GrepBeat’s 2025 In Review

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Happy 2026, everybody.

By now, if you’re a diligent GrepBeat reader, you’ve seen a few of our looks back at what we can now call “last year” (2025). We posted our annual “Top Stories” article, threw a few stats up on social media, and started a (possible) new tradition with a content round-up poem.

But one can never have too much year-end content (source: the internet). So as we officially look back on 2025 this January 1^st, here’s a more overarching look at the headline changes and accomplishments we experienced at GrepBeat (naturally there were no shortcomings or failures).

These have been chopped up into conveniently digestible bullet points, rather than, say, strung out across 211 lines of poetry.

The Big Story

The big internal story in 2025 was that GrepBeat evolved into a nonprofit—and, accordingly, established a Board of Directors. You can read more about all of that right here.

Team Comings & Goings

Team GrepBeat faced a few personnel changes in 2025:

In the spring, we said a fond farewell to Reporter-slash-Multimedia Producer Kaitlyn Dang (who is now a Multiplatform Producer at WRAL).
Around that same time, we welcomed Katelyn Crespo as our new Multimedia Producer.
We also brought longtime Colopy Ventures ally Melissa Crosby aboard as an official part of Team GrepBeat.

*If your name is Kaitlin, Caitlin, Catelyn, C8tlyn, CKaitelyn, or any variation thereof, go ahead and shoot us a resume to have on file.

The Big Events

In addition to some smaller and more regular community gatherings, GrepBeat hosted three major events in 2025. These were:

Our first-ever “Rising Stars” awards night (registration is open for the 2026 edition in early February).
The fourth installment of Grep-a-Palooza (keep an eye out for 2026 updates soon), featuring our first-ever pitch competition cash prize ($5K in cash in a sketchy briefcase), as well as a collaboration with the Launch Powered by KPMG Accelerator.
The fifth installment of our “Startups to Watch” awards.

Community Gatherings

Perhaps more than ever in the past, Team GrepBeat made a point of finding ways to engage with and gather the community in 2025. Beyond the bigger events listed above, this effort manifested in:

Several Happy Hours
Seven GrepBeat Book Club meetings
(Our first ever) College Night
LiLa Gatherings (GrepBeat adjacent, *full* credit goes to the LiLa Team, but we were thrilled to cover them and will continue to do so!).

Around the Office

GrepBeat Xiomara (the Godfather’s daughter) and FOG (friend-of-GrepBeat) Isabella Dearr completed a mural at HQ that immediately generated buzz as a new aspect of Downtown Durham’s look.
Primordial Sonali was gifted a fish, who has since become part of the team as a sort of living mascot-slash-diligent partner in cultivating and celebrating early-stage startup success.

Content

Perhaps the most important and exciting note on GrepBeat content in 2025 is that it was our first full year covering startups and tech news across the entire state. As for the specifics, we produced:

109 startup features
136 newsletters
8 editions of The Download

The GrepBeat Podcast

The GrepBeat Podcast had four active shows throughout 2025 (with more to come this year 👀). Listeners enjoyed:

10 installments of Exit Stories
32 installments of In The Soup
A weekly Friday Fix
A weekly Monday Mix

Event Coverage

Beyond our own events, we also covered more award shows, conferences, and the like than ever before in 2025. Over the course of the year, Team GrepBeat attended and wrote about:

We also had hands-on coverage of several different startup accelerator pitch/showcase events, including those for CED’s GRO Incubator, the Launch Powered by KPMG Accelerator, the FCAT Fellowship, RevTech Labs, and SEA Change.

That sums up a busy and productive 2025.

Here’s to doing even more, and doing it even better, in 2026. Happy New Year!