In this week’s episode of The Friday Nooner, Joe and Pete are trying out a new format, which loosely resembles the daytime talk show The View. (Very loosely.) Before bringing on the featured guest, they welcomed guest co-host Chantal Allam—whose work you have most likely read in WRAL TechWire, Hypepotamus, or another media outlet. The trio talked about everything tech in the Triangle and beyond from Charlotte-based AvidXChange’s recent filing for an IPO to future unicorns in the Triangle.
Our featured guest was Melissa Phillippi, CEO of Performance Culture (and a former GrepBeat feature subject). Performance Culture offers performance management software to help build better teams that lead to better results. It is also a portfolio company at Joe’s Jurassic Capital.
Here are some highlights from this episode:
- Joe and Pete talked about Charlotte unicorn AvidXChange’s recent filing for an IPO that values the fintech startup at $4.4B. They also discussed whether going public via an IPO is worth it for a company. Joe said, “The simplistic view that an IPO is the holy grail of a company is not really accurate; it’s much more a spectrum of financing.”
- Chantal joined the guys about 10 minutes into the live stream. She talked about her writing for TechWire’s multimedia series called “Tomorrow’s Unicorns: a look inside Raleigh’s $1B startup pipeline.” Pete said that he was very amused by the comments that John Cowan, the CEO of Raleigh-based edge computing startup EDJX (and former Download subject), made about Pendo in her recent profile. (John had said that EDJX “could far exceed Pendo,” which was just the kind of trash-talking that Pete believes will liven up the Triangle tech scene.)
- Melissa entered next, ready with her very own handheld microphone. She talked about the transition of Performance Culture moving to Durham from Wilmington. Melissa also revealed she holds a black belt in karate, though only after Joe displayed a pic of Young Melissa posing with a sword. Oh, just watch the show already.
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