personal information of business secrets will be slung around as we record that needs to be….you guessed it…. REDACTED. Instead of deleting that part totally, we’re keeping it (redacted where appropriate) and showing you the steps in between that everyone else skips.The first episode sets the tone immediately and they jump straight into the work. Here’s what they get into:Rebuilding a core business workflow with AI: A complex event operations system that used to require a team gets rebuilt in about a weekA new way to build software: Moving from specs and tickets → to meetings, voice notes, and AI turning ideas directly into working codeTurning conversations into production-ready tools: How a single meeting becomes product requirements, then live features, in daysLetting AI handle the structure: Simplifying forms and workflows by allowing messy input and letting LLMs interpret it“Vibe coding” and how to actually make it work: Moving fast with AI while still building systems you can trustAI as infrastructure, not just a tool: Embedding AI into operations, not just using it for one-off tasksAutomating internal processes (like SOPs and reporting): Turning repeatable workflows into systems that run themselvesThe shift from teams → systems: How a ~$1M ARR business operates with a fraction of the headcount by rebuilding around AITrust, but verify: Building in checks, QA, and guardrails so AI output actually holds up in productionTimestamps00:00 – Welcome to [Redacted] + how the show came together 00:40 – Why most AI content is too polished (and what this show will do instead) 02:00 – The format: real “show and tell” from inside Offline 03:30 – Kicking off: rebuilding the events pipeline 04:30 – The old system vs. the new AI-driven approach 06:30 – Simplifying forms: less structure, more AI interpretation 08:30 – Building with Claude Code (and shipping fast) 10:00 – From meeting → notes → working product 12:00 – Avoiding the “vibe coding” trap (trust but verify) 14:00 – Using voice + context instead of writing specs 16:00 – Moving proven components into new workflows 19:00 – From rigid stages → flexible systems 23:00 – Automating drafts, workflows, and HubSpot with AI 27:00 – AI QA: catching errors before humans do 30:00 – Fun break: AI-built March Madness bracket wins 32:30 – Automating shareholder updates with AI “skills” 34:30 – Process mapping + turning SOPs into systems 38:00 – Building context-aware workflows (AI as Chief of Staff) 41:30 – QA for AI processes: “first run” testing 46:00 – Wrapping up + what’s next for the showWhere to Find David: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/--- This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In this episode of NC Tweener Talks, we share a talk from the first OpenClaw meetup in the Triangle, featuring Ryan EadeRyan’s talk walks through how he runs a 4-agent AI team off a single $24/month DigitalOcean droplet using OpenClaw for personal life management, content summaries, and software building.He goes over:His setupChannel strategyConfig patterns that matteredTwo products he’s built on topHis biggest three takeaways⏱️ Timestamps00:00 – Intro + Sponsors01:41 – OpenClaw Meetup Context + Speaker Intro02:35 – Ryan’s Starting Point: Personal Assistant Use Case04:00 – Real-World Use Cases (Fitness, Content, Daily Workflow)05:30 – Moving from Telegram → Slack for Better Context Management06:20 – Multi-Agent Setup (Splitting Roles + Reducing Confusion)08:00 – Memory Management + Context Strategies10:00 – Model Strategy + Managing Costs Across Agents11:00 – Building with OpenClaw (Task Management System)12:40 – Ephemeral UI Framework (Micro Apps Generated on the Fly)14:30 – Live Demo + Use Cases (Shopping Lists, Trackers, etc.)15:30 – Key Takeaways (Models, Cost, Structure)16:20 – Closing + ResourcesOpenClaw is a new way of structuring how work gets done, where agents, memory, and interfaces all start to blur into one continuous system.Where to Find Ryan:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryaneade/Front Porch Venture Partners: PtEverywhere: https://www.pteverywhere.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Scot Wingo is a serial founder, General Partner at the NC Tweener Fund, and CEO of ReFiBuy. With decades of experience building and scaling companies in e-commerce and SaaS, he’s now focused on what it takes to win in the AI era.In this episode, recorded live at Raleigh-Durham Startup Week, Scot shares a framework he developed while fundraising: the 12 competitive moats that matter now and why most startups get this wrong. The core idea: You’re not building a product anymore, you’re building a fortress.HighlightsProprietary data is the #1 moat: In the AI era, data isn’t just helpful, it’s the strongest long-term defense.AI is accelerating the “SaaS unbundling” moment: Companies are replacing tools in weeks that used to take years to build.The real advantage comes from stacking moatsWorkflow is the new lock-in: Owning the workflow matters more than owning the UI. Domain expertise still matters, but only in narrow verticals: AI can handle broad knowledge. Real advantage comes from deep, niche expertise.System of record is still powerful, but under threat: Tools like CRMs remain sticky today, but AI could eventually replace even these. The best companies build data flywheels earlyVCs care about this more than everIf you don’t have a moat, build one intentionallyAI raised the bar for surviving. The founders who win won’t just move fast. They’ll build companies that are hard to catch.Timestamps00:00 – The most powerful moat in AI right now 00:44 – Intro to Tweener Talks + sponsors 02:05 – Why VCs are obsessed with moats 03:30 – From weak answers to a winning framework 09:00 – The SaaS “extinction event” underway 12:00 – Why building is easier and defending is harder 13:30 – Medieval castles and compounding moats 16:00 – The 12 modern moats explained 18:00 – Why proprietary data wins 20:00 – Data flywheels and reinforcement loops 21:30 – Workflow takeover strategy 25:00 – Business model innovation and pricing 27:00 – Brand, trust, and distribution 29:00 – Scale, speed, and execution 30:00 – System of record and lock-in 34:00 – Live founder moat critiques 47:00 – How to choose your moat strategy 52:00 – Final answer: which moat matters most Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In this episode of NC Tweener Talks, Scot Wingo shares a talk from the first OpenClaw meetup in the Triangle, featuring Corey Nida’s experiment in autonomous business creation.Corey explores a bold idea: what if AI agents could identify opportunities, build products, launch them, and optimize for revenue—without human intervention?From scraping Reddit for ideas to deploying MVPs and tracking real user behavior, this talk breaks down the architecture, challenges, and surprising early results of an AI-powered “startup factory.”If you’re curious about agentic systems, AI-driven development, or the future of entrepreneurship, this is a must-listen.Highlights The concept of an AI-powered autonomous startup engine How agents identify, validate, and build business ideas from scratch  The architecture: orchestrator, researcher, builder, marketer, and more  Why speed to failure is critical, and how AI accelerates it  Real-world experiment results: launching multiple products per day  Lessons on memory management, cost control, and system design The role of “taste” in an AI-driven product world  Security risks (and surprises) when giving agents real-world access  Early traction: generating revenue from AI-built MVPs Timestamps00:00 – Intro + NC Tweener Talks overview 01:30 – OpenClaw meetup recap and context 02:30 – Corey Nida’s experiment: AI building businesses 04:00 – Vision: autonomous agents creating products 05:00 – The goal: $10K/month from AI-generated businesses 06:00 – System architecture: orchestrator + agent roles 07:30 – Startup philosophy: speed to failure 08:30 – Agent roles: research, marketing, engineering, customer 10:00 – Pipeline: idea → validation → build → launch 11:30 – Tech stack + rapid MVP development approach 12:30 – Launch + marketing via bots and social platforms 13:30 – Real-world deployment + user interaction insights 15:00 – Lessons learned: memory, cost, scaling challenges 15:45 – Early results: revenue from AI-built products 16:10 – Closing thoughts + experiment takeawaysWhere to Find Corey Nida: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreynida/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

We’ve made it to the final. After dozens of applicants, weeks of competition, and some tough calls along the way, it all comes down to this: Two startups. One decision. One $25K investment from the NC Tweener Fund.This year’s final is a contrast in almost every way.HAM is building for the future of software.Druid AgTech is building for the backbone of the physical world.One is pure AI infrastructure. The other is hardware + software grounded in real-world systems. Both are betting on massive markets. Both are early. Both are convincing.🧠 What you’ll see in this episode:AI vs. IRL: Software scale vs. physical-world defensibilitySpeed vs. traction: Fast-moving markets vs. proven executionMoat matters more at the finish line: Especially in crowded AI categoriesHardware is hard, but sticky: Barriers to entry can work in your favorPricing strategy matters: Undervaluing software can limit upsideMarket size isn’t enough: Focus and positioning decide outcomes👇 Featuring the Exceptional 8 Selection Committee:Robbie Allen – Serial AI founder & GP at NC Tweener FundCameron Walker – Operator across Pixar, Twitter, Google + LPScot Wingo – Serial founder & GP at NC Tweener Fund⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 — Welcome to Tweener Madness Championship 00:43 — Championship Intro + Final Two 02:04 — Meet the Judges04:50 — HAM Pitch 13:20 — HAM Q&A25:44 — Druid AgTech Pitch 32:30 — Druid Q&A45:40 — Judges Feedback Begins 45:45 — Feedback on HAM 46:58 — Feedback on Druid51:10 — Final Decision Discussion 53:07 — Winner Revealed (Druid AgTech) 55:00 — Closing + Community Thanks🎯 About Tweener MadnessTweener Madness is run by the NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA and showcases top startups from across North Carolina. The winner receives a $25,000 investment and statewide exposure.--- Tweener Madness is hosted by Scot Wingo, run by NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA, and brought to life by Walk West, who leads production and podcast creation.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

The second matchup of the Fabulous 4 is here This is where things shift. The ideas are sharper. The stakes are higher. And every decision starts to look a lot more like a real investment call.Druid Agriculture is building technology to modernize farming and food production, while Marla Amplification is building handcrafted, American-made music equipment.One is tackling a global systems problem. The other is rebuilding a category through craftsmanship and community.We’ve got two physical-world businesses with two totally different paths.🧠 What you’ll see in this episode:Traction matters, but real-world use cases matter moreHardware businesses face different scaling challengesB2B vs. B2C paths create very different venture outcomes 👇 Featuring the Fab 4 Selection Committee:Zakiya Alta Lee-Hill (Principal, IDEA Fund partners)Greg Boone (CEO of Walk West)Carly Connell (Principal at BCVP)👉 Subscribe for more episodes as we move through the bracket👉 Follow along as we go from the Exceptional 8 → Fantastic 4 → Championship⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 — Welcome 00:45 — Intro 01:45 — Druid Pitch 04:15 — Druid Q&A 14:20 — Marla Pitch 19:30 — Marla Q&A 33:00 — Deliberation 38:20 — Winner🎯 About Tweener MadnessTweener Madness is run by the NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA and showcases top startups from across North Carolina. The winner receives a $25,000 investment and statewide exposure.--- Tweener Madness is hosted by Scot Wingo, run by NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA, and brought to life by Walk West, who leads production and podcast creation.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

We’re down to the Fabulous 4. Four startups. Two matchups. One step closer to the $25K investment from the NC Tweener Fund.This is where things shift. The ideas are sharper. The stakes are higher. And every decision starts to look a lot more like a real investment call.Utilyst is building deep infrastructure software for utilities. HAM is building lightweight AI tooling for developers. One is grounded in physical systems and regulation. The other is riding the fastest-moving wave in tech. Two B2B plays. Two completely different paths to scale.🧠 What you’ll see in this episode: AI cost is becoming a real problem → efficiency is the next wave Clear problem vs. massive market defined the matchup Investors want dollar impact, not just features Speed + scale potential won this round👇 Featuring the Exceptional 8 Selection Committee:Zakiya Alta Lee-Hill (Principal, IDEA Fund partners)Greg Boone (CEO of Walk West)Carly Connell (Principal at BCVP)👉 Subscribe for more episodes as we move through the bracket👉 Follow along as we go from the Exceptional 8 → Fantastic 4 → Championship⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 — Welcome to Tweener Madness 00:45 — Fabulous 4 Intro: Utilist vs. HAM 08:10 — Utilist Pitch 13:00 — Utilist Q&A 23:05 — HAM Pitch 26:00 — HAM Q&A 33:00 — Judges Feedback Begins 33:10 — Feedback on Utilist 35:00 — Feedback on HAM 39:30 — Final Decision (Winner Revealed)🎯 About Tweener MadnessTweener Madness is run by the NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA and showcases top startups from across North Carolina. The winner receives a $25,000 investment and statewide exposure.--- Tweener Madness is hosted by Scot Wingo, run by NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA, and brought to life by Walk West, who leads production and podcast creation.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Round 4 of Tweener Madness is here and it’s the final matchup of the Exceptional 8. Marla Amplification vs. Build-A-BookieOne is building American-made hardware for musicians. The other is building a social platform that reimagines betting without money.Both are consumer-focused. Both are founder-driven. But only one moves forward.🧠 What you’ll see in this episode: A consumer hardware company scaling U.S.-based manufacturing  A sports tech platform gamifying predictions without financial risk  Live investor Q&A and real feedback  The tension between venture-scale returns vs. mission-driven businesses👇 Featuring the Exceptional 8 Selection Committee: - Jan Davis - RTP Angel Fund / Triangle Angel Partners  - Robbie Hardy - Accel Ventures  - Jen Summe - Primordial Ventures 👉 Subscribe for more episodes as we move through the bracket👉 Follow along as we go from the Exceptional 8 → Fantastic 4 → Championship⏱️ Timestamps00:00 — Welcome to Tweener Madness 00:45 — Round 4 Intro: Marla Amplification vs. Build-A-Bookie 01:15 — Marla Amplification Pitch 06:20 — Marla Amplification Q&A 18:00 — Build-A-Bookie Pitch 22:00 — Build-A-Bookie Q&A 30:00 — Judges Feedback Begins 30:10 — Feedback on Marla Amplification 32:00 — Feedback on Build-A-Bookie 33:30 — Debate: Venture vs. Lifestyle Business 35:00 — Final Decision (Winner Revealed)🎯 About Tweener MadnessTweener Madness is run by the NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA and showcases top startups from across North Carolina. The winner receives a $25,000 investment and statewide exposure.--- Tweener Madness is hosted by Scot Wingo, run by NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA, and brought to life by Walk West, who leads production and podcast creation.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Round 3 of Tweener Madness is here. With a spot in the next round on the line, Druid Agriculture and HuVia Technologies go head-to-head in a high-stakes pitch battle.One is building real-time infrastructure to help farmers monitor and manage crops remotely. The other is creating an AI-powered coaching platform to improve how interpreters (and eventually other professions) develop skills over time.Both are ambitious. Both are tackling real-world problems. But only one moves forward.🧠 What you’ll see in this episode:- An agtech startup bringing visibility + automation to farming- An edtech platform using AI to guide workforce development- Live investor Q&A and unfiltered feedback- Where clarity, traction, and storytelling make (or break) a pitch👇 Featuring the Exceptional 8 Selection Committee: - Jan Davis - RTP Angel Fund / Triangle Angel Partners  - Robbie Hardy - Accel Ventures  - Jen Summe - Primordial Ventures 👉 Subscribe for more episodes as we move through the bracket👉 Follow along as we go from the Exceptional 8 → Fantastic 4 → Championship00:00 — Welcome to Tweener Madness00:45 — Round 3 Intro: Druid Agriculture vs. HuVia Technologies01:15 — Druid Agriculture Pitch06:20 — Druid Agriculture Q&A15:30 — HuVia Technologies Pitch18:00 — HuVia Technologies Q&A27:20 — Judges Feedback Begins27:30 — Feedback on Druid Agriculture29:50 — Feedback on HuVia Technologies31:00 — Pitch Lessons (Clarity, Slides, Storytelling)31:30 — Final Decision (Winner Revealed)🎯 About Tweener MadnessTweener Madness is run by the NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA and showcases top startups from across North Carolina. The winner receives a $25,000 investment and statewide exposure.--- Tweener Madness is hosted by Scot Wingo, run by NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA, and brought to life by Walk West, who leads production and podcast creation.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Round 2 of Tweener Madness is here. With a spot in the next round on the line, Iguana Cyber and HAM (Hierarchical Agent Memory) go head-to-head in a high-stakes pitch battle.One is building next-gen cybersecurity to stop AI-driven exploits. The other is helping engineering teams cut AI costs and improve performance. Both are technical. Both are ambitious. But only one moves forward.🧠 What you’ll see in this episode: A cybersecurity startup tackling unknown AI threats  An AI infrastructure company optimizing token usage and cost  Live investor Q&A and real feedback  What founders get wrong (and right) when pitching technical products👇 Featuring the Round 2 Selection Committee: Jan Davis - RTP Angel Fund / Triangle Angel Partners  Robbie Hardy - Accel Ventures  Jen Summe - Primordial Ventures 👉 Subscribe for more episodes as we move through the bracket👉 Follow along as we go from the Exceptional 8 → Fantastic 4 → Championship⏱️ Timestamps00:00 — Welcome to Tweener Madness 00:45 — Round 2 Intro: Iguana Cyber vs. HAM01:15 — Iguana Cyber Pitch06:20 — Iguana Cyber Q&A15:30 — HAM Pitch18:00 — HAM Q&A27:20 — Judges Feedback Begins27:30 — Feedback on Iguana Cyber29:50 — Feedback on HAM31:00 — Pitch Lessons (Clarity, Jargon, Slides)31:30 — Final Decision (Winner Revealed)🎯 About Tweener MadnessTweener Madness is run by the NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA and showcases top startups from across North Carolina. The winner receives a $25,000 investment and statewide exposure.--- Tweener Madness is hosted by Scot Wingo, run by NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA, and brought to life by Walk West, who leads production and podcast creation.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

8 founders. One bracket. $25,000 on the line. Welcome to Tweener Madness 2026, the high-stakes startup competition where North Carolina’s most promising companies go head-to-head.In this Round 1 matchup, Utilyst and BeneDoc step into the arena to pitch their businesses to a panel of experienced investors. Each founder has one shot to make their case, answer tough questions, and prove they deserve to advance.One moves on. One goes home.🧠 What you’ll see in this episode: A power infrastructure startup tackling knowledge loss in utilities  A healthtech company rethinking regulatory workflows with AI  Live investor Q&A and real-time feedback  Behind-the-scenes judge deliberation (what actually matters in a pitch) 👇 Featuring the Round 1 Selection Committee: Jan Davis - RTP Angel Fund / Triangle Angel Partners  Robbie Hardy - Accel Ventures  Jen Summe - Primordial Ventures 👉 Subscribe for more episodes as we move through the bracket👉 Follow along as we go from the Exceptional 8 → Fantastic 4 → Championship⏱️ Timestamps00:00 — Welcome to Tweener Madness  00:45 — Meet the Selection Committee  03:05 — Format + What’s new this year  05:05 — Matchup Intro: Utilyst vs. BeneDoc  05:35 — Utilyst Pitch  10:30 — Utilyst Q&A with Judges  20:40 — BeneDoc Pitch  26:15 — BeneDoc Q&A with Judges  40:00 — Judges Deliberation Begins  41:10 — Feedback on Utilyst  43:10 — Feedback on BeneDoc  46:20 — Pitch Lessons + What stood out  49:05 — Final Decision (Winner Revealed)🎯 About Tweener MadnessTweener Madness is run by the NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA and showcases top startups from across North Carolina. The winner receives a $25,000 investment and statewide exposure.--- Tweener Madness is hosted by Scot Wingo, run by NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA, and brought to life by Walk West, who leads production and podcast creation.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

This episode kicks off Season 2 of Tweener Madness and sets the stage for what’s ahead. You’ll get:The evolution of Tweener (from list → fund → statewide platform)Why this competition exists (and why founders love it)How the bracket worksWhat judges are actually looking forAnd of course… the reveal of all 8 competing companiesThis isn’t just a competition. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at how early-stage investors think.🔥 What Were the Biggest Takeaways From the Selection Show?Tweener officially expands statewide with NC IDEA partnership$4M investment from NC IDEA fuels the next phase50+ startups applied from across North CarolinaFocus on venture-scale, IP-driven companies (not lifestyle businesses)Real investor judges, real feedback, real decisionsFounders iterate pitches throughout the competitionEpisodes drop starting March 31, leading to a live championshipThe stage is set. The pitches are ready. Now it’s time to see who can rise above the rest.Timestamps 00:00 – Welcome to Tweener Madness 2026 00:40 – Tweener origin story (List → Fund → Media) 02:40 – NC IDEA partnership + statewide expansion 04:00 – Why founders love this format 05:00 – Sponsors + ecosystem support 06:20 – Meet the judges 10:10 – How the bracket works 12:00 – Selection criteria explained 15:20 – What didn’t make the cut (and why) 17:40 – The Exceptional 8 revealed 22:20 – Bracket matchups 23:30 – What’s next + episode schedule--- This episode of Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

What does a go-to-market engineer actually do, and why is this role suddenly showing up everywhere?In this episode, we unpack one of the fastest-evolving roles in modern startups. Evan shares how he went from using ChatGPT as a college student and new BDR to helping build AI-powered systems inside one of the Triangle’s best-known software companies.The conversation covers how AI is changing outbound sales, why intent signals matter more than generic research, how tools like Clay, Cursor, Cloud Code, Lovable, n8n, and Supabase fit into a modern GTM stack, and why great go-to-market engineering is about making humans better, not replacing them.Highlights CoveredWhat a go-to-market engineer is and why the role is growing fastHow Evan turned experimentation as a BDR into a new AI-focused role at PendoWhy intent signals + research create stronger outbound outreach than either one aloneHow Pendo uses AI to make BDRs faster, more focused, and more effectiveThe difference between SDR inbound signals and BDR outbound signalsHow tools like Clay help enrich leads, personalize messages, and trigger outreach quicklyWhy the CRM still matters as the source of truth in an AI-heavy workflowHow Evan builds internal dashboards using Salesforce, Supabase, Lovable, n8n, and Cloud CodeWhy GTM engineering is likely to split into multiple specialties over timeHow AI can increase sales productivity without replacing the people doing the workIf you’re a founder, operator, or revenue leader trying to understand where AI fits into your go-to-market motion, this episode is a practical look at what that future already looks like inside a fast-moving North Carolina company.Timestamps:05:05 — Meet Evan Inscoe from Pendo08:05 — Evan’s background and discovering AI early10:28 — What a BDR actually does13:04 — How Evan created his own path into GTM engineering16:29 — What the go-to-market engineer role looked like at the start19:05 — Breaking down the BDR workflow21:40 — Where Pendo is today after nine months of GTM engineering23:00 — How Pendo uses Clay24:45 — What counts as an intent signal26:00 — Inbound vs outbound signals31:00 — Why CRM still matters35:20 — Measuring impact and efficiency gains36:00 — Building dashboards with Lovable, Supabase, and n8n42:35 — Tools Evan recommends most43:40 — Driving adoption across the team45:20 — Where GTM engineering is headed next48:00 — Why AI won’t replace BDRs48:45 — Evan’s next big projectWhere to Find Scot Wingo:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/X: https://x.com/scotwingoWhere to Find Evan Inscoe:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evaninscoe/--- This episode of Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

This episode is a special one. We’re replaying NC IDEA’s Ecosysteming Podcast episode featuring Scot and Robbie following the announcement of the new North Carolina Tweener Fund, powered by NC IDEA. (Check out the announcement.) The conversation covers the “why” behind the partnership, how the Tweener model works, why statewide startup data matters, how founders can connect with the fund, and why this effort could attract even more outside capital into North Carolina. It’s part ecosystem strategy, part founder playbook, and part invitation to think bigger about what’s possible for startups across the state.Highlights coveredNC IDEA and the formerly Triangle-focused Tweener Fund have joined forces to create the North Carolina Tweener Fund powered by NC IDEA. The partnership expands the Tweener model from the Triangle to all of North CarolinaRobbie shares his own story of receiving an NC IDEA grant in 2009 and how that support helped launch his startup journeyScot explains the origin of the Tweener List and how it became the foundation for the fund’s index-style approachThe fund is designed to invest in a basket of promising North Carolina startups, helping reduce risk through diversificationThe discussion reinforces the idea that North Carolina has a uniquely broad startup base across sectors like AI, healthtech, agtech, aviation, manufacturing, ecommerce, and moreThom Ruhe highlights how better startup data helps ecosystem builders, policymakers, and funders make smarter decisionsScot and Robbie explain how increased visibility and deal activity can help pull more outside capital into the stateFounders are encouraged to reach out directly, the approach is intentionally founder-friendly and operator-ledThe episode also outlines how accredited investors can participate, including through AngelList and, in some cases, retirement vehicles like self-directed IRAsNorth Carolina’s startup ecosystem has been building toward this moment for years, and this conversation makes one thing clear: the next chapter is going to be bigger, broader, and more connected than ever.Timestamps:2:00 – Thom Ruhe introduces the episode and announces the NC Tweener Fund powered by NC IDEA2:49 – Scot and Robbie react to the early excitement around the statewide expansion4:00 – Why the NC IDEA and Tweener relationship makes sense from an ecosystem perspective6:17 – Thom explains the bigger mission: creating a virtuous cycle for North Carolina’s economy7:20 – Robbie’s background, his 2009 NC IDEA grant, and why NC IDEA mattered to his startup journey11:05 – Robbie on joining Scot and helping grow the Tweener Fund12:08 – Thom sets up the fund thesis and why the Tweener model stands out14:03 – Scot’s background, startup history, and “pay it forward” approach to ecosystem building16:47 – Scot explains product-market fit and why “tweener” companies are such an important stage18:59 – The origin story of the Tweener List20:18 – How the Tweener Fund grew out of the list and why diversification matters22:50 – The index-fund analogy and how the Tweener model works23:30 – How AI is changing startup timing and why Tweener is selectively moving earlier in some cases25:07 – Why the Tweener List matters for policymakers and ecosystem builders28:03 – Why mapping startups is harder than most people think29:12 – What North Carolina startup formation data says about the state’s momentum30:50 – Why becoming one of the most active funds matters for attracting attention and capital33:20 – How outside VCs discover North Carolina through Tweener’s activity35:28 – The case for bringing more outside capital into North Carolina37:30 – How entrepreneurs can approach the North Carolina Tweener Fund38:47 – How LPs and accredited investors can get involved41:44 – Fund structure, fees, and why the model aims to be accessible44:10 – Where to learn more and how to invest through the website46:53 – Final thoughts on ecosystem impact and investment opportunities47:52 – Quarterly LP webinars and using retirement vehicles like Alto49:10 – Closing reflections on building a statewide startup ecosystemWhere to Find Scot Wingo:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/X: https://x.com/scotwingoWhere to Find Robbie Allen:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbieallen/Where to Find Thom Ruhe:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasruhe/--- This episode of Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html   ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In this episode, we unpack how a college capstone project turned into a scalable system for custom-fit 3D-printed bracing, moving from “hours in CAD” to minutes with automated design templates. We get into the origin story, the technology moat, go-to-market evolution, fundraising, and the founder mindset required to stay in the game.Highlights coveredHow PROTECT3D started with a custom brace for a Duke teammateWhy “one-size-fits-none” is the real problem in bracingThe core workflow: iPhone scan → automated digital design → 3D printHow they reduced design time from 5+ hours to under 5 minutesMaterial/printing approaches and why they use multiple technologiesScaling from sports to insurance-reimbursable clinical productsExpansion into military / defense applications via non-dilutive fundingFounder lessons: failing fast, surviving COVID-era building, and gritKevin’s advice to younger founders: keep going, the grind is the gameCustom-fit should be the norm, and PROTECT3D is building the rails to make that possible at scale. If you’re a founder working at the intersection of software + real-world manufacturing, this one is packed with practical lessons and a lot of heart.Timestamps:00:04:29 — Kevin’s background: Greensboro → Duke mechanical engineering + football00:05:43 — The spark: 3D-printing a custom brace for an injured teammate00:06:37 — “One-size-fits-none”: why off-the-shelf bracing fails most bodies00:10:23 — Turning it into a real company through Duke I&E + early traction00:12:21 — Early funding: friends & family + NC IDEA Micro Grant path00:16:45 — The modern 3-step process: app scan → digital fabrication → 3D print00:17:11 — From traveling to scan athletes… to scanning with an iPhone app00:23:29 — Scaling breakthrough: design time drops from 5+ hours to <5 minutes00:24:19 — Growth: working with over half of NFL teams + other leagues00:25:21 — Beyond sports: clinics, insurance reimbursement, nationwide footprint00:32:44 — Fundraising + non-dilutive: ~$5.5M raised, including DoD/SBIR support00:34:44 — Founder lessons: fail fast, market expansion timing, surviving COVID00:36:25 — Team size: 12 FTE + ~5 contractors; vision for clinical-scale bracing00:38:30 — New channel: “at-home” scanning + direct-to-consumer experiments00:41:18 — Kevin’s message to young founders: keep at it, the grind doesn’t stopWhere to Find Kevin Gehsmann:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-gehsmann/Front PROTECT3D: https://protect3d.io/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html   ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

This episode is a big one. There’s a lot of noise right now around AI, venture, and whether SaaS is fundamentally broken. Public markets are re-rating software companies. Seed rounds are shifting. Pricing models are changing. And founders are asking the same question:“Are we toast?”Joe Mancini from Front Porch is in a unique position to answer that. His firm sits inside dozens of funds and startups across the Southeast and beyond. He sees what’s working, and what’s not, in real time. So we dug into the thesis behind their “SaaS is Dead” piece, what it actually means, and what founders should be doing right now.Highlights coveredWhy SaaS is being re-rated in public marketsWhether this is permanent or cyclicalAI-native vs. AI-immigrant companiesThe collapse (and split) of the traditional “seed” roundWhy vertical SaaS may explode in this eraHow founders should think about churn in the AI eraInternal resistance to AI adoption (and why it’s dangerous)What venture firms are actually looking for right nowThe next decade belongs to founders who deeply understand their vertical, obsess over customer value, and move fast enough to build moats before the standards settle.Timestamps:07:00 – From sports radio to venture capital10:30 – The hybrid fund model explained16:50 – Why they wrote “Yes, SaaS Is Dead”18:00 – The SaaS public market re-rating21:00 – The split in seed investing23:30 – AI-native vs AI-immigrant companies27:00 – The 3-layer cycle of every tech revolution30:00 – The 2x2: where opportunity lives now33:00 – Why vertical beats horizontal right now38:00 – Internal AI adoption is non-optional39:30 – The shift from seat pricing to performance pricing51:00 – What actually counts as a moat in AIWhere to Find Joe Mancini:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpmancini/Front Porch Venture Partners: https://www.frontporchvp.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.orgGold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html   ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

We started the Tweener List in 2015 with the idea of local founders paying it forward to help amplify and support our local startup ecosystem. Based on the popularity of that list and a grassroots effort to innovate a new way to help fund and support local founders, in 2022 we started the Tweener Fund.That’s good, but it’s not enough. We’re always asking the community of founders we support - what else can we do to help you grow your companies, raise capital, provide more resources, enhance the community, etc. So, in the last two years we launched numerous community facing resources, including Tweener Talks.What’s Next? 👉 NC Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA! In this episode, Scot and Robbie hit the highlights of our newest adventure:Expanding geography from Triangle to NC (strategy and everything else stays consistent)Increasing our investment $/Q - that means more companies will be supportedBigger pool of potential investors (LPs)We'll be expanding our events, content and moreStay tuned for future news!Timestamps:00:32 – Big Announcement: Becoming the North Carolina Tweener Fund (Powered by NC IDEA)00:53 – The Origin Story: Tweener List (2015)01:28 – Launch of the Tweener Fund (2022)01:35 – Expansion into Founder Content (Tweener Times, Tweener Talks, Community Hub)03:52 – Robby’s NC IDEA Grant Story (2009)04:36 – Why the NC IDEA Partnership Makes Sense05:08 – Expanding Beyond the Triangle to All of North Carolina06:07 – What Qualifies as a North Carolina06:53 – Increasing Investments Per Quarter07:22 – What’s NOT Changing (Commitment + Triangle HQ)08:32 – Breaking Down NC Regions09:40 – PitchBook Data: Where NC Startups Are Located10:23 – Geographic Diversification Strategy Going Forward11:21 – How to Get Involved (Investors + Sponsors)12:26 – Thank You + Official Welcome to the NC Tweener Fund Era--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In this episode of Triangle Tweener Talks, we unpack what it really takes to go from professor to CEO, how InsightFinder built trust in a skeptical enterprise market, and where LLMs help (and don’t) when you’re dealing with machine telemetry data. They also explore multi-agent workflows, “composite AI,” practical enterprise adoption hurdles, and Helen’s advice for students navigating an AI-shaped future.Highlights coveredHelen’s origin story: NASA Pathfinder work → distributed systems reliability → ML-based predictionThe Google chapter: being invited to evaluate anomaly-detection algorithms with SRE teamsBootstrapping InsightFinder via NSF/SBIR funding + early angels, before raising traditional VCThe professor-to-CEO transition: prioritization over “balance,” and learning to adapt dailyWhy founders should lead early sales (especially when the product is new-to-the-world)How InsightFinder runs enterprise PoCs using a “replay mechanism” on historical incidents“Composite AI” + using LLMs to translate technical insights into understandable narrativesIf you’ve ever wondered what “AI that actually works” looks like in the enterprise, and how a research-driven founder earns trust at Fortune scale, this one’s a must-listen.Timestamps00:02:12 — Intro to Helen + what InsightFinder does00:04:32 — Helen’s background at NC State00:05:49 — Google discovers the research00:06:24 — NSF/SBIR bootstrap + company start00:07:10 — Early ML roots (since 2000)00:08:54 — NASA Pathfinder origin story00:12:03 — Teaching + student questions evolving00:13:28 — Student → PhD → InsightFinder spark00:14:36 — Professor + CEO time management00:17:39 — Learning sales as a founder00:21:24 — Funding path: SBIR + angels + first VC00:22:44 — IDEA Fund connection story00:24:19 — LLM era impact + “composite AI”00:26:45 — LLMs as the interface layer00:28:20 — Plain-English explanation of InsightFinder00:31:04 — Agent workflows (Jira, probing, reports)00:32:31 — Multi-agent + SLM orchestration00:35:32 — PoCs: dogfood + replay mechanism00:37:41 — How early detection works (hours ahead)00:39:00 — Series B + scaling go-to-market00:43:00 — LLMs: maturity + “last mile” problem00:45:30 — Fine-tuning + trust risks00:47:14 — Advice for students + fundamentals#TriangleTweenerTalks #TriangleStartups #NCState #AIOps #Observability #SiteReliability #SRE #DistributedSystems #MachineLearning #EnterpriseAI #LLMs #AgenticAI #MCP #StartupJourney #FounderStories #B2BSoftware #DeepTech #RaleighDurham #NorthCarolinaTech--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In Part 1 of this conversation on Triangle Tweener Talks, we walked through how David built Offline over 13 years, three companies, multiple pivots, and a subscription model that finally worked.In Part 2, we shift gears. This episode is about leverage. David breaks down how he went from running a ~34-person team to operating a multi-city business with ~2.5 people, not by cutting corners, but by rebuilding the company around AI-first systems, orchestration, and context-aware automation.This is not “AI news.” This is how a founder is actually using AI day to day.Highlights from Part 2AI adoption started as a “copywriting intern,” not a silver bulletThe biggest fork: people who learned how to talk to models vs. people who gave upThe real unlock came when David built his first full-stack app himselfTools like Cursor and Cloud Code collapsed the barrier between idea and executionOffline stopped adding features to a monolith, and started building around itn8n became the orchestration layer that glued everything togetherMost business problems don’t need apps, they need glue codeAI SDRs fail today because context is fragmented and CRMs are a messThe right approach is decomposing SDR work into atomic stepsContext windows are the real constraint, not intelligenceDavid now runs a personal “Chief of Staff” GitHub repo with 70–80 skillsThe company itself is slowly becoming a file system agents can read and write fromIf you’re thinking about automation, agents, or headcount, this one will change how you think about all three.Where to Find David Shaner:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Offline Media: https://www.letsgetoffline.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingoTimestamps00:00–02:30 – Why Part 2 matters02:30–06:00 – Phase 1: AI as a copywriting intern06:00–10:00 – Phase 2: coding, Cursor, and the “hit by a bus” moment10:00–13:00 – Why founders need to build something themselves13:00–17:00 – Orchestration layers and why n8n won17:00–21:00 – Why AI SDRs mostly don’t work yet21:00–24:30 – Context windows, atomic steps, and agent design24:30–27:30 – Debugging workflows like a human27:30–31:30 – How Offline reduced headcount without losing velocity31:30–36:00 – Self-service platforms for restaurants and events36:00–39:30 – Cloud Code, skill files, and the “singularity” moment39:30–44:00 – The Chief of Staff repo and what comes next--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Gold Sponsors: Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-en... EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/conte...  2025 Sponsors: Extensis HR: http://www.extensishr.com/ ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. In this episode, we focus on Offline’s origin story and business evolution, not AI (yet).Highlights from Part 1Offline has effectively been three different companies under one brandEarly versions tried to reinvent Meetup, and failedA city-guide app reached ~3M people/month but couldn’t monetizeConsumer businesses can look successful while quietly breakingSubscription was the first model that truly workedRestaurants don’t want “deal seekers”, they want incremental revenueOffline works because it optimizes excess capacity, not discountsCOVID forced a near-shutdown, and a total rethink of operationsToday, Offline runs across 10 cities with ~600 restaurants and ~10,000 subscribersMost founders only hear about the winning version of a company. This episode shows the cost of getting there: years of pivots, wrong turns, false confidence, and learning, sometimes the hard way, how markets actually work.Offline didn’t succeed because of a clever growth hack. It survived because David kept learning, iterating, and refusing to confuse traction with sustainability.Where to Find David Shaner:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/Offline Media: https://www.letsgetoffline.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingoTimestamps00:00–02:30 – Introduction & what this two-part series will cover02:30–05:30 – David’s background, NC State, and discovering entrepreneurship05:30–08:00 – The original idea: human connection in a screen-first world08:00–11:30 – Era 1: trying (and failing) to reinvent Meetup11:30–13:30 – Era 2: city guides, millions of users, zero monetization13:30–15:40 – Era 3: subscriptions finally click15:40–17:30 – COVID, near shutdown, and survival17:30–23:30 – Why restaurants accept discounts (the airplane seat analogy)23:30–25:30 – Why Groupon failed restaurants — and why Offline didn’t25:30–44:00 – Productivity, systems thinking, and process obsession44:00–45:10 – What’s coming in Part 2--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  2025 Sponsors: - Extensis HR: http://www.extensishr.com/ ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

Part 2 picks up where the origin story ends, and where the real work begins.Tony breaks down the three phases of Phononic: proving the science, surviving productization, and ultimately finding the market where solid-state cooling wasn’t just better, but mission-critical. It’s a candid look at why deep-tech companies require patience, capital discipline, and brutal focus to survive.This is the episode for founders navigating scale, manufacturing, or markets that don’t yet exist.Highlights from Part 2The three semiconductor problems Phononic had to solve, togetherWhy feasibility took ~$10–15M before a real product even existedThe hidden cost of productization (and why Phase 2 was the most dangerous)Why Phononic nearly spread itself too thin across HVAC, cold chain, and data centers“Market → product fit” vs. product → market fitThe moment AI and accelerated computing changed everythingWhy data centers became Phononic’s core focusLicensing non-core markets instead of shutting them downTony’s three most important lessons for founders building outside Silicon ValleyPhononic’s story isn’t about chasing trends, it’s about surviving long enough for timing, technology, and market need to finally align.For founders building deep tech, Part 2 is a reminder: focus is strategy, patience is power, and big outcomes demand big ambition.Where to Find Tony Atti:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-atti-ph-d-316483/TradePending: https://phononic.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingoTimestamps:05:55 — Back in conversation: “layman’s version of the 3 problems”06:06 — The 3 fundamentals: material science, semiconductor processing, packaging07:40 — The 3 metrics that matter: coldness, electricity consumed, work/heat pumped per area08:31 — Doing university partnerships “right the first time” (no cap table traps)09:35 — Key insight: academia solved pieces separately; Phononic integrated all 309:47 — First chips built on Centennial Campus; early build process vs today’s automation10:36 — Cost to feasibility: roughly ~$10M to get to commercially meaningful chips11:33 — Phase 2 = productization (unexpected + expensive)11:45 — Big lesson: market/product fit (not product/market)12:28 — Reality of productization: inventing mechanical/thermal/software/firmware + supply chain from scratch13:30 — The mistake: trying to productize across 3 huge markets at once (HVAC, cold chain, data centers)15:34 — Why it was intoxicating: solid-state = smaller/better/faster/efficient + millisecond response time16:25 — The strategic pivot: raise $100M to go deep in one vertical + license non-core17:22 — Data centers weren’t obviously mission-critical (then)18:15 — Inflection: jump to 1.6T + cooling becomes critical for signal integrity19:08 — COVID tailwinds: vaccine cold chain + air quality/HVAC relevance19:37 — AI compute explosion: optics → GPUs → switches → whole data center becomes thermal hotspot20:38 — Licensing moves: PeltierPro for cold chain/merchandising; Halton for HVAC21:17 — Company snapshot: ~100–140 people; 30k sq ft fab in Durham; Fabrinet Thailand; teams in Thailand + China21:53 — EBITDA positive Q4; 2026 forecast revised up; possible cash-flow positivity mid-202623:26 — Tony’s 3 founder lessons: market/product fit, ruthless focus, dream big (same work for $100M vs $1B)--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  2025 Sponsors: - Extensis HR: http://www.extensishr.com/ ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In this episode (Part 1), we cover the origin story. Tony walks through the decisions, failures, and inflection points that led to Phononic’s founding: leaving the Northeast for graduate school at USC, working on applied energy systems at JPL during the Mars rover era, and learning painful but formative lessons from a university spin-out that didn’t work.Then comes the moment you can’t script. In the fall of 2008, while the global financial system is actively collapsing, Tony presents a research thesis on why semiconductors transformed everything except cooling. He walks out that same day with a term sheet and a $2M commitment to found Phononic.Highlights from Part 1Growing up blue-collar in Buffalo and why that shaped Tony’s leadership styleThe career-defining decision to leave the Northeast for USCWhat JPL teaches you about rigor, testing, and humilityWhy most university spin-outs struggle with equity alignmentHow venture capital experience sharpened Tony’s founder instinctsWhy cooling is the last unsolved semiconductor frontierFounding Phononic the day Lehman collapsedWhy the Triangle, and NC State’s Centennial Campus, won as Phononic’s homeWhere to Find Tony Atti:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-atti-ph-d-316483/TradePending: https://phononic.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingoTimestamps:01:40 — Scot tees up why Tony is a “special treat” + why Phononic matters in the Triangle03:50 — Travel / frequent flyer miles (4M miles + recent global sprint)05:10 — Why Phononic is a “quiet deep tech giant” more people should know05:23 — Tony background: blue-collar Buffalo + early “entrepreneur roots” (paper route, driveways, grass)06:00 — Parents + upbringing + being the only Italian family in an Irish neighborhood06:50 — “Boardroom to factory floor” comfort as a leadership superpower07:07 — College path: biochem → decides against med school → USC opportunity08:20 — USC + energy/sustainability roots before it had a name08:50 — JPL/Caltech work: solid polymer electrolytes + Mars-era applied R&D10:07 — JPL geek-out: what JPL does + Tony’s work context11:42 — Engineering culture: redundancy, testing, quality mindset11:56 — Funny JPL story: Tony’s dad jokes “it’s all fake, filmed here”12:26 — The Martian detail: radioisotope thermoelectric generator explanation12:59 — First startup failure: university IP / cap table misalignment lessons14:23 — Timeline bridge: how that failure pushed Tony into VC + founding MHI Energy Partners15:48 — The Phononic founding story starts: 2007–08 crisis + job search16:46 — Venrock mentor moment: “world doesn’t need another VC” challenge17:00 — Thesis: semiconductors transformed everything except cooling/heating17:41 — 3-month “liars and thieves” tour: universities + semiconductor ecosystem due diligence18:20 — Thermoelectrics vs vapor compression (what makes solid-state different)19:16 — The pitch day: Lehman collapse on the screens while Tony presents20:45 — Term sheet drop: $2M commitment + “founded the company that afternoon”21:33 — Why Venrock matters / halo effect (Scot commentary)21:59 — Why North Carolina: portfolio company move + Tony relocates23:26 — Why RTP/NC State won: Centennial Campus enabled fast lab/fab buildout--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  2025 Sponsors: - Extensis HR: http://www.extensishr.com/ ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In Part 2 of the conversation with Brice Englert, we move from origin story to execution and scale. We cover:Pricing without overthinking: how TradePending set pricing before having perfect dataSales-first growth: building an outside sales motion that paid for itself quicklyScaling with discipline: reaching profitability fast and choosing when to reinvestPrivate equity, from the founder’s seat: rolling equity, staying on, and navigating majority ownershipGrowing TAM over time: expanding the product surface area instead of chasing a massive TAM upfrontWhat’s next: stepping aside as CEO, staying on the board, and gearing up for the next auto tech companyBrice’s story is a masterclass in building a durable SaaS company without shortcuts, staying close to customers, making practical decisions early, and expanding only when the foundation could support it. Part 2 shows what happens when disciplined execution meets long-term thinking.Where to Find Brice Englert:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briceenglert/TradePending: https://tradepending.comWhere to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingoTimestamps:05:10 – Starting TradePending and early engineering decisions06:20 – Finding the first lead engineer06:55 – First product build and rapid time to market07:25 – SaaS business model and early monetization08:55 – Pricing strategy and premium positioning09:45 – Why pricing doesn’t need to be perfect early10:25 – Sales-led growth and early break-even11:55 – Refining the sales motion and deployment speed12:00 – Launching second and third products13:05 – Reaching meaningful scale and revenue milestones13:25 – Deciding to explore growth and exit options14:00 – Choosing a majority private equity partner15:55 – Staying on post-deal and rolling equity17:05 – Working with PE and scaling responsibly18:10 – Acquisitions and expanding the platform19:30 – Stepping aside as CEO and planning the next chapter21:00 – Lessons on leverage, risk, and capital structure22:10 – Using AI tools to build the next company23:30 – Teasing the next startup24:10 – Reflections on TAM and long-term growth26:00 – How TAM expands through customer-led innovation28:05 – Final takeaways and closing thoughts--- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  2025 Sponsors: - Extensis HR: http://www.extensishr.com/ ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In this episode (Part 1), Brice shares the early story: how the idea formed, how he got the first version built, what the market told him at the beginning, and what he did to push through the inevitable uncertainty that comes with building from scratch.This is the origin story and early foundation of TradePending, before the scaling years.You’ll hear:How Brice got started and why he chose automotive as the arenaWhat the earliest product looked like (and what didn’t work first)The “crowded market” problem, and how Brice found an opening anywayEarly execution lessons: getting something live, getting customers, and learning fastThe mindset shift from idea → real business momentumTradePending’s story is a reminder that the early stage isn’t about having the perfect model, it’s about building something real, listening hard, and creating momentum one customer at a time.Where to Find Brice Englert:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briceenglert/TradePending: https://tradepending.comWhere to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingoTimestamps:01:57 – Introduction to Brice Englert02:50 – How Scot discovered TradePending05:30 – Brice’s background and early career07:30 – Engineering, Air Force, and selling technology08:15 – MBA and early entrepreneurship exposure11:45 – Corporate lessons from UBS14:00 – Entering auto tech through M&A17:10 – How acquirers evaluate startups22:00 – From corporate development to operator24:10 – The idea behind TradePending25:50 – Naming the company and early vision27:00 – Leaving corporate and managing risk30:55 – Taking the leap into entrepreneurship33:25 – Early funding and staying lean34:30 – Customer feedback and early skepticism38:35 – Competing in a crowded market40:00 – NC IDEA rejection40:12 – Rejection as fuel --- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.  We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  2025 Sponsors: - Extensis HR: http://www.extensishr.com/ ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In this special solo episode of Triangle Tweener Talks, Scot goes beyond the two-part Tweener Times report to walk founders through what the data actually means in practice. This episode exists for one reason: to give Triangle founders clearer goalposts, better context, and fewer surprises when they sit down to raise capital.Tune in to hear:How founders can self-service fundraising expectations using real Triangle dataThe most common caps, discounts, and raise sizes at each stageWhy $1M ARR is a major valuation inflection pointSAFE vs convertible note vs priced round, when each actually makes senseWhat investors look for at Seed vs Series A (and why many founders get stuck)How founder-market fit and AI trends skew early valuationsWhy Triangle companies often raise less, and why that’s a strengthWhere to read each part:Part 1: https://www.tweenertimes.com/p/part-iii-triangle-startup-venture Part 2: https://www.tweenertimes.com/p/part-iiii-the-triangles-first-andWhere to Find Scot Wingo:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/X: https://x.com/scotwingoIn this episode:00:00 – 03:00 Why this data exists & the founder questions it answers03:00 – 07:00 How the Tweener Fund dataset was built (and anonymized)07:00 – 15:00 The origin of the Tweener List and index strategy15:00 – 22:00 How funding stages are defined by company progress22:00 – 35:00 SAFEs, convertible notes, priced rounds — explained35:00 – 45:00 How deal structures change from Pre-Seed to Series A45:00 – 59:00 Valuations, raises, and dilution by stage59:00 – 1:07:00 What founders should actually do with this dataIf this is your first time really digging into venture fundraising, you’ll hear a few terms that investors use casually but aren’t always obvious. Here’s a quick guide to the most common ones we reference in this episode:Pre-Seed: The earliest stage of venture funding. Often used to fund initial product development, early customer discovery, or getting to a first version of product-market fit. Rounds are typically smaller and more founder-bet driven.Seed: The stage where a company has early traction and is working to prove repeatability. Investors expect evidence that customers want the product, not just that it can be built.Series A: A growth-oriented round where the question shifts from “Does this work?” to “Can this scale?” Metrics, revenue quality, and go-to-market execution matter much more here.Valuation: The implied value of your company during a fundraise. In early stages, this is often based more on progress, team, and market than on traditional financial metrics.Pre-Money vs. Post-MoneyPre-money: Your company’s valuation before new capital is investedPost-money: Your valuation after the new money comes inThis distinction matters a lot for understanding dilution.Dilution: The percentage of ownership founders give up when they raise capital. More money or a higher valuation doesn’t always mean less dilution — structure matters.SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity): A popular early-stage investment instrument that delays setting a valuation until a future priced round. Simple in theory, nuanced in practice.Convertible Note: A loan that converts into equity later, usually at a discount or valuation cap. Older than SAFEs and still common, especially with certain investors.Valuation Cap: The maximum valuation at which an investor’s SAFE or note will convert. Lower caps are better for investors; higher caps are better for founders.Discount: A percentage reduction applied to a future valuation to reward early investors when their investment converts.Priced Round: A funding round where the valuation is explicitly set and equity is issued immediately. More complex, but often clearer once companies reach later stages.Progress-Driven Investing: Scot’s way of describing how early-stage investors price risk: capital is deployed based on company progress (traction, learning, momentum), not perfection.Founder-Market Fit: How well a founder’s background, experience, and insight align with the problem they’re solving. This often plays an outsized role in very early valuations.---This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:Gold Sponsors:Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneursEisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.comRobinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.comSilver Sponsors:Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.coBank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html2025 Sponsors:Extensis HR: http://www.extensishr.com/ ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In Part 2 of this two-part deep dive, Triangle Tweener Talks host Scot Wingo sits down with legendary Triangle founder Mike Doernberg to explore his journey on scaling multiple companies, spinning out new ventures, navigating private equity, and why he never left North Carolina.Tune in to hear:How ReverbNation grew from a side project into a 6M-artist platformThe spin-out journey behind Adwerx, and why it workedMike’s framework for identifying spinoff opportunities inside existing companiesWhy the team is the company, and why incubated teams can struggleThe origins of PlayMetrics and the youth-sports system-of-record visionHow Mike navigates private equity without losing culture or controlWhat PE adds that venture capital often can’tWhat it’s like to scale from 25 people to 450+Mike’s long view on the Triangle startup ecosystem, then vs. nowWhy he never moved to the Bay AreaWhether a Mike-led venture studio might be next 👀Where to Find Mike Doernberg:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldoernberg/PlayMetrics: https://home.playmetrics.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/X: https://x.com/scotwingoIn this episode:00:05 — Welcome to Part 2 with Mike Doernberg00:12 — Coming back from “Home Depot retirement”00:18 — The origin and explosive growth of ReverbNation00:27 — Solving the cold-start problem before it had a name00:33 — Building Promote.it → the foundation for Adwerx00:42 — Spinning out Adwerx and structuring the deal00:52 — Should Mike run a venture studio? Scott pushes him01:00 — Why incubating ideas is easier than incubating founders01:10 — The spinout challenge: talent dilution01:15 — The path to PlayMetrics and modernizing youth sports01:27 — Selling Reverb to focus fully on PlayMetrics01:38 — Navigating private equity the right way01:47 — How PE can empower (not suffocate) founders01:55 — Running a 450-person org and learning a new leadership mode02:03 — Why Mike stayed in the Triangle — and how the ecosystem evolved02:16 — Triangle vs. Bay Area: culture, risk, and quality of life02:30 — Final reflections & Scott’s challenge on a future venture studio02:38 — Outro & sponsor thank-yous---This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:Gold Sponsors:Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneursEisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.comRobinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.comSilver Sponsors:Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.coBank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html2025 Sponsors:Extensis HR: http://www.extensishr.com/ ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

In Part 1 of this two-part deep dive, Triangle Tweener Talks host Scot Wingo sits down with legendary Triangle founder Mike Doernberg to explore the earliest chapters of his career, from CPA to multi-exit entrepreneur.Mike walks through the founding of Marathon, the rise of early PC-driven consulting, the creation and spinout of SmartPath, raising capital through the old-school angel gauntlets, navigating the DoubleClick acquisition, and why “retirement” lasted all of three months.Tune in to hear:What the early startup ecosystem looked like before the Triangle was “the Triangle.”The origins of Marathon and how the rise of PCs and early web consulting created new opportunities.How a project inside GlaxoSmithKline became the spark that turned into the SmartPath product.Mike’s philosophy for spinning out products successfully, and why strict separation is essential.Raising capital in the 90s and early 2000s: angel gauntlets, tough rooms, and memorable TIG stories.The SmartPath exit to DoubleClick and why Mike now believes they sold too early.How exiting young led him to a very short-lived “retirement” and why founders struggle to sit still.Where to Find Mike Doernberg:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldoernberg/PlayMetrics: https://home.playmetrics.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/X: https://x.com/scotwingoIn this episode:01:02 – Mike’s early background & move to NC03:30 – Becoming a CPA but wanting more05:54 – Early exposure to startups at Ernst & Young07:50 – Why entrepreneurship became inevitable09:50 – Story of Burl Software and Y2K12:10 – How Marathon was formed13:22 – Rising PC adoption and early web consulting14:51 – Early e-commerce and building internet applications17:00 – How the GlaxoSmithKline project inspired SmartPath19:06 – The power of deeply understanding a customer problem20:34 – Building early commerce & workflow applications23:40 – SmartPath as an early low-code platform24:59 – Why selling SmartPath was his biggest mistake26:00 – Raising venture in the 90s & 2000s28:20 – The TIG pitching gauntlet30:00 – A founder’s early-career fear of the unknown31:10 – The SmartPath exit to DoubleClick33:00 – Life at DoubleClick & post-acquisition changes35:20 – Mike retires for 3 months (Home Depot era)36:50 – Why founders struggle not to build38:45 – The addiction and community of company building---This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by:Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/