[Editor’s Note: you can find our coverage of Day One’s afternoon sessions here.]
CED’s Venture Connect summit kicked off Wednesday morning in the Citrix Building in downtown Raleigh with a keynote speech by the person most responsible for there being such a building: Jes Lipson.
Lipson traced his career from its humble beginnings developing his first company in an insect-infested basement in his apartment as a Duke undergrad, to launching ShareFile in 2005 and growing it without outside capital, to ShareFile’s acquisition by Citrix in 2011, to bringing Citrix/ShareFile into a formerly abandoned warehouse as the rechristened Citrix Building a decade ago.
Citrix—which was taken private two years ago by two private equity firms—has now left its space in the building that still has its name, but for two days at least the halls are buzzing again as the site of Venture Connect 2024.
Lipson is now the founder and CEO of Raleigh-based Levitate, a platform that uses AI to help businesses maintain client relationships. He will also be a keynote speaker at Grep-a-palooza 3 on Tuesday, June 4. (Get those Very Early Bird rates before they expire on March 31!)
After Lipson spoke, the conference kicked off in earnest with what it’s best known for: streams of startups pitching for an audience that includes some 200 investors, most visiting from outside the Triangle. This year introduced a new wrinkle as the audience could vote for a winner in each session of roughly eight startups.
North Carolina startups Beam Dynamics (Winston-Salem) and Zinnia (Charlotte) took home victories Wednesday morning during Venture Connect’s Growth SaaS and AI pitch sessions, respectively.
Although the morning’s pitch winners were from outside the Triangle, several local tech startups pitched as well.
Raleigh’s Coworks and MuukTest in Raleigh and Cary-based Map My Customers in Cary pitched during the Growth SaaS presentations. Map My Customers CEO Ben Hartmere reported the startup had over 250 customers and expects the company to have positive cash flow by the end of Q3 2024. (The links are to previous GrepBeat stories on those startups.)
MuukTest, a quality assurance and software-test-automation startup, reported that its ARR (annual recurring revenue) grew by 11x in 2023, according to CEO and co-founder Ivan Barajas Vargas.
Triangle-based startups Bionic Health, Bristles AI, SneakPeek Technologies, Truentity Health, Trusted AI Solutions and TSV Analytics presented during the AI session. (The links are to previous GrepBeat stories.)
Durham-based and Primordial-backed Bristles AI grew its annual recurring revenue from $0 to $132,000 in 2023, according to CEO and co-founder Tina Tang.
Truentity Health, an RTP-based patient platform that uses AI to lower readmissions, reported a 95 percent retention rate and an aim to break even by the end of 2024.
Raleigh-based TSV Analytics is poised to gain strategic partnerships with an NC tech giant and Brazilian political campaigns in the near future, according to CEO and co-founder Trevor Ferree.
GroupUps, Jobvious, PlanMyKids, SonoVoice and Zoee are the local startups that will present in Thursday morning’s consumer software and marketplaces competition. Local startups during the consumer innovation and marketplaces competition will include Jabin Beverage Co, Social Cascade and Tromml. (The links are to previous GrepBeat stories.)
Thursday’s morning pitch sessions will begin at 9:15 a.m. and last until noon, followed by four more sessions (two at a time) in the afternoon. Venture Connect will then be capped by the Summit Celebration on the roof of the Citrix Building, for which tickets can be purchased separately.
If you’re at the event, be sure to swing by the GrepBeat table on Level Two to say hi!
