RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Triangle entrepreneur and investor Scot Wingo is out with a third “Tweener” list – his analysis of promising startups across the region.
“Think of Triangle Tweeners as the ‘Goldilocks’ companies in the Triangle — not too small and not too large,” Wingo explains.
“These are our future breakouts, IPOs and big M+A’s. They are also great for folks moving to the area or if you are at a big company and want to try something more entrepreneurial.”
Drawing on his own sources, feedback and email, Wingo has identified 38 newcomers for 2018.
“These come to me a variety of ways — some from their investors, others email me directly, etc.” he explains in a blog post.
The full list:
- 3 Birds Marketing
- Academic Benchmarking Consortium
- Appraisalnation
- Arya/Leoforce
- Boss Key Productions
- Broadvine
- BulkTV
- CARS/ez-recovery
- Compostnow
- Creative Allies
- CrossComm
- EmployUS
- Eton Solutions
- Exit Intelligence
- Feelgoodz
- Global Data Consortium
- Inspectionxpert
- InterviewUp/ThinkOptimal/optimalresume
- Keen Decision Systems
- Macgregor partners
- Map My Customers
- Market Vue Partners
- Medicom
- Mobile Reach
- Myxx
- Percona
- Remarque Systems
- Republic wireless
- Sift
- Slingshot Coffee Company
- SMT (SportsMEDIA Technology Corp)
- SnapSolv
- Sports Endeavors
- SyncFusion
- Tethis
- TiO Home Automation
- Virtue Labs
- Wastezero
Wingo, who invested in car maintenance startup Spiffy and is also its CEO, is best known for his role in co-founding and growing ecommerce services provider ChannelAdvisor. He began publishing the Tweener list in 2016.
Criteria to be listed as a Wingo Tweener include “companies headquartered out of the Triangle with at least $1M/yr in sales or 10 people. They generally are technology companies (mostly around software, e-commerce, tech enabled services and some materials/devices) and are independent and not public. Once a company is over $80m/yr in revenue and/or 500 employees they ‘graduate’ off the list.”
The graduates
Previous Tweeners that have graduated through merger and acquisition, growth, or an IPO include, with comments from Wingo:
- Bandwidth — Bandwidth had an IPO in 2017, so has graduated off the list.
- Bivarus — Was acquired before I could get then on the list — by a Boston firm.
- Dude solutions — Graduated off the list by crossing 500 employees.
- Junxure — I found in Q3 17 and before I could get them on the list this year they were acquired by AdvisorEngine.
- KnowledgeTree — Acquired by SAVO
- Transloc — Acquired by Ford in Jan 2018
- Wedpics — Was acquired by Mixbook in 2017
- Windsor Circle — Was acquired in early 2018 by OSG
- Zift Solutions — Merged with another company and moved HQ to NJ
You can read more from Wingo online.