Triangle ‘Tweener’ fund fuels startups with 56 investments, nearly $3M in deals

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – When serial entrepreneur and investor Scot Wingo spoke at a 2023 economic kickoff event last week he touted the Triangle’s entrepreneurial community as a source for growth and optimism even in the face of growing economic uncertainty. His reasons for the positive comments became clear today when he disclosed the rapid growth of the so-called Tweener Fund he announced just a year ago.

“We’ve been super-busy at the Tweener Fund and are excited to report our Q4 investments and overall 2022 summary,” says Wingo, who counts ecommerce service provider ChannelAdvisor and the rapidly growing Get Spiffy! vehicle service and maintenance startup among his achievements.

The Tweener Fund builds off the Tweener list Wingo launched several years ago which focuses on emerging startups he defines as “in their ‘goldilocks’ phase and looking for capital and expertise to scale” before going public or cashing out through a merger and acquisition.

And through 2022 the Tweeners – Wingo along with partner and fellow successful entrepreneur Robbie Allen – have been successful on multiple fronts:

The fourth quarter was especially busy, as Wingo notes:

“We’ve been blown away by the support from the community on the investment side and the number of great investments we’ve been able to make in Triangle Tweeners both to hopefully deliver a great return to our investors, but also accelerate the Triangle’s startup flywheel.”

To be considered for funding, companies must meet the following requirements, according to the fund:

1. Companies must be headquartered in the Triangle
2. The fund invests 70%+ in early-stage, high-tech, ‘Tweener’ companies (10 people or $1m ARR)
3. The fund is building an index of Triangle Tweeners, so favors writing more ‘small’ checks vs. the traditional venture model of fewer large checks
4. Our accredited investors (LPs) are top entrepreneurs, service providers and other participants in our startup ecosystem and are not only looking for great returns, but also see the opportunity to accelerate the Triangle startup ecosystem flywheel.

In the announcement, Allen notes as Wingo did in his speech that the Tweener Fund continues to see growth in demand and opportunity regardless of the wider economy’s troubles with inflation, looming recession and other maladies – including a falling stock market.

“Even though the macro-economic data is worsening, and overall venture investing is under pressure, we continue to see robust activity at the early-stages (Seed/Seed+/Series A) and this quarter Tweener Fund was able to add some growth stage (Series B/Series C) investments to the portfolio. We have built an unmatched portfolio of the top startups in the Triangle and are only getting started.”

Looking in the rearview mirror, Wingo points out Tweener success was hardly guaranteed when launched.

“When we launched the Tweener Fund in January of 2022, we faced two big unknowns. First, we didn’t know if accredited investors would be interested in the idea of a Triangle focused early-stage startup index and second, we didn’t know if we would be able to find enough Tweener startups actively raising capital that would be open to having Tweener Fund on their capital table,“ he explains.

“Our results from 2022 exceeded our wildest expectations. We ended the year with over 125 investors and deployed $2.8m into 48 Triangle companies.” Traditional closed-end venture capital funds have a 5-year deployment period. Given Tweener Fund’s $6.4m investor commitments in the rolling-fund, after the first year of operations, Tweener Fund is the equivalent of a ~$30m traditional venture fund.
Triangle Tweener Fund Q4 Portfolio

“Additionally, the Tweener Fund is excited to welcome 14 investments across 10 new companies into the portfolio, representing over $780,000 invested in the quarter.”

Triangle serial entrepreneur Robbie Allen joins Triangle Tweener Fund as general partner