NC Tweener Fund - Q1 Update: $700K Invested in NC startups, Statewide Expansion Update, and The Macro Looks Great 🚀

Statewide expansion gains momentum with investments in the Triangle, Triad, Charlotte (Piedmont) and Coastal regions!

The Biggest Update in Fund History: Going Statewide 🚀

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

Featured Gold Sponsor

Featured Silver Sponsor

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!

🙌 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.