Caitlin Grimes

CandleScience founders Dan and Michael Swimm came into the candle business honestly.  Their father was a chemist at a pair of once prominent global candle companies and taught them the craft and chemical process of making the best quality candles and fragrances.  But they brought something else to the table too—backgrounds in programming from the dotcom era and a deep desire to work together to solve problems in an industry that hadn’t evolved with technology.  Thirteen years later, they’ve built the largest distributor of natural soy wax in the U.S. and a leading ecommerce company in the candle industry. The...

Innovation, culture and music were center of attention at the Innovate Your Cool conference, held this past weekend at American Underground in Durham to compliment the Art of Cool Festival.  Sessions featured entrepreneurs, musicians, rappers, chefs and other creatives from Durham and beyond—there were interactive activities for children too. The following photo essay captures some of the best moments at the annual innovation event.  To Pimp A Butterfly Roundtable  Using WildEyes virtual reality headsets, attendees were able to experience 360-degree views of U.S. National Parks from downtown Durham. The Durham startup will showcase its technology on a cross-country tour starting in...

Innovation, culture and music were center of attention at the Innovate Your Cool conference, held this past weekend at American Underground in Durham to compliment the Art of Cool Festival.  Sessions featured entrepreneurs, musicians, rappers, chefs and other creatives from Durham and beyond—there were interactive activities for children too. The following photo essay captures some of the best moments at the annual innovation event. To Pimp A...

Durham is known for being a hub for entrepreneurship, but it’s not as well known that Durham County has one of the largest populations of HIV-positive people in the country. It’s also the No. 3 county in North Carolina for newly-diagnosed HIV cases.  Allison Mathews, a Doctor of Sociology at the University of Chapel Hill, is trying to reverse those statistics, not only through research but by crowdsourcing a cure. The Research Triangle is a global center for HIV and AIDS research, with researchers at UNC and Duke studying new therapies and ways to prevent the disease from mutating, but Mathews thinks the community should be involved.  Mathews...

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Beyonce dropped her latest album last Saturday night, accompanied with an hour-long visual album with scenes depicting her smashing cars on streets and lighting a house on fire. Not only has the move lit up the media, but the Queen Bee’s album is earning her around $3 million every 24 hours.  You may not know this (unless you have read my bio at the bottom of this page), but when I am not covering news in the local startup community, I am a graduate student studying communication at NC...

We’re keeping an eye on cool career opportunities in the Triangle’s startup community, and publishing them every so often on ExitEvent. To submit a job opening, email laura@exitevent.com.  This month’s job list includes a mix of companies from around the Triangle, from healthcare to apps to analytics to mobile development shops. The types of positions range from sales and marketing to engineering and product management to graphic design. Some internships are posted here too. Check out the full list below. (And here’s the March 2016 edition)  Axial Exchange The healthcare software startup founded by a former Red Hat exec is...

Here’s the second installment of our list of entrepreneurial camps and programs for kids, brought to our readers a bit earlier this year so they actually have time to sign up. (Can you tell we at ExitEvent don’t have kids yet??)  Our community is developing a real passion around building the pipeline of entrepreneurs in the Triangle, and the many offerings for kids of all ages is proof. If your kids are already curious about coding and science or you want to introduce them to these and other entrepreneurial skills, these programs might be a good fit.  The programs...