Here Are All The Winners Of The Inaugural Greppy Awards

We trust you already watched (and heartily enjoyed) the inaugural Greppy Awards, which aired at 12 Noon on Friday thanks to our sponsor, Dualboot Partners. If you didn’t watch yet, you can catch it on YouTube here.

Either way, we don’t expect that you memorized all the winners. (Or memorized all the nominees, for that matter, which you can find here.) So we’re here to help!

First, we’d like to thank all of the judges who put their time and energy into choosing both the nominees and a winner for each category. The judging committee includes:

• John Austin, Senior Director of NC IDEA
• Tina Cochrane, Vice President at Dualboot Partners
• Jan Davis, Founder of Davis Growth Partners
• Lister Delgado, Managing Partner of IDEA Fund Partners
• Sarah Leners, Senior Associate of Bull City Venture Partners
• Tim McLoughlin, Partner of Cofounders Capital

We named winners in five categories: Best Small Startup (1-10 employees), Best Medium-Sized Startup (11-50 employees), Best Large Startup (51+ employees), Most Impactful Individual and Best On-Campus Startup. There was both a Judges’ Choice and a Readers’ Choice winner in each category, though in some categories the judges and readers voted for the same candidate. In all, 1,368 readers cast votes. Thanks!

We also presented a special award for Best Leveraging of Triangle Startup Resources.

You can find all of the nominees, with information capsules on each, here.

In the Best Small Startup category, Klearly took top honors both in the judges’ and popular vote.

Klearly, based in Durham, is a SaaS-based platform for B2B companies using machine learning and data analytics to help marketing teams identify what will contribute to future growth. Founded in 2017, Klearly can simulate different growth scenarios so companies can prioritize the best path to growth. We wrote about them in January, 2019: “Klearly Analytics Helps Businesses Better Map Their Marketing Efforts”

The Best Medium Startup category also found one startup taking the majority of votes from both the judges and readers: Reveal Mobile.

Raleigh-based Reveal Mobile designs results-driven, geofencing marketing tools to help companies understand their mobile audiences. Their latest product, VISIT Local, enables precise location data to measure the impact of digital advertising in specific locations. Here’s what we’ve had on Reveal Mobile on GrepBeat: “Pete Meets… Brian Handly, CEO, Reveal Mobile” (Sept. 29, 2020); “The Download: Brian Handly, CEO, Reveal Mobile, Inc.” (Aug. 27, 2019)

For the Best Large Startup award, the judges selected Pendo, a Raleigh-based startup that creates product experience and digital adoption solutions to help companies become product-led and deliver digital experiences users love. You probably know plenty about Pendo, but here’s what we’ve written (or shown) about the company on GrepBeat.com:

“[VIDEO] GB Cribs: CEO Todd Olson Gives Us A Tour Of Pendo’s HQ” (June 11, 2020); “Marketing 101: Joe Chernov, CMO, Pendo” (July 7, 2020); “Meet… Jennifer Dearman, Chief Customer Officer, Pendo” (Oct. 24, 2019); “Pendo Event Aims To Change Underrepresentation Of Women In Tech” (January 24, 2019); “Meet… Jennifer Fentress, Pendo” (Sept. 13, 2018)

The Readers’ Choice winner for Best Large Startup was Levitate/Real Magic. Raleigh-based Real Magic is creating SaaS communication products to drive effective marketing for companies. Their first app, Levitate, utilizes AI-powered software to help businesses manage their professional relationships and referrals.

Here’s how we’ve covered Levitate in GrepBeat: “Raleigh’s Levitate Keeps Rising With New Funding, Rapid Growth” (July 23, 2020); “Lipson’s Latest Trick: Raising $6M Series A For Real Magic” (June 20, 2019); “No Trick: ShareFile Founder Lipson Back With Real Magic” (Aug. 21, 2018)

The winners for Most Impactful Individual also differed between the judges’ and readers’ choice.

Judges selected Scot Wingo, a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Get Spiffy, an on-demand mobile car care service company. Wingo is also known for successfully launching and exiting other startups like ChannelAdvisor, Stingray Software and AuctionRover. Wingo has created and maintained the Triangle Tweener list as well.

Readers, on the other hand, chose Robbie Allen as their Most Impactful Individual. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Startomatic as well as the former founder of StatSheet, which transformed into Automated Insights. Allen has been an angel investor and adviser to a variety of startups and will even be hosting a GrepBeat podcast called For Starters exploring how to start a business.

The Best On-Campus Startup category had a variety of contenders from Triangle universities; at least one of the founders needed to be a current student, whether undergraduate or graduate, to qualify.

The judges picked Flux Hybrids, which was founded by NC State grad students Micah Ulrich and Clay Dowdey. Flux Hybrids seeks to make transportation better and more accessible with clean hybrid conversion technology, including a kit that can turn any car into a clean, efficient vehicle. We just published a separate story on the startup to introduce it more fully.

For the readers who voted, MUSE Biomedical was the winner. A UNC Chapel Hill startup, MUSE Biomedical creates medical devices and sensors that provide preventative solutions to opioid addiction, a national crisis that leads to senseless deaths. We wrote about MUSE Biomedical in December.

Last but definitely not least, we tabbed Durham’s ArchiveSocial for a special award in the category of Best Leveraging of Triangle Ecosystem Resources. ArchiveSocial provides a social media archiving software to ensure an organization’s communications are saved. Social media posts and conversations are seamlessly preserved in near-real time.

Anil Chawla, the founder of ArchiveSocial, leveraged multiple Triangle opportunities like an NC IDEA grant and going through the then-accelerator The Startup Factory as he built a great company and led it through a successful exit to a private equity firm in 2019. Here is a full story on ArchiveSocial, Anil’s founder journey and why they’re tailor-made for this award.