The official press release is here → https://ncidea.org/press-release/nc-idea-announces-launch-of-first-statewide-nc-tweener-list/

What is a NC Tweener?

Think of Tweeners as the ‘Goldilocks’ companies: not too small and not too large. These are our future breakouts, big fund-raisers, acquisition targets and (fingers crossed) IPOs.

NC Tweeners have the following criteria:

1. They must be headquartered in North Carolina.

2. They need to be a technology company: software, hardware, tech-enabled services, digitally native brands, e-commerce, etc.

3. Have a minimum of $1,000,000/yr ($80k/m) in sales OR 10 people. Or as we say in startup-land, $1m ARR or $80k MRR.

Once a company is over $80m/yr in revenue or 500 employees they ‘graduate’ off the list.

NC Region Coverage

As part of the 2026 NC Region, the state of NC is sub-divided into 7 regions:

1. Mountains / Western NC

Includes the Blue Ridge Mountains and Hickory metro area.

• Key Cities: Asheville, Boone, Hickory, Morganton, Waynesville, Sylva, Brevard, Marion, Hendersonville, Lenoir.

2. Triangle

The core of RTP and its immediate suburban expansion.

• Key Cities: Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, Morrisville, Apex, Holly Springs, Wake Forest, RTP, Clayton, Smithfield.

3. Piedmont Triad

The central industrial and logistics hub.

• Key Cities: Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, Burlington, Kernersville, Lexington, Thomasville.

4. Charlotte / Central Piedmont

The metropolitan area centered around the banking hub and Lake Norman.

• Key Cities: Charlotte, Concord, Huntersville, Matthews, Gastonia, Mooresville, Statesville, Monroe, Salisbury.

5. Sandhills

The south-central region characterized by pine forests and military presence.

• Key Cities: Fayetteville, Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Lumberton, Laurinburg, Rockingham, Sanford.

6. Wilmington & Coastal NC

The immediate coastline, beaches, and the Outer Banks.

• Key Cities: Wilmington, Jacksonville, Morehead City, Elizabeth City, Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills, Emerald Isle, Southport.

7. Eastern NC (Emerging / Inner Coastal)

The historically agricultural and industrial “Inner Banks” and rural East.

• Key Cities: Greenville, New Bern, Rocky Mount, Wilson, Goldsboro, Kinston, Roanoke Rapids, Tarboro, Washington.

This year's list features 559 companies across North Carolina, including 268 brand-new additions. The Triangle continues to anchor the state's Tweener ecosystem with 301 companies (54%), followed by Central Piedmont at 136 (24%), with meaningful representation from Eastern NC, the Triad, Western NC, the Coast, and the Sandhills.

The list spans 41 industries across 10 core segments, with Enterprise Software & Infrastructure (119), Consumer & Commerce (82), and Healthcare & Life Sciences (68) leading the way.

The full list is available LIVE now at tweenerlist.com.

2026 NC Tweener List Methodology

The 2026 NC Tweener List was created using publicly available data sources including LinkedIn, Crunchbase and Pitchbook. Additionally, NC IDEA reached out to their ECOSYSTEM Partners, Entrepreneurial Support Organizations across the state in a ‘call for NC Tweeners’.

The list is then semi-automatically collated and manually curated for those companies that meet the NC Tweener Criteria.

Because of the manual nature and the complexity of the list, it’s possible that some of the data is inaccurate, or we missed a company, if you would like to request an addition, deletion or edit to the data, email: contact@tweenerfund.com

👉 Head to tweenerlist.com to explore the full 2026 NC Tweener List and meet the companies shaping what comes next in NC!

Share NC Tweener Times

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The Tweener Madness Championship Bracket

🎉We’ve made it to the grand finale! 🎉

After dozens of applications, out path has led through:

• The Exceptional Eight - where we had Utilyst, Benedoc, Iguana Cyber, HAM, Druid Agriculture, HuVia Technologies, Marla Amplification and Build-a-Bookie.

• The Fabulous Four - Our selection committee(s) narrowed the field down to: Utilyst, HAM, Druit Ag and Marla.

• The Tweener Madness Champsionship - Finally, here we are. Only two NC startups are left to fight it out. There can only be one winner. HERE WE GO 🥊🥊🥊🥊

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.

HAM (Charlotte) – AI / Developer Infrastructure

Middleware that reduces the hidden cost of AI

• Reduces token usage for coding agents by up to ~80%

• Uses hierarchical memory + context routing

• Sits between developer prompts and LLMs

• Bottom-up adoption via engineers (PLG motion)

• Early traction: GitHub usage + paying users

Core wedge:
👉 Make AI development cheaper without changing how developers work

Druid AgTech (Charlotte) – AgTech / Hardware + AI

Real-time crop monitoring for modern farms

• 24/7 monitoring via cameras, sensors, and weather stations

• Tracks crop health, pests, irrigation, and yield

• Reduces labor costs by ~30%

• 250+ devices deployed, 15+ paid pilots

• Recently secured a U.S. State Department contract

Core wedge:
👉 Bring precision agriculture to the 90% of farms that can’t afford it

Tweener 2 Selection Committee

This final round brought together a unique mix of perspectives with different lenses but the same question: Where would you invest $25K today?

• Robbie Allen – Serial AI founder & GP at NC Tweener Fund

• Cameron Walker – Operator across Pixar, Twitter, Google + LP

• Scot Wingo – Serial founder & GP at NC Tweener Fund

How to Watch/Listen?

To watch the epic startup battle, you can watch here:

Check out the audio here for all your favorite podcast links, or listen right from substack:

🔍 Key Takeaways (No Spoilers)

This round surfaced a different kind of tension:

• AI vs. IRL: Software scale vs. physical-world defensibility

• Speed vs. traction: Fast-moving markets vs. proven execution

• Moat matters more at the finish line: Especially in crowded AI categories

• Hardware is hard, but sticky: Barriers to entry can work in your favor

• Pricing strategy matters: Undervaluing software can limit upside

• Market size isn’t enough: Focus and positioning decide outcomes

Both companies made a compelling case. One leaned into the fastest-moving wave in tech. The other built momentum in a category that’s harder to disrupt, but harder to replicate. In the end, the selection committee can only choose one!

What’s Next

That’s a wrap on Tweener Madness 2026. THANK YOU to this community.

To the 50+ founders who applied. To the teams who showed up and put themselves out there. To the judges, partners, and sponsors who made this possible. And to everyone who watched, shared, and supported along the way.

This only works because of you.

We’ll be back next year with an even bigger, fully statewide competition. In the meantime: Explore the companies, rewatch the matchups, and stay plugged into the ecosystem at: www.tweenermadness.com

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

Fabulous Four Bracket

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.

Druid Agriculture (Charlotte) – AgTech

Camera systems that allow farmers to remotely monitor and manage crops

• Detects crop issues in real-time (pests, mold, irrigation, etc.)

• Enables farmers to monitor farms from phone or laptop

• Improves crop retention by ~10–15%

• 15+ pilots across universities, startups, and partners

• Paid pilots + early traction with real-world use cases

• Expanding across indoor farming, greenhouses, and beyond

Core wedge:
👉 Help farmers spend less time finding problems — and more time solving them

Marla Amplification (Asheville) – Consumer Hardware

American-made guitar amplifiers built for affordability + durability

• High-quality amps priced for everyday musicians

• Focus on longevity vs. mass-produced failure-prone products

• ~$140K+ revenue already this year, ~5% MoM growth

• Expanding through dealer network (B2B motion)

• Strong brand + community-driven positioning

• Clear plan to scale production + distribution

Core wedge:
👉 Bring high-quality, American-made gear to musicians at an accessible price

Fabulous 4 Selection Committee

This round featured a powerhouse group of investors and ecosystem leaders evaluating each pitch:

• Zakiya Alta Lee-Hill (Principal, IDEA Fund partners)

• Greg Boone (CEO of Walk West)

• Carly Connell (Principal at BCVP)

These are investors who see dozens of pitches a month, and they’re not easy to impress.

How to Watch/Listen?

To watch the epic startup battle, you can watch here:

Check out the audio here for all your favorite podcast links, or listen right from substack:

🔍 Key Takeaways (No Spoilers)

This round surfaced a different tension: certainty vs. scale.

• Massive markets win attention, especially at early stages

• Traction matters, but real-world use cases matter more

• Founder energy is powerful, but not always decisive

• Hardware businesses face different scaling challenges

• B2B vs. B2C paths create very different venture outcomes

• Not all great businesses are venture-scale businesses

What’s Next

That’s a wrap on the Fabulous 4. It all comes down to the Tweener Two where we reveal the 2026 Tweener Madness Champion!

📅 Next episode drops THURSDAY

👉 Tune in as the bracket unfolds, find more info, and read about the companies at: www.tweenermadness.com AND follow our calendar to never miss an episode!

Q1 marked a fundamental shift in the future of the Tweener Fund.

We announced a strategic partnership with NC IDEA, and changed the fund from the chrysalis from, Triangle Tweener Fund to it’s new form: NC Tweener Fund.

This partnership includes:

• $4M committed over 5 years

• Expansion beyond the Triangle to cover the whole state→ Charlotte, Wilmington, Triad, Mountains, and beyond

• A significantly larger pool of companies and opportunities and capital to deploy 🔥

Why now? We’ve effectively covered the Triangle “tweener” market:

• ~300 companies on the Tweener List

• ~100 bootstrapped (not raising)

• ~40–50 too late-stage for our model

• Leaving ~150–200 investable companies → most already in our portfolio

The NC state-wide expansion unlocks hundreds of new investable companies across the state and dramatically increases our long-term upside.

As shared in the Q1 LP meeting:

“We incubated this in the Triangle, it worked very well, and now we’re ready to take it statewide.”

Check out the ✨official✨ announcement here!

Thank You, LPs 🙌

Before we jump into the recap: thank you to our investors! This milestone doesn’t happen without you. With your support: We’re approaching $12M invested across 170+ companies, while maintaining a ~10% failure rate, far below traditional VC benchmarks

Always open for new investors/LPs!

Do you want to join with our 200 lifetime Limited Partners (or LPs, what we call our investors in VC) in helping us support NC startups? We’re structured as a rolling fund, which means, unlike closed funds that only let investors in every 5-10 years, we are ‘always open’ for new LPs. Here’s the details:

• Must be an accredited investor - SEC rule, not ours

• 1yr commitment, $30,000 for the year or $7,500/Q

• 1% management fee, 20% carry and a small AngelList administrative fee

For more details - visit www.tweenerfund.com where you can see our pitch and hit the invest button to get started!

We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

Featured Platinum Sponsor

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Our amazing sponsors have also put out an official Q1 press release here, check it out!

Q1 Investing Highlights

Our Tweener Fund Q1 2026 Snapshot:

• $700K invested

• 14 total investments

  • 7 new

  • 7 follow-ons

• 10 tweeners / 4 pre-tweeners

What stood out this quarter?

1. Statewide deals are already happening

• Investments in Winston-Salem, Wilmington, Charlotte

• Early proof that expansion is working immediately

2. Stronger mix toward “true Tweeners”

• After feedback, we’re leaning more heavily into later-stage, revenue-generating companies

3. Fundraising environment improving

• More priced rounds returning

• Less reliance on SAFEs as bridge capital

• Early signal: market thawing

New Portfolio Companies

• Beam Dynamics (PT) - Operating system for managing enterprise physical assets, compliance, and lifecycle data. (Winston-Salem)

• BEAMRaiL (PT)- Building public safety intelligence platform. (Cary)

• Lucid Bots (T)- Builds drones and software for automated cleaning of large structures like parking garages. (Charlotte)

• NeuroTech Insights (PT)- AI platform combining gait and cognitive analysis to measure brain-body function for clinical care. (Wilmington)

• OOGA Technologies (T)- NDT (Non Distruptive Testing) platform connecting organizations with experts and AI tools for faster, reliable inspections. (Cary)

• Skillmaker (PT)- AR platform upskilling blue-collar mechanics to address national workforce shortage. (Carolina Beach)

• Spidr (PT)- Unified API platform providing payment processing, KYC, and fraud monitoring infrastructure. (Charlotte)

Also, Tweener Fund made additional investments in 7 portfolio companies:

• Futureproof Ops (PT) - AI-powered financial operations platform for startup bookkeeping and cap table management. (runfutureproof.com)

• Truentity (T) - AI platform enabling community pharmacies to offer clinical services and generate revenue.

• Keebler Health (T) - GenAI platform accelerating insurance claims coding and processing.

• Blue Sky Robotics (PT) - AI vision systems and robotics for warehouse and hospital automation with 50% labor savings. (crunchbase.com/organization/blue-sky-robotics)

• Arpio (T) - Cloud-aware disaster recovery software for business continuity.

• Cycle Labs (T) - Testing platform helping retailers validate new warehouse management system implementations.

• Troupe AI (PT) - AI platform measuring and optimizing go-to-market messaging performance across channels.

Q1 Tweener Events

Q1 was one of our most active quarters on the community side. Our Q1 event was the LP + Founder Happy Hour at Ruckus. With the close knit crew we enjoyed the amazing weather and had some high-quality conversations.

Other Key moments include:

• 2026 Founder Productivity Series (4 parts): one of our best-performing content series ever

  • Part 1: Productivity Hacks for Founders

  • Part 2: Founder Health Optimization

  • Part 3: GTM Tech Stack Playbook

  • Part 4: DevStack for Ludicrous PR-Production

• First Wilmington event at UNCW CIE

• Multiple NC IDEA shoutouts across podcasts and collaborations

• Tweener Madness now in championship the Fab 4 round!

Become a Sponsor

Would your company benefit from exposure to NC’s fastest-growing startups?

Our audience is made up of NC founders and operators, primarily at startups doing over $1M/year and many much larger. When a company hits Tweener status, they’ve got real traction, funding (usually), a growing team, and momentum.

Thanks to strong demand, we’re upgrading our sponsorship opportunities across Tweener Times, Tweener Talks, and more.

If you’re looking to connect with this high-impact community, now’s the time. Send us a message or an email to contact@tweenerfund.com.

Let’s build together!

Subscribe now

🙌 Thank You

This quarter marks a clear shift:

Before:

• Triangle-focused

• Limited deal pool

• Early-stage heavy

Now:

• Statewide platform

• Larger, more diverse pipeline

• Truer tweener-stage companies

• Stronger ecosystem integration

We’re entering the next phase of the fund:
👉 More scale
👉 More access
👉 More impact

From a strong investing quarter → to a statewide expansion that redefines the future of the fund.

We’re just getting started.

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

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Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

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Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

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Here’s what we’re tracking this week across Tweener, the NC ecosystem, and the signals shaping what comes next.

Before we jump in, shout out to our sponsors! 👇 None of this would be possible without them 💪🏻

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First some general news from the NC startup ecosystem→

NC is Scaling, Not Just Growing:

NC IDEA announced 21 SEED semi-finalists
A few standouts are already pushing toward Tweener territory, plus some are highlighted in our 2026 Tweener Madness Cohort! Selected from a competitive pool of 184 applicants, the 21 Spring 2026 NC IDEA SEED Semi-Finalists include:

• AKALAKA – Durham, NC

• Auditrol – Charlotte, NC

• Beiing Human – Asheville, NC

• BeneDoc – Asheville, NC

• Innatrix – Durham, NC

• Joyntly – Charlotte, NC

• League Linq – Asheville, NC

• Nuream – Wilmington, NC

• On Holiday – Winston-Salem, NC

• OTTER Reading – Concord, NC

• Phaseshift – Wake Forest, NC

• Play Action AI – Charlotte, NC

• Rooted-in-tech – Apex, NC

• Shuttlebee Dispatch Solutions – Asheville, NC

• SonoVoice – Raleigh, NC

• STEM PLUG – Chapel Hill, NC

• Tada AI – Charlotte, NC

• Utilyst – Raleigh, NC

• Ver Coaching – Durham, NC

• Vet Sleeve – Wilmington, NC

• VibraPower – Raleigh, NC

RIoT Labs & NC IDEA: 22nd Accelerator Cohort

Following their recent joint venture, RIoT Labs and NC IDEA announced the 10 startups for their newest accelerator cohort. While these are earlier stage, they are the primary pipeline for future Tweeners.

Durham’s AI “Talent Halo”
The All Things Open AI Conference brought 4,000+ people to Durham this week. North Carolina isn’t “trying” to do AI anymore, it’s becoming a real hub.

Also, large entities like Siemens and Labcorp announced major Q1 hiring and infrastructure updates this week. This is significant for Tweeners because it creates a deeper pool of local senior talent that often migrates into the 10-50 person “Tweener” startups.

Asheville’s Tech-Enabled Recovery

As of March 31, Shuttlebee Dispatch Solutions and League Linq (both Asheville-based, both listed as semi-finalists in that release) are gaining traction as “tech-enabled services.” They are key examples of Western NC companies using technology to solve logistics and community problems, moving closer to that Tweener revenue threshold despite the regional recovery efforts following Hurricane Helene.

The 8th Annual Ecosystem Summit

NC IDEA is bringing its 8th Annual Ecosystem Summit to the shores of Wrightsville Beach on November 12–13, 2026!

Raleigh Durham Startup week is underway!

Raleigh-Durham Startup Week is a regional movement powered by a team of founders, entrepreneurs, and support organizations dedicated to showcasing the vibrant entrepreneurial community in the Triangle area. On April 20-24, 2026, founders come together to learn, connect, and grow.

🎙️ Tweener News:

Tweener Madness Is Rolling!

8 founders. One bracket. $25,000 on the line.

Round 1: Utilyst VS BeneDoc

👀 Watch the competition
🎧 Listen to the matchup

Utilyst (Triangle) – PowerTech

• Building a cognitive digital twin for utility operators

• Captures institutional knowledge before experienced workers retire

• On-prem AI solution (critical for security-sensitive infrastructure)

• Early traction with utilities like DC Water and Cincinnati

BeneDoc (Durham) – HealthTech

• End-to-end regulatory intelligence platform for medtech

• Uses AI to streamline FDA processes, compliance, and paperwork

• Focused on software as a medical device (SaMD) and regulatory workflows

• Currently in private beta with early partners

Round 1: Iguana Cyber VS HAM

👀 Watch the competition
🎧 Listen to the matchup

Iguana Cyber (Charlotte) – Cybersecurity

• Blocks AI-generated exploits that traditional systems miss

• Uses a dual-server validation system to detect unknown threats

• Positioned as a last line of defense in enterprise security stacks

• Early traction with beta testers and MSSP pipeline

HAM (Charlotte) - AITech

• Reduces token usage (cost) for AI coding agents

• Optimizes how agents retrieve context instead of scanning entire codebases

• Open-source entry point with a developer-led GTM motion

• Focused on engineering teams already using AI tools

📅 Next episode: April 7th

Subscribe to NC Tweener Talks to stay up to date! This one’s going to be fun.

Tweener Awards are Open!

2026 NC Tweener Awards
Join us as we unveil the latest Tweener List and celebrate the founders, fundraisers, and exits shaping North Carolina’s startup ecosystem.

🗓️ Tuesday, April 21st
🕓 5:00pm - 8:30pm
📍Durham Bulls Athletic Park

Learn more and register → https://luma.com/b8g6sqc5

What Stuck With Us This Week:

What Moats Actually Matter?

Michael Bloch dropped one of the clearest frameworks this week: AI compresses doing, but not waiting.

The only defensible advantages left:

1. Proprietary, living data

2. Network effects

3. Regulatory barriers

4. Capital at scale

5. Physical infrastructure

Key Takeaway: If your moat is bottlenecked by intelligence, you're on borrowed time. If it's bottlenecked by years... you're building something that lasts.

Check it out:

Eye Spy Real AI-Native Products

If Claude Code had a baby with a desktop email client, it would be Exo. Exo (open-source) is one of the best examples yet of what “AI-native” actually looks like:

This isn’t just an email app with an AI “plugin”, it’s AI-native from the ground up.

Why it’s interesting:

• Automatic Triage: It analyzes every email before you open it, prioritizing by what actually matters.

• Agent-to-Agent Communication: Exo’s agent can talk to your company’s internal knowledge base to answer questions like “What’s the status of the Acme deal?” while you’re drafting.

• Writing Style Learning: It extracts samples from your sent mail so the drafts actually sound like you, not a generic LLM.

• Memory System: It remembers your priority overrides and specific instructions (e.g., “always be formal with investors”).

Take a look: https://github.com/ankitvgupta/mail-app

Your AI Coworker: Plus One

The team at Every just launched Plus One, a hosted version of OpenClaw that lives in your Slack. Instead of a “vanilla” AI, it comes pre-loaded with specific skills:

• Cora: For managing email.

• Spiral: For writing in your voice.

• Animate: Turning screenshots into animations via Remotion.

It’s a play toward the “parallel org chart” where AI agents have names, managers, and real responsibilities within a team’s existing workflow.

Read More →

The Secret Battle for DeepMind’s Soul

In an excerpt from The Infinity Machine, we get a fascinating historical deep dive into the 2015-2017 period at DeepMind. We finally get the “inside baseball” on Project Mario, Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman’s attempt to spin DeepMind out of Google into a “post-capitalist” governance structure.

Highlights from the excerpt:

• The Failed SpaceX Meeting: A 2015 safety board meeting hosted by Elon Musk ended in disaster, leading Musk to found OpenAI as a rival.

• The 3-3-3 Board: DeepMind proposed a semi-independent structure with three members from DeepMind, three from Alphabet, and three independents.

• The $5 Billion Plan B: At one point, Hassabis and Suleyman considered raising $5B from outside investors (like Reid Hoffman) to walk away from Google entirely if they didn’t get their safety guarantees.

• The “Realist” Pivot: Ultimately, Google (led by Sundar Pichai) pulled back, realizing AI was too core to Google’s search and cloud future to let it sit in an independent “moonshot” bucket.

Worth the read: https://colossus.com/article/project-mario-demis-hassabis-deepmind-mallaby/

Final Thoughts

See you same time next week, more reads, more ecosystem news, and whatever we’ve been cooking up at Tweener.

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

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Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

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Here’s what we’re reading this week, plus a few things worth your time across AI, the NC startup ecosystem, and what we’ve got coming at Tweener.

Before we jump into this week’s golden nuggets, let’s take this opportunity to thank our amazing sponsors!

👇Featured Gold Sponsor

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🌎 North Carolina Is Quietly on a Heater

A few things happening across the state:

UNC hits 200 startups
$48.9B raised. 131,000+ jobs. Top 10% nationally in commercialization.

NC IDEA names 21 SEED semi-finalists
Strong pipeline across ag-tech, fintech, and health.

Charlotte lands $60M fintech hub
$60 million investment expected to create 600 high-paying jobs in software, AI engineering, and data science.

Ag-tech going global
NC State-backed early startup Verdia Diagnostics moving from lab → greenhouse with global traction.

Western NC recovery funding
$8.5M going toward rebuilding small business infrastructure post-Helene.

Also worth noting…
We had ChatGPT pull “biggest NC Triangle news this week”, and NC Tweener/NC IDEA made up 4 of 6 bullets 😅

🎙️ Tweener News

New podcast drop

Scot Wingo joined Venture in the South to break down:

• How Tweener Fund got started

• How the thesis has evolved

• What actually makes a company investable

Good listen if you want a behind-the-scenes look at how early-stage investing really works.

Tweener Madness Is Live!

8 founders. One bracket. $25,000 on the line.

We’ve pulled together startups from across North Carolina and put them head-to-head in front of real investors.

🎬 Trailer is live

📅 Competition starts Monday, March 31

Subscribe to NC Tweener Talks to stay up to date! this one’s going to be fun.

What We’re Reading (Signals, Not Noise)

🧠 AI Is Getting Faster (and Weirder)

Karpathy is a must-listen every time. The big idea: what happens when AI can run the entire research loop, design experiments, collect data, iterate, without humans?

We’re not talking copilots anymore. We’re talking closed-loop systems that improve themselves. That shift alone changes what “building” even means.

⚙️ What Does “AI-Native” Actually Mean?

We’ve all heard it. Few people can define it.

In AI Native or Death, the argument is simple: AI-native companies aren’t just using AI, they’re structurally different.

• Higher revenue per employee

• Faster growth curves

• Different cost structures

The takeaway: this isn’t a feature shift, it’s a business model shift.

The Leverage

AI Native or Death. Choose.

Are the startups being funded today ten times better than the cohort five years ago? You better hope to God that the answer to that question is a resounding yes, because otherwise we are all in real trouble…

Read more

a month ago · 22 likes · Evan Armstrong

How Do AI-Native Startups Actually Grow?

The playbook is emerging, and it’s not SaaS. Some standout patterns:

• $1M ARR in ~12 months (not 24+)

• Product-market fit is binary, not gradual

• Customers are far less price sensitive if AI actually does work

• GTM starts self-serve, then layers in enterprise

Everything is compressed and speed is the advantage.

Read more here 👉 https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/ai-native-org-report-part-one

🤖 Background Agents Are Coming

One of the more interesting repos this week: A “subconscious” agent that sits behind your main AI, watches everything, builds memory, and nudges you with context over time.

Not just chat. Not just tools. A persistent layer that learns you. That’s a preview of where agents are heading.

Check out GitHub 👉 https://github.com/letta-ai/claude-subconscious/blob/main/README.md

Final Thoughts

AI is accelerating timelines. Startups are scaling faster. And ecosystems like North Carolina are starting to compound.

See you same time next week, more reads, more ecosystem news, and whatever we’ve been cooking up at Tweener.

Tweener Madness returns for Season 2, bringing together eight of North Carolina’s most promising startups in a bracket-style competition where every pitch matters.

No fluff. No safety nets. Just founders stepping up, making their case, and facing off in front of investors who are ready to write a check.

The bracket is set. The stakes are real. March 31, it all begins.

Don’t miss a single episode, subscribe now! →

Subscribe now

We couldn’t bring you 100% original founder-to-founder content like this without the support of our awesome-sauce sponsors:

👀 So… Who Made the Cut? Meet the Exceptional 8

• Utilyst(Triangle) – PowerTech

• BeneDoc (Durham) – HealthTech

• Iguana Cyber (Charlotte) – Cybersecurity

• HAM (Charlotte) - AITech

• Druid Agriculture (Charlotte) – AgTech

• HuVia Technologies (Kernersville) – EdTech

• Marla Amplification (Asheville) – Consumer Hardware

• Build-A-Bookie (Charlotte) – Sports Tech

Winners move to the Fabulous Four → Championship → $25K investment

📌 What’s Next…

On Monday the bracket officially tips off.

Each episode, you’ll watch:

• Founders step up with their pitch

• Judges dig in with real questions

• Decisions get made on the spot

By mid-April, only one company will be left standing and they’ll walk away with a $25K investment.

👉 Tune in as the bracket unfolds: www.tweenermadness.com and follow our calendar to never miss an episode.

Read more

Big news… Tweener Madness is back and bigger than ever!

For the first time, the competition has gone statewide as part of the North Carolina Tweener Fund, Powered by NC IDEA, bringing together founders from across the mountains, coast, Triad, Charlotte, and the Triangle.

In this Selection Show, we reveal the Exceptional 8, the startups selected from 50+ applicants to compete in a bracket-style showdown for a $25,000 investment.

No fluff. No Shark Tank theatrics. Just real founders, real pitches, and real investor feedback.

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Listen/Watch Or Selection Show:

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 works

• What judges are actually looking for

• And of course… the reveal of all 8 competing companies

This 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 phase

• 50+ startups applied from across North Carolina

• Focus on venture-scale, IP-driven companies (not lifestyle businesses)

• Real investor judges, real feedback, real decisions

• Founders iterate pitches throughout the competition

• Episodes drop starting March 31, leading to a live championship

How to watch:

Visit Tweener Talks to listen for all audio podcast players

We have a video version on YouTube (make sure to subscribe!)

So… Who Made the Cut? You have to 👀 or 👂 to find out which startups made the 2026 NC Tweener Madness Exceptional Eight!?!

📌 What’s Next…

The stage is set. The pitches are ready. Now it’s time to see who can rise above the rest. Starting March 31, the bracket officially tips off.

Each episode, you’ll watch:

• Founders step up with their pitch

• Judges dig in with real questions

• Decisions get made on the spot

No resets. No do-overs. By mid-April, only one company will be left standing and they’ll walk away with a $25K investment.

👉 Tune in as the bracket unfolds: www.tweenermadness.com

Just kidding EVERYONE knows the answer to that one! But relevant to this topic, Pendo has a very large sales team - it has to be top 10 in NC if not top 5? Anyway, there’s a lot of folks in the go-to-market org.

What’s GTM Engineering?

As we’ve covered in these virtual pages, the 2023+ ‘AI Era’ is changing how everyone thinks about their organization. An output of that process is new titles and roles emerging like the now famous ‘Forward Deployed Engineer’. I was listening to Lenny’s podcast where they interviewed the CRO of Vercel (previously at Stripe and Google), Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, on how they have built their modern GTM back in January and while I had previously heard of GTM Eng and had an inkling what it was, I hadn’t heard it described so crisply and cleanly until she really laid it all out.

I’ve been asking a variety of folks in NC if they have this function with the hopes we could bring one to the NC Tweener audience and had zero luck, until now!

Who is Evan?

Evan Inscoe is a GTM Engineer and Enterprise Business Development Representative at Pendo, and one of the early operators defining what that role actually means. After graduating NCSU, he started at Pendo as an entry-level BDR. Pendo’s culture encouraged AI exploration and before long, Evan had built his own micro GTM automation set of tools that dramatically boosted his productivity.

That got the attention of his manager and now Evan builds systems for the WHOLE BDR/SDR team that combine intent signals, enrichment, custom dashboards, data, and extreme automation to help Pendo’s GTM team move faster and focus on what actually matters: conversations with customers.

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We couldn’t bring you 100% original founder-to-founder content like this without the support of our awesome-sauce sponsors:

Loving our content? It wouldn’t be possible without our amazing sponsors and our paid subscribers, so THANK YOU!

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And special thanks to our friends at Walk West for partnering with us to produce this pod!

How I Know Evan…

We actually met through NC State. While he was a student at NC State, Evan took an entrepreneurship class where I came in as a guest speaker.

It was a class taught by Chris Little and I did a session (about Spiffy and hiring profiles). Evan already knew my name from the local startup scene. That class stuck with him, and later we reconnected

Fast forward: One evening I randomly saw Evan post to LinkedIn about his work at Pendo and how much he was loving being a GTM Engineer. <record scratch!> I reached out and..here we are.

It’s a very “Startup ecosystem” connection: entrepreneurship class → LinkedIn → Tweneer Talks podcast. Let’s GOOOO🚀!

Listen/Watch Our Interview:

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 NC’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 Covered

• What a go-to-market engineer is and why the role is growing fast

• How Evan turned experimentation as a BDR into a new AI-focused role at Pendo

• Why intent signals + research create stronger outbound outreach than either one alone

• How Pendo uses AI to make BDRs faster, more focused, and more effective

• The difference between SDR inbound signals and BDR outbound signals

• How tools like Clay help enrich leads, personalize messages, and trigger outreach quickly

• Why the CRM still matters as the source of truth in an AI-heavy workflow

• How Evan builds internal dashboards using Salesforce, Supabase, Lovable, n8n, and Cloud Code

• Why GTM engineering is likely to split into multiple specialties over time

• How AI can increase sales productivity without replacing the people doing the work

If 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.

How to watch:

Visit Tweener Talks to listen for all audio podcast players

We have a video version on YouTube (make sure to subscribe!)

📌 What’s Next

Next on Tweener Talks, we’ll continue spotlighting founders who’ve built real companies in the NC, digging into the decisions that shaped their journeys, the tradeoffs behind growth, and what they’re building next.

Subscribe to Tweener Talks for more founder stories, tactical lessons, and honest conversations from builders across the NC startup ecosystem. Your paid subscription helps us continue to bring great stories!

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🦞🦞OpenClaw Meetup! 🦞🦞

We are excited to host the Triangle's first ever OpenClaw Meetup on April 9 at Raleigh Founded (North St. Location) from 4-7pm.

Pizza, beer and sodas provided, BYOC -Bring-Your-Own-Claws

We’ll have some 1hr of content where a variety of people/companies share what they are doing with OpenClaw followed by a unstructured social time.

Register here→
https://luma.com/o3cmcku6

Founders Should Avoid “Revenue Addiction”

Elena Verna (head of growth at Lovable) dropped one of the more best and most blunt articles we’ve read in a while. Her argument: revenue obsession quietly kills innovation.

Her alternative framing is simple: revenue should be an output of the system, not the objective of the system. The system is innovation, if you keep innovating, revenue will come.

Read it here:

Elena's Growth Scoop

Revenue addiction kills companies.

I love revenue. Who doesn’t love revenue? But some (and I mean MANY) companies aren’t just pursuing revenue. They’re absolutely addicted to it. I’m talking full foaming-at-the-mouth, short-term dopamine hit, sell-your-future-for-this-quarter kind of addicted…

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2 months ago · 108 likes · 10 comments · Elena Verna

When Should You Vibe Code Your CRM?

Dharmesh Shah from HubSpot posted a smart video explaining why you probably shouldn’t vibe code your own CRM.

His framework maps the problem on two axes:

• Narrow vs. wide use case

• Low vs. high maintenance

A general-purpose CRM sits in the worst quadrant: wide use case, high maintenance. In other words, don’t try to vibe code Salesforce.

But interestingly, his own framework also explains when building your own CRM actually makes sense.

That’s where we landed at Tweener Fund. Our CRM is narrow, internal, and directly tied to our core workflow, deal flow and portfolio tracking.

Robbie actually touches on this exact idea in his recent DevStack article too, which made this one feel especially timely.

Why it matters: The real question isn’t “should you build internal tools?” It’s “is this tool close enough to your core advantage that it’s worth owning?”

Check out the video here. (under 10mins)

Service as Software - Wait…what?

Local startup ecosystem OG and serial founder Jes Lipson frequently uses this framing: Service as Software - he’s been ahead of this trend since 2022!

Blue chip VC Sequoia is out with this piece If you’re a founder looking for an idea, or a software founder, this is a good way to think about how you can add a service that has software-like margins because the team providing it will be hyper-efficient thanks to

The article also makes one of the clearest arguments we’ve seen about how AI companies will actually monetize.

The key distinction: Copilots sell tools. Autopilots sell outcomes.

The big insight is that the total market for work is far larger than the market for software. If AI can deliver the outcome directly (accounting, insurance brokerage, legal drafting, procurement) companies may buy the result instead of the tool.

It’s a simple idea with massive implications. The next wave of AI companies may look more like services firms powered by software.

Can AI map the Venture Ecosystem?

MarketMap is building an interesting idea: AI-driven intelligence for venture capital.

The platform aggregates signals from funding rounds, GitHub activity, investor networks, and ecosystem relationships to identify promising startups before they become obvious.

Think of it as a command center for venture sourcing, mapping investors, co-investment patterns, and startup momentum across the ecosystem.

Whether the predictions are perfect or not, the broader idea is compelling: venture has historically relied heavily on networks and intuition. AI could make those invisible networks far more legible.

Check it out here: https://marketdj.vela.partners/

The BI AI opportunity

This OpenAI engineering post describes the internal data agent they built to help employees analyze company data. But the real takeaway is much bigger.

There may be a massive opportunity for what you could call BI AI (AI-powered Business Intelligence): giving AI access to all the data, context, and institutional knowledge needed to answer complex business questions.

Instead of waiting days for analysis, teams can ask natural language questions and get answers in minutes.

The catch: it only works when the AI understands the context behind the data, not just the tables.

Read it here: https://openai.com/index/inside-our-in-house-data-agent/

Is Data the Real AI Bottleneck?

This a16z piece argues that the real constraint on future AI progress may not be models or compute, but data.

The reasoning is simple: every major leap in AI has followed a breakthrough dataset. CNNs needed handwritten digit datasets. Image recognition needed ImageNet. LLMs needed the internet.

The next wave of AI (agents, healthcare systems, multimodal models) requires high-quality real-world data that is messy, fragmented, and rarely AI-ready.

In other words, the frontier of AI is “jagged” because the data is. Whoever controls the best datasets may control the next AI breakthroughs.

Read it here:

a16z

The world needs an AI lab — for Data

America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts…

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2 months ago · 131 likes · 4 comments · Bobby Samuels

Final thoughts

We’re seeing the same thing showing up: old bottlenecks are weakening.

Software is easier to build, prototypes ship faster, models continue to improve, and even internal tools are becoming easier to create. As that happens, the scarce things move toward judgment, distribution, customer understanding, workflow ownership, proprietary context, and data.

The real challenge becomes knowing what is actually core to your business. Sometimes that means not vibe coding your CRM. Other times it means building exactly the tool you need. Sometimes it means selling software; other times it means selling the completed job.

For founders in North Carolina, the playbook is familiar: stay close to the work, stay close to the customer, and move early when the stack changes. What’s different now is just how many parts of the stack are suddenly up for grabs.

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.

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Listen/Watch Our Interview:

North 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.

Highlights covered

• NC 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 Carolina

• Robbie shares his own story of receiving an NC IDEA grant in 2009 and how that support helped launch his startup journey

• Scot explains the origin of the Tweener List and how it became the foundation for the fund’s index-style approach

• The fund is designed to invest in a basket of promising North Carolina startups, helping reduce risk through diversification

• The discussion reinforces the idea that North Carolina has a uniquely broad startup base across sectors like AI, healthtech, agtech, aviation, manufacturing, ecommerce, and more

• Thom Ruhe highlights how better startup data helps ecosystem builders, policymakers, and funders make smarter decisions

• Scot and Robbie explain how increased visibility and deal activity can help pull more outside capital into the state

• Founders are encouraged to reach out directly, the approach is intentionally founder-friendly and operator-led

• The episode also outlines how accredited investors can participate, including through AngelList and, in some cases, retirement vehicles like self-directed IRAs

How to watch:

Visit Tweener Talks to listen for all audio podcast players

We have a video version on YouTube (make sure to subscribe!)

NC Founders, we want you!

NC Tweener companies must meet the following criteria:

• Headquartered in North Carolina (Primary executive and operational presence must be in NC.)

• Technology company, including any of the following:

  • Software (SaaS, AI, platforms, enterprise, consumer, etc.)

  • Hardware

  • Tech-enabled services

  • Digitally native brands

  • E-commerce companies

• We do not include:

  • Industries requiring FDA approval

  • Pharmaceutical

  • Clinical/regulated medical products

  • Traditional services businesses (agencies, consulting firms, etc.)

• Tweener Scale Threshold (Must Meet ONE)

  • $1,000,000+ in annual revenue (ARR)

  • $80,000+ in monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

  • 10+ full-time employees

  • (In startup terms: $1M ARR or $80K MRR — or meaningful team scale.)

If you meet these criteria (or know someone who does), reach out to us directly at contact@tweenerfund.com - we’ll schedule a convo!

Investors/LPs, we want you too!

Do you want to join with our 200 lifetime Limited Partners (or LPs, what we call our investors in VC) in helping us support NC startups? We’re structured as a rolling fund, which means, unlike closed funds that only let investors in every 5-10 years, we are ‘always open’ for new LPs. Here’s the details:

• Must be an accredited investor - SEC rule, not ours

• 1yr commitment, $30,000 for the year or $7,500/Q

• 1% management fee, 20% carry and a small AngelList administrative fee

For more details - visit www.tweenerfund.com where you can see our pitch and hit the invest button to get started - we’d love to help you and you can come on the journey for the next $10m!

📌 What’s Next

Subscribe to Tweener Talks for more founder stories, tactical lessons, and honest conversations from builders across the NC startup ecosystem. Your paid subscription helps us continue to bring great stories!

Robbie conducting a Tweener Dev Team meeting

Software development is going through one of the biggest shifts in decades. AI coding agents are changing how quickly founders can build, and what it even means to “write code.” In this final post of our founder optimization series, we’re diving into the modern AI-powered developer stack.

This is Part 4 of a 4-…

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Today we’re going to learn how to make your products Lovable!

But before we get to that, this week’s reading list circles one big theme: when building gets cheap, “strategy” becomes your operating system. Dev costs are shrinking. Agents are getting more autonomous. Everyone can ship. So what actually matters now?

Across these pieces, you’ll see the same shift from different angles:

• Building software is becoming extremely cheap

• Agents are starting to do real work autonomously

• Founders who operate “AI-native” will move much faster

• The real moats are shifting toward brand, workflow, and distribution

Some people are calling this the SaaSpocalypse. Others think it’s the biggest expansion of the software industry we’ve ever seen. As founders, the real question isn’t which narrative is right, it’s how to position yourself for whichever future arrives first. We’ve covered this extensively here→

and in our awesome interview with Joe Mancini from Frontporch Ventures here→

But first! This series is made possible by our sponsors, so let’s give them a quick shout-out 👇

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Does Software development now costs less than minimum wage? 😵‍💫

Geoffrey Huntley’s post is a cold shower (in a useful way): he argues dev labor is being commoditized fast, down to ~$10/hour in effective cost, and that this triggers a brutal compression across org charts, pricing models, and even personal identity.

A few things that hit hard:

• “Everyone’s a builder now.” He describes showing up to a Cursor meetup where many attendees weren’t software devs… and yet they’re shipping real stuff.

• Model-first companies as apex predators. Lean teams, razor-thin margins, and aggressive iteration cycles.

• Traditional moats melting: per-seat pricing, feature-based differentiation, and “switching costs” don’t look as sturdy when agents can rebuild + migrate things frighteningly fast.

• The punchline: if your “identity function” is tied to a job category (developer, manager, etc.), you may need to re-anchor to something more durable: taste, distribution, domain insight, relationships, judgment.

Read it here: https://ghuntley.com/real/

MVP is dead. Long live the MLP (Minimum Lovable Product) 💜

Elena Verna is calling it: the MVP era devolved into “minimum functioning product,” and that’s not enough anymore.

Her case is simple: building “functional” is becoming a commodity. Your users can find 12 alternatives or rebuild it themselves. So, the new baseline is MLP, the earliest version that’s genuinely lovable. “Lovability” is a defensible moat because AI can match features fast, but it can’t easily copy the emotional relationship people have with a product (yet).

Read it here 👇

Elena's Growth Scoop

The Minimum Lovable Product Era

Forget MVP (Minimal Viable Product). The new baseline is MLP: Minimal Lovable Product. Because if it’s not lovable, it’s not viable in the market anymore…

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2 months ago · 92 likes · 10 comments · Elena Verna

Becoming an AI-native operator (your new unfair advantage) 🧠⚙️

This Growth Unhinged piece (Kyle Poyar featuring Justin Norris) is basically a playbook for what the workday looks like when you stop using AI as a side tool and start using it like a Chief of Staff + execution layer.

What I loved about this one: it’s not “use prompts.” It’s systems thinking about knowledge work.

Read it here: https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/becoming-an-ai-native-operator

Cursor CEO: The third era of AI software development is here (cloud agent factories) 🏭🤖

Michael Truell’s thread is short, punchy, and worth reading twice. He describes three eras:

1. Tab/autocomplete (one keystroke at a time)

2. Synchronous agents (prompt-response loops)

3. Autonomous cloud agents (longer tasks, less direction, artifacts/previews for review)

The part that matters: Cursor isn’t trying to help you “write code” anymore, it’s trying to help you build a factory that produces software using fleets of agents as teammates.

A wild data point: he says ~35% of Cursor’s internal PRs are created by agents operating autonomously in cloud VMs.

Read it here: https://x.com/mntruell/status/2026736314272591924

Is the SaaSpocalypse real? a16z says… not really.

While some Substacks are predicting the death of SaaS, this a16z piece takes the opposite position: AI won’t destroy software. It will massively expand it.

Their key argument is that the market is treating software companies as if their value comes from code. But historically, code was never the moat.

The real competitive advantages come from what Hamilton Helmer calls Seven Powers, including:

• Network effects

• Brand

• Scale

• Proprietary data

• Process power

• Counterpositioning

AI might weaken switching costs, but most of these other moats actually get stronger. Their prediction is that the industry isn’t collapsing; it’s splitting.

Read it here

a16z

Good news: AI Will Eat Application Software

America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts…

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2 months ago · 252 likes · 17 comments · Alex Immerman and Santiago Rodriguez

Final thoughts

Across all these pieces, there’s a clear pattern emerging. We’re entering a world where building software becomes cheap. When that happens, the scarce resources shift.

The human parts of building companies, distribution, taste, brand, knowledge, and judgment become valuable instead. Some software companies will absolutely get disrupted. But the software industry itself is probably about to get much bigger.

For founders in North Carolina, the opportunity is the same as it’s always been: Move early, operate lean., build something people actually love, and let the agents handle the rest!

Kevin Gehsmann is the CEO and co-founder of PROTECT3D, a Durham, North Carolina startup building mass-customized 3D-printed medical orthoses.

A Greensboro native, Kevin studied mechanical engineering at Duke, completed Duke’s innovation & entrepreneurship certificate, and played linebacker during the Coach Cutcliffe era. Protected began when Kevin and his co-founder used 3D printing to create a custom brace for an injured Duke teammate, then turned that spark into a company now serving pro sports, clinical orthopedics, and defense applications.

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We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

Loving our content? It wouldn’t be possible without our amazing sponsors and our paid subscribers, so THANK YOU!

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And special thanks to our friends at Walk West for partnering with us to produce this pod!

How I Know Kevin

I’ve known Kevin for about 4–5 years, watching PROTECT3D grow from an early-stage, scrappy team into a real force in custom medical devices. Over time, I got to see Kevin’s style up close. A ton of grit, very little ego, and a deep focus on the “why” behind the work. Eventually, we were excited to invest and join the cap table, and this episode is a chance to share Kevin’s story and the founder lessons they’ve earned the hard way.

Listen/Watch Our Interview:

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 covered

• How PROTECT3D started with a custom brace for a Duke teammate

• Why “one-size-fits-none” is the real problem in bracing

• The core workflow: iPhone scan → automated digital design → 3D print

• How they reduced design time from 5+ hours to under 5 minutes

• Material/printing approaches and why they use multiple technologies

• Scaling from sports to insurance-reimbursable clinical products

• Expansion into military / defense applications via non-dilutive funding

• Founder lessons: failing fast, surviving COVID-era building, and grit

• Kevin’s advice to younger founders: keep going, the grind is the game

Custom-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.

How to watch:

Visit Tweener Talks to listen for all audio podcast players

We have a video version on YouTube (make sure to subscribe!)

📌 What’s Next

Next on Tweener Talks, we’ll continue spotlighting founders who’ve built real companies in the NC, digging into the decisions that shaped their journeys, the tradeoffs behind growth, and what they’re building next.

Subscribe to Tweener Talks for more founder stories, tactical lessons, and honest conversations from builders across the NC startup ecosystem. Your paid subscription helps us continue to bring great stories!