Interesting Reads for Triangle Founders from week 26/52
A curated collection of content I saw this week that was interesting.
The amount of quality (e.g. not genai ) content coming out right now is amazing. I’ve filtered out some things here that I think you’ll enjoy - with a focus on all things startups: foundation, speed, trends, fundraising and GTM.
Before we get into it, a thanks to our sponsors→
Bank of America – BofA’s Transformative Technology Group helps game-changing tech businesses and founders realize their boldest ambitions across a wide range of technology sectors. With hands-on support, world-class resources, and an extensive network – BofA provides the stability and scalability that tech companies need to rapidly grow today and into the future.
ExtensisHR - As a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), ExtensisHR empowers tech founders and growing businesses to scale smarter. We take HR administration off your plate—managing payroll, recruiting, employee benefits and retirement plans, compliance, risk, and more—so you can focus on innovation. For over 25 years we’ve leveraged a people-first approach, customer-centric mindset, and deep industry expertise to ensure employers have the tools needed to stay competitive in today’s market.
Robinson Bradshaw - A full-service business law firm with a passion for supporting the Triangle entrepreneurial ecosystem. Learn more about Robinson Bradshaw’s startups and venture capital practice here.EisnerAmper (formerly HPG) - One of the world’s largest business consulting firms, with a dedicated technology practice offering outsourcing, accounting, tax, and advisory services. Our experienced professionals serve more than 2,000 technology companies, from early-stage startups to public enterprises. Discover how EisnerAmper’s stage-specific solutions and industry expertise can help you achieve your milestones whether startup, international expansion, M&A, or IPO: eisneramper.com/tech.
Whitley Recruiting Partners - Whitley Recruiting Partners specializes in recruiting top tech talent for growth-stage startups in the Triangle. We target industry-specific, entrepreneurial employees who drive immediate results through a fast, accurate, and scalable recruiting process. Special offer for Tweener Times subscribers: Free survey of available local talent for one of your openings.
Lithios Apps - Lithios Apps is a Triangle-based software design and development studio that builds custom mobile and web applications focused on quality and user experience. We help founders and teams bring products to life that drive growth, engage customers, and stand out in competitive markets. We've worked side by side with clients whose products have gone on to earn millions in follow-on funding.
Aligned Technology Group - Navigating cloud costs as a startup? ATG helps you maximize AWS Activate credits—up to $100K for startups and $300K for AI-driven startup businesses. As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, we streamline your cloud journey, optimizing security, scalability, and cost efficiency. Startups move fast. We help you build smarter. Let’s unlock your AWS credits today.
Two Great Data Drops from Carta
If you’re not following Carta’s Head of Insights, Peter Walker, first do that immediately.
Ok, welcome back. One of the most FAQ we get at Tweener fund is ‘what is average pre-seed/seed/etc. valuation in the Triangle.’ We have all that data and share the summary with founders. Peter has that data plus much more data and the Carta team does an amazing job of formating it. Here’s two of my favorites from this week alone→
This post is a super summary of round size and valuations by stage and by priced/SAFE that packs in a TON of data.
As you can imagine, this data is skewed towards Silicon Valley’s nose-bleed prices, we see Triangle companies typically coming in between the 25th and 50th quartile with serial founders that raise outside the area getting into that 50-75% zone.
Another FAQ we get is advisor shares and Peter Must get that one a lot too because he answered it here.
Enjoy!
What can you learn from AI Native Startups?
AI Native Startups are ‘Building Different’ - Learn what that means and how you can adopt it. The TL;DR is they have to build fast and furious and it’s all about execution. Ideas are easy, execution is hard. Roll up your sleeves and LFG!!! 🚀
Data, data, data
As a founder, I always have this fear that I’m to accidentally make a serious or fatal mistake. Today’s biggest risk, IMHO, is that your company has some great proprietary data that you let ‘escape’ and fail to monetize. This piece about Slack and how they are protecting their data and what that means for Slack’s customers is an interesting read with that in mind.
Tight Benioff Video
Marc Benioff is a top founder and everytime I see an interview with him I learn a PR tip, a persuasion technique, etc. This video is chock full of Benioff-isms, is only 25mins and also hits on SaaS vs. Agentic/AI and a good investment of time→
Sam Altman’s Genius $100m Psyop
While on his brother’s pod recently, Sam dropped that Meta is hiring OpenAI ‘top talent’ for $100m. The number is so high, it sounded impossible, but I would have said that about the AI headlines I read every week, so who’s to know? Turns out it was a very very clever strategy by Altman to simultaneously lock in talent at OpenAI and make it much more expensive to hire them.
This tech writer Signul captures it well here.
That’s it this week, we’ll be taking off next week for 🇺🇸 - Happy Independence Day! 🎇