At ExitEvent, we want you up on all the topics trending and news happening in the Triangle, so here’s a feature we run after each month ends recapping the most popular 10 stories and posts (and one video) on our site. They’re ranked below based on page views.
Our readers loved quite the range of stories in September, from an impressive critique of the region from the world’s top venture capitalist to an analysis of the changing media landscape to a sampling of up-and-coming ideas from NC State’s new crop of entrepreneurs. Also, enjoy a handful of profiles of cool companies building momentum in the Traingle.
In a rare speaking engagement, the world’s top venture capitalist according to Forbes sat on a stage at the CED Tech Venture Conference and professed his admiration for the Triangle’s universities and innovators. He also gave some marching orders to ensure the region continues its leadership role in technology innovation.
In less than a week, Walk [Your City] Founder Matt Tomasulo will make a run at Raleigh City Council with a goal of infusing entrepreneurial thinking into a typically staid organization. We talk about his credentials in urban planning, entrepreneurship and civic technology innovation, along with the key issues he’ll address if elected.
Reflecting back on the fits and starts of his pre dotcom era media startup, Automated Insights Chief Product Officer (and ExitEvent founder) Joe Procopio talks about the way today’s media world is embracing technology and change and how that is contributing to a whole new crop of media innovation.
Sound software innovation from a lab at UNC has made its way out of the university and into the hands of game developers and building designers around the world, making the Chapel Hill startup behind it all a key contributor to the evolution of virtual reality technology.
In a first of its kind event kicking off a school year of entrepreneurship activities, students with ideas that range from robotic lower body exoskeletons and sunscreen dispensers to automated chessboards and electric longboards pitched to win money and resources to fuel their ideas.
A friend’s Snapchats and a budding career in data science brought this New Yorker to Durham. After a few months at a local startup, he’s got some observations about everything from food and fashion to startup culture and business opportunity. Enjoy some laughs and pats on the back from this listicle.
A successful 18 months training new coders in Durham has prompted The Iron Yard to add a second campus in Raleigh. The only bad news is that 25 companies in the existing American Underground will have to move out to make room for the new school. American Underground says it’s an evolution of the ecosystem to focus more on the pipeline of talent that needs to flow into its 240+ companies.
After graduating from a Boulder startup accelerator, abandoning the idea it entered with and then securing funding for a new one from Cofounders Capital in Cary, a startup called Factivate is well on its way to rethinking the spreadsheet for a business world connected by the cloud.
Tied for our eighth spot this month is a profile of a stealthy software company leading in global Hadoop adoption. Its first product helps large companies create, tag and analyze “data lakes” so big data can be more useful for their executives and managers. Funding will help bring that product to the broader market.
Derek Holt has long had a heart for the Triangle. After a decade at IBM and with an MBA from Duke University in hand, he moved to Washington D.C. in 2011 to join the executive team of the White House-endorsed Startup America Partnership. After leaving that role and then working for a startup in D.C., he’s brought his enterprise software knowledge and deep connections in the startup world back to Raleigh, and specifically to connected home innovator K4Connect.
More than a decade after developing a website that helped bus riders more accurately predict when their buses would show up, TransLoc is releasing a series of new products providing even more predictability and options to public transit riders along with critical data for the agencies. It’s safe to say the latest products position agencies to compete with Uber, Lyft and the like.
Ironically enough, our top viewed video of the month is a Founders Series interview with TransLoc CEO Doug Kaufman:
