Happy Friday! During this week’s Friday Nooner, Pete kicked off the episode by acknowledging Joe’s haircut. And if you feel like Joe just got a haircut, it’s because he did. Joe said he’s attempting to get a “fresh new do” every four weeks. In regards to Pete updates, he informed Joe that his early-morning run did occur this morning, though the weather wasn’t the most conducive.
The biggest GrepBeat news is that the crew announced the launch of Very Early Bird tickets for Grep-a-palooza 2. The event will take place June 1 at the Durham Convention Center with keynote speakers Bill Spruill and Erkang Zheng. At Grep-a-palooza, Triangle tech community members will have the opportunity to network, learn, and form connections with like-minded startup founders and ecosystem members. [Very Early Bird prices last through March 31 and are $99 for Startup Founders/Employees and $199 for Everyone Else. You can register here.]
In other GrepBeat news, this week brought the seventh episode of our For Starters podcast with guest Monica Wood—the Co-Founder and former CEO of recipe and shopping startup Myxx. Dime Marketplace, a startup connecting college students and brands run by a Duke senior; and Equifire, a back-office solution for fire prevention professionals to start their own businesses, were also profiled on the site.
Before welcoming this week’s guest, Joe and Pete also discussed Pendo’s seemingly inevitable march toward an IPO in the near future, and Joe specifically commented about the macro environment of customer-experience-based startups. He said he feels Pendo is thinking correctly about their development and fundraising by working to keep their name relevant in the community.
This week’s guest was a former Pendo executive, Kristen Baileys, who is now the Co-Founder and CEO of the Raleigh-based startup Bake Eat Love, which we first profiled in November (and here’s their website). Here are some highlights from her appearance:
- Bake Eat Love is a subscription-based service that delivers all the necessary tools and ingredients to create an inspirational dessert. Each month, the company launches a new box with pre-measured ingredients, a cooking tool, detailed instructions, and digital resources so user can bake a themed treat. Baileys made her virtual background a yuzu white-chocolate lava cake—which was this month’s featured dessert as part of a Japanese-influenced theme—as an example to show the masterpieces waiting in each box.
- Baileys said the key to creating a perfectly executed baked good is to add together the right ingredients, right tools, and right knowledge. Her startup aims to foster growth and ease for people who want to create lavish desserts but might lack experience. And although Baileys thought Bake Eat Love would be a biggest hit with adults in their 20s and 30s, she’s found that teens and tweens are the demographic that seem to be having the most fun with the boxes. Soon, Baileys plans to roll out a series of kid-inspired boxes.
- As the former Director of Growth at Pendo, Baileys said her experience with the company taught her immensely about product management and marketing. Rather than attempt to try every marketing strategy, Baileys said her Pendo background helps narrow the field on marketing tactics and hone in on the customer experience. She added that the customer experience is central to Bake Eat Love and that each box goes through several rounds of customer testing before hitting the doorsteps of her subscribers.
The episode ended with some advice about crumb-coating for Joe (he’s been struggling in the frosting area recently), and Baileys emphasized that baking with friends and family is an incredibly fun bonding experience that everyone should try.
You can watch the full episode on LinkedIn here and Facebook here.
Or on YouTube:
Auditory learners can listen (and subscribe to!) our podcast version: