In today’s episode of The Friday Nooner, Joe and Pete recap the latest tech-related news including the recent fundraising round by Real Magic (aka Levitate) and give their breakdown on trends including the effect of the pandemic on work-life balance and company vacation policies. Tobi Walter, a Principal at Cary’s Cofounders Capital, also joins as a special guest, so this is an episode you won’t want to miss! (Not that you should miss any of them, of course.)
Here are some highlights:
- This week, serial entrepreneur Jesse Lipson secured another $8 million for his latest venture, Raleigh-based software startup RealMagic, bringing its total funding to $20M in a little more than two years since being founded. The company’s first product, a keep-you-top-of-mind marketing app called Levitate, reached 2,000 paid customers just seven months after hitting 1,000. With plans to bring on 50-75 more employees in 2021, RealMagic is a Triangle tech company to watch this year. (3:00)
- According to a CNN story this week, New-York based software company Elephant Ventures is the latest company to implement a four-day work week. Pete found that fact interesting; Joe, generally speaking, did not. Joe said that the jaded debate over the 40-hour work week is no longer relevant—most of the time, especially in software engineering roles, the focus should be on getting the work done, whether it takes more or less hours than officially designated. They also discussed the concept of “unlimited vacation days,” which turns out to be more about helping employers do some fancy accounting than improving the lives of employees. (15:20)
- Beginning at the 23:30 mark, Tobi jumps in on the vacation-day debate. Walter also explains the mission of Cofounders Capital and why he joined in 2018 after successfully exiting his Triangle-based SaaS startup Shoeboxed. Walter said the Cofounders leadership team is comprised of fellow former entrepreneurs David Gardner, who founded the firm in 2015, and partner Tim McLoughlin who joined not long after. The team is especially dedicated to investing in and advising first-time entrepreneurs in North Carolina. “We try to take a ‘cofounders’ position in those companies,” Walter said.
Here is the full recording on Facebook Live:
And on YouTube: