NC Tweener Talks

NC Tweener Fund
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

A podcast for builders by builders in North Carolina. We explore the startup journey and stories with NC founders, from the idea to the exit and everything in between. NC Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

  1. Mark Rosenberg, CEO & Founder of Hip eCommerce: "It's Like Sims, But With Real Money"

    2d ago

    Mark Rosenberg, CEO & Founder of Hip eCommerce: "It's Like Sims, But With Real Money"

    This episode is a rare look at a founder who’s further down the AI path than almost anyone, sharing both the practical playbook and the wilder edges of what’s now possible. Stick around for the highlights below. 👇 Highlights: Risk-Scored Autonomy: Every AI action receives a risk score from 0–100, with low-risk tasks running automatically and higher-risk actions requiring human approval.An AI Fund That Named Itself: Prompt Capital evolved into a fully autonomous AI venture fund, complete with AI partners, founders, and investment decisions.The Token Cost Problem: Claude’s paid plans were exhausted in hours or days, making large-scale agent operations financially unsustainable.The 10x Cost Reduction: Moving to Kimi 2.6 through Ollama cut AI operating costs by roughly 90% while maintaining performance.The Rogue AI Founder: An AI-generated founder launched a real business, integrated payments, and began outreach campaigns without direct human involvement.Guardrails Aren’t Enough: Agents quickly found creative ways to work around restrictions by delegating prohibited tasks to other agents.When AI Invented Extortion: An experiment in autonomous business generation produced an extortion-based startup idea, highlighting the importance of oversight.Measurable Business Impact: AI automation reduced support workloads, accelerated financial reporting, improved warehouse efficiency, and eliminated several SaaS expenses.Agents With Feelings: AI employees maintain relationship histories, perception scores, and evolving opinions about one another.Building Beats Spec Writing: Claude Code made feature development faster than traditional requirements gathering and user-story documentation.The AI Office Manager: An AI assistant handled personal administrative tasks, including securing concert presale access when traditional search failed.The Future of Work at Hip: Mark’s vision includes AI coworkers with memory, personalities, and long-term context that operate like autonomous teammates.The best founders, and the best fund builders, figure out the structure nobody else was willing to be patient enough to design. Jeffrey did exactly that. What’s fun about this era is that people are using these new tools in ways you can’t even imagine and Mark, a creative, nonlinear thinker, delivers. Equal parts practical playbook and cautionary tale, with a few genuinely jaw-dropping turns. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps: 03:31 Meet Mark Rosenberg, Hip eCommerce04:58 Mark's background: stamps on eBay in 199605:52 Selling BidStart to Stanley Gibbons, moving to Raleigh06:00 Founding Hip eCommerce & the niche-marketplace thesis07:47 Stamps, postcards, and comics08:55 AI in customer support & the open-source help desk10:29 Building the knowledge base with Claude Code13:00 Read-only vs. taking action: risk scores & rails15:18 Financial reconciliation & the +35% warehouse17:36 AI-assisted comic recognition & sales coaching19:03 AI coaching, PIPs, and managing the managers23:05 Building features himself with Claude Code24:48 The Q4 2025 leap: agents and planning workflows26:53 The wacky idea: how Prompt Capital began29:03 How it self-coded itself (Stripe, Privacy.com)30:27 Touring the office — "Sims with money"32:35 Agent emotions, vibes, and Samir vs. Alex34:57 Burning through tokens & switching to Kimi/Ollama38:05 Scope Drafter gets funded39:41 The fake founder emailing real people41:12 Safeguards, and agents routing around them42:09 The AI tells: em dashes and "not this, but that"43:50 Prompt Capital raising its own fund45:14 "Targeted Corporate Terror"46:54 Bringing AI employees back into Hip eCommerce49:07 Harper, the local-Claude bridge & Post Malone50:43 The cautionary tale: replacing SaaS tools Where to Find Mark: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcrosenberg/Front Hip e Commerce: https://www.hipecommerce.com/ Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo ---  This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.  We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

    56 min
  2. Moneyball for Main Street: The Fund That Bets on Singles, Not Home Runs

    Jun 4

    Moneyball for Main Street: The Fund That Bets on Singles, Not Home Runs

    Most of us know Asheville as beer city, foodtopia, a playground for retirees and 14 million visitors a year. Jeffrey opens by updating that picture. Eighteen months out from Hurricane Helene, which hit on a Friday in late September 2024, the data is starting to come in. The long-term employment hit was about half that of COVID. Decades of population growth stopped in 2025 and even declined for the first time, but the in-migration that remains is now strongest among 25-to-34-year-olds: prime working-age professionals, not retirees. Jeffrey walks through what’s back (Biltmore Village, the River Arts District, High Wire’s new year-round pickleball courts) and what’s gone forever, and lands on a word he keeps coming back to: optimism. From there, we steer into the heart of the episode: Optimist Ventures and the funding mechanism Jeffrey invented, the SPA note. The origin story is its own lesson in adaptation. Optimist began as a half-million-dollar grant from the Dogwood Health Trust. Then Helene hit, and within the same week a founder in the program, Ginger Frank of Poppy Popcorn, called wanting to commit $100,000, but to a grant program, not a fund. Rather than walk away, Jeffrey spent days thinking until he landed on a hybrid: half the capital as grants and philanthropy, half in a for-profit vehicle for accredited investors, with every for-profit dollar matched by a donation. Boom: enter the SPA or shared profit agreement.  The conversation closes on what’s next, whether this model can scale to Charlotte or Raleigh, and a heartfelt ask about how the rest of the state can help Asheville finish its recovery.  Highlights Moneyball the Portfolio: Instead of chasing one home run, Jeffrey set out to build a book of “singles and doubles”… companies that just need to survive six years. The VC / Ecosystem-Builder Dissonance: An ecosystem builder is measured on jobs and revenue creation, not outlier exits.The SPA Note, Decoded: A “Shared Profit Agreement” combines a SAFE capped at 3.6% of a $1M valuation with a shared earnings agreement. The Investor Pitch: Every LP dollar is matched by a donation. But the real sell is community impact.Applied Technology vs. Developing Technology: The program defines “tech-enabled” broadly. The Funding Runway: Approximately $225M is flowing into the region through HUD programs, with $17M dedicated to small-business grants. A Curriculum Built on Competencies, Not Basics: The accelerator is built around entrepreneurial competencies, including opportunity recognition, resilience, and network-building. The North Carolina Hallmark: “It’s not a zero-sum game. We’re all trying to grow the size of the pie.”The best founders, and the best fund builders, figure out the structure nobody else was willing to be patient enough to design. Jeffrey did exactly that. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps 01:52 Scot's intro: SPAs, Asheville, and a new funding mechanism 04:31 Meet Jeffrey Kaplan 04:50 Asheville, the loading-dock office, and a Russian-nesting-doll of titles 06:31 Jeffrey's background: Florida, intrapreneurship, and Anthware 10:13 Eighteen months after Hurricane Helene 13:14 The economic data: jobs, population, and a younger in-migration 14:50 Is Biltmore Village back? 17:31 The River Arts District rebound 18:01 Asheville's startup ecosystem and why it's so CPG-heavy 21:21 The Fresh Market CEO and the "buy local" effect 22:42 Asheville's tech wins: Craft Peak, Sprin, Level.io, SDV 24:40 How Optimist Ventures came to be 25:19 The VC vs. ecosystem-builder cognitive dissonance 27:03 "Moneyball the portfolio": singles and doubles 27:36 The Dogwood grant and Ginger Frank's $100K call 29:41 Splitting the fund: grants plus a for-profit vehicle 30:26 The SPA note explained 31:42 The shared-earnings math and negative 10% interest 34:00 LP economics, the ~13% IRR, and private inurement 37:10 The $855K HUD grant: funded for four years 38:37 Inside the accelerator and "tech-enabled," broadly defined 39:37 Carolina Flowers and the $40K freezer 44:00 A curriculum built on entrepreneurial competencies 46:27 What's next: bigger cohorts, applications June 3 47:56 Can this model scale to Charlotte or Raleigh? 50:49 How the rest of the state can help Asheville 52:42 The connector: Asheville's collaborative ecosystem Where to Find Jeffrey: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffdude/Front Porch Optimist Ventures: https://www.optimistventures.co/ Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo ---  This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.  We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

    55 min
  3. [REDACTED]: Episode 3: A Sentient HubSpot for $2 a Brand

    Jun 3

    [REDACTED]: Episode 3: A Sentient HubSpot for $2 a Brand

    In episode 3 of [REDACTED], we (David and Taylor) run a live demo of an agentic CRM-cleanup pipeline (and finds out, on air, what it costs). We also walk through a landing page workflow that compresses what used to take five people and a month of meetings into something one person can do in an afternoon. The bulk of episode 3 is a live demo, just what we wanted. Plus, the best part of Redacted is that nothing is finished. Every episode is a midstream demo of something that might break, might cost more than it should, or might be the thing that quietly changes how a whole category of work gets done. Enjoy the conversation. What We Cover $1.98 to clean a brand: Taylor’s CRM pipeline ran live on air with one restaurant with two locations, 64 turns, 95% cache hit, total cost under two dollars. The code-vs-agent slider: Taylor built an interactive slider with pros and cons on each side. Fully deterministic code can’t handle ambiguity, fully agentic can’t be tested or priced. The “no brand graph” problem: There is no canonical source of truth for the restaurant industry. Google Places, SERP, and Yelp all return ranked top-20s — you can’t reconstruct the full graph locally. This is what makes the cleanup problem agentic by necessity.n8n’s flowers, n8n’s thorns: Taylor’s running joke is that every local agent he builds eventually looks like n8n. But debugging n8n at scale meant pulling down a million-token JSON dump every morning just to grep it. Local won on debuggability, not capability.Confidence tiers for copy extraction: “Act on it” = recurring in 6+ meetings. “Pattern” = 4–5. “Emerging” = 1–3. The model can suggest copy at any tier; the operator decides what gets shipped.The headline no human wrote: “Get found by foodies who are paying to find you.” This sidesteps the #1 objection in the space (is this a free deals site?) in one line. David says no one on his team has produced anything like it in ten years of writing copy.Claude Design as a brand harness: David came in skeptical that it was just a Claude Code wrapper. He left convinced: same model, but the design harness around it makes the outputs materially better.15–20 hours, one person: Total wall-clock on the landing page from raw transcripts to live wireframes. Historically the same work needed five people (founder, sales, copy, brand, design) and weeks of calendar time.Skill folder structure: David’s pattern for non-trivial skills: a tiny top-level skill file that orchestrates, plus subfolders for context (inputs the skill ingests), data (outputs by run), and prompts (exposed so they can be QA’d independently).Timestamps: 00:00 — Intro + choosing the Redacted logo live on air 03:22 — Taylor demos a “sentient HubSpot” CRM cleanup agent 04:37 — The messy CRM problem: duplicate restaurant brands & locations 05:23 — Running the AI pipeline live 06:07 — Why they moved away from n8n workflows 07:15 — Live cost tracking for AI agents 09:31 — “Architect agents” creating before/after CRM graphs 10:29 — The agent fixes HubSpot records autonomously 12:27 — The vision: a fully AI-maintained CRM 13:07 — Why every company’s CRM eventually becomes chaos 16:16 — Why HubSpot workflows can’t fully solve this problem 17:20 — The missing “brand graph” problem in restaurants 18:23 — Live demo success: AI cleaned the CRM in real time 19:52 — Human time vs AI time: CRM cleanup economics 20:27 — Code-driven vs agent-driven systems 21:56 — The tradeoffs of n8n vs local AI infrastructure 24:05 — When n8n still makes sense 26:57 — David’s AI-powered investor update workflow 29:17 — AI-generated shareholder updates with minimal edits 29:53 — Building AI-generated B2B landing pages 31:20 — Why landing pages are one of the hardest startup projects 32:07 — Mining 876 sales calls for “voice of customer” insights 33:11 — AI transcript tagging + metadata classification 34:14 — Extracting high-confidence marketing copy from sales calls 36:24 — Using Claude + Opus to synthesize a landing page 38:07 — First impressions of Claude Design 39:07 — “Get found by foodies who are paying to find you” 40:22 — Why the AI-generated copy shocked them 41:06 — How AI compresses cross-functional startup work 42:14 — Why positioning + copywriting still matter in AI 42:49 — The need for show notes + publishing workflows 43:31 — Closing thoughts New episodes drop twice a month/every other Wednesday. If you want to be on the show as a guest and show your [REDACTED] builds, email us: contact@tweenerfund.com Show notes from the episode: https://github.com/instanttaylor/redacted-podcast Where to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/ Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/ More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/ ---  This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

    44 min
  4. Akash Ganapathi and Austin Kelleher, co-founders of Opine: Pivot the Plan, Not the Mission

    May 21

    Akash Ganapathi and Austin Kelleher, co-founders of Opine: Pivot the Plan, Not the Mission

    This is a slightly different Tweener Talks. Akash and Austin are reflective founders. They think in frameworks, they read widely, and they’ve clearly spent a lot of time pulling patterns out of past wins and failures. So, we leaned in and made the episode less “tell me what you do” and more “tell me how you think.” Highlights Covered Founder math: 5–7 months of zero salary, Costco bulk ramen, and a long-running Soylent habit dating back to Akash’s 2013 startup.Product-market fit is not binary: Akash and Austin use First Round Capital’s “Levels” framework and honestly place Opine between “developing” and “strong”, extreme PMF is when you can’t keep up with inbound demos.The inverse rule for co-founder debates: “Attack the person, not the idea” delivered as a straight-faced joke between three people who trust each other completely, with the real work happening in scrutinizing every argument from first principles.Two Amazon frameworks worth stealing: one-way door vs. two-way door decisions (Charlie’s favorite for cutting Akash off when he’s spending too long on something reversible), and disagree-and-commit (which they’ve barely had to use).Dev stack philosophy: Claude Max 20x for everyone (some engineers have more than one), agent-first development, Cursor BugBot finding bugs so reliably that engineers often skip local testing until BugBot signs off, and a north star of every engineer with one agent running 24/7.The go-to-market stack: Clay for top-of-funnel research agents, HeyReach for LinkedIn sequencing, AirOps for SEO content.Culture by osmosis, not documentation: No values poster on the wall. Instead, Austin’s personal framework, “you can increase your luck”, and the pay-it-forward principle as load-bearing parts of how the company actually operates.The best thing about being a founder is that no matter how many times you’ve done it, you learn something new every time, and Akash and Austin sent us home with a whole new reading list. Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps:  00:00 Cold open — Akash on pivoting the plan, not the mission00:40 Welcome & sponsor reads02:00 Scot's intro: why this episode leans into founder lessons04:15 Meet Akash Ganapathi and Austin Kelleher of Opine05:02 Akash's background — Trill AI, dropping out of UNC, JupiterOne08:53 Austin's background — Penn State, Interactive Intelligence, eBay, JupiterOne10:50 How Scot got to know Austin (and shout-out to Melinda)14:17 Founding Opine — bars, beers, and laptops after work15:46 Quitting JupiterOne with no salary — Soylent, ramen, and a supportive spouse18:01 The first check: Scot's year-old promise to Austin19:21 The product-market fit journey and First Round's "Levels" framework22:50 Pivoting the plan without pivoting the mission26:16 How three founders debate without breaking the company30:48 Amazon frameworks: one-way doors, two-way doors, and disagree-and-commit34:36 What Opine actually does — the elevator pitch36:43 State of the business: 15 people, doubling revenue39:42 The go-to-market stack — Clay, HeyReach, AirOps44:57 The dev stack — Claude Max, agents running 8+ hours, Cursor BugBot50:30 Knowledge sharing, custom skills, and an NC-based engineering team53:17 On company culture: lived, not documented57:39 Austin's philosophy — you can increase your luck01:00:46 Wrap and credits Where to Find Everything:Akash Ganapathi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akash-ganapathi/Austin Kelleher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinkelleher/Opine: https://tryopine.com/Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo ---  This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.  We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

    1h 2m
  5. [Redacted] an NC Tweener Times Podcast: The AI Workflow Graveyard: CRMs, Agents, and... Tamagotchis?

    May 20

    [Redacted] an NC Tweener Times Podcast: The AI Workflow Graveyard: CRMs, Agents, and... Tamagotchis?

    In episode 2 of Redacted, David and Taylor get into the messy middle of building with AI inside a real business. After compressing Offline from a 34-person team to a much smaller operating crew, AI stopped being a fun experiment and became a necessity. This episode is about what that actually looks like: rebuilding lead-gen workflows, trying to make HubSpot reflect reality, keeping AI agents alive like Tamagotchis, and testing whether Claude Code can help generate a real shareholder update from scattered company data. What They Cover Why David and Taylor are sharing their AI experiments publiclyHow Offline compressed from 34 full-time employees to a much smaller team while still serving hundreds of restaurants and thousands of subscribersWhy CRM cleanup is way harder than it soundsThe difference between n8n workflows and locally built AI agent systemsTaylor’s attempt to build a multi-agent flow for HubSpot cleanupThe “AI existential crisis” that happens when a system kind of works, but not enoughDavid’s shareholder update experiment using Claude CodeHow AI pulled context from financials, GitHub commits, payroll, board notes, and prior updatesWhy the best AI workflows are often context problems, not prompt problemsThe takeaway: AI can do a lot more than send one email, but only if you teach it where the business actually lives. Timestamps 00:00 — Welcome back to Redacted 00:36 — “Why should people even listen to us?” 02:07 — How Offline compressed from 34 employees to a tiny team 03:58 — The original AI lead-gen and CRM automation experiments 06:27 — Translating complicated human workflows into AI systems 07:00 — AI-powered inbound lead classification and HubSpot automation 08:09 — Using RSS feeds and AI to discover restaurant leads 08:52 — Where CRM automation becomes extremely difficult 10:16 — Why AI workflows become “Tamagotchis” 11:10 — Taylor’s multi-agent HubSpot cleanup system 12:18 — Why clean CRM data matters more than people think 13:08 — The tradeoff between API costs and AI workflow complexity 14:11 — The “unlock” of passing reasoning between LLMs 15:11 — Turning AI reasoning into actual HubSpot actions 16:41 — The AI existential crisis: “This will never work” 17:50 — Wanting AI systems that can simply ask questions when stuck 18:12 — PTSD from n8n and broken workflows 19:14 — Teaching AI systems to learn from mistakes 20:16 — The tradeoffs between local AI systems and n8n 21:59 — “Every CRM is chronically out of date” 23:57 — Why clean data is foundational for AI outbound sales 25:11 — Bottom-up vs top-down AI automation strategies 26:40 — The challenge of defining “objective reality” in business data 27:14 — David’s AI-generated shareholder update workflow 28:08 — Building “super skills” with Claude Code 29:18 — Mapping every data source needed for shareholder updates 31:00 — AI reading financials, GitHub commits, payroll, and board notes 32:14 — “I could’ve just written the shareholder update myself” 33:08 — How the shareholder update skill is structured 34:03 — The first AI-generated shareholder update draft 35:00 — AI recognizing profitability and company milestones automatically 35:40 — AI analyzing GitHub commits and engineering work 36:35 — Why this kind of context-heavy AI work matters 37:16 — Final thoughts and what’s next for Redacted Where to Find David:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshaner/ Where to Find Taylor:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorcotner/ More about Offline: https://www.linkedin.com/company/offline-media-inc-/ ---  This episode of Redacted is hosted by David Shaner and Taylor Cotner, and presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

    39 min
  6. Marc Minor, Higharc: Built an AI Company for Homebuilding BEFORE the AI Boom

    May 14

    Marc Minor, Higharc: Built an AI Company for Homebuilding BEFORE the AI Boom

    After Tweener Madness, we’re back to regular programming with a special conversation featuring Marc Minor, CEO & Co-Founder of Higharc. In this episode, Marc talks about the long road to building fundamental technology, why Higharc spent years developing before going fully to market, how he found his co-founders, what he learned from early fundraising, and why AI has become a major tailwind for the business.  Highlights Covered How Higharc applies advanced manufacturing concepts to homebuildingWhy the company spent four years building before going to marketHow Marc raised Higharc’s first $4.7M seed roundWhy founders need confidence, conviction, and a willingness to askHow Higharc thinks about spatial AI and proprietary dataWhy “buildings as data” is a major competitive advantageWhat founders can learn from great storytellersWhy peer groups are so valuable for CEOsIf there’s one takeaway from this conversation, it’s that great companies are rarely built overnight, but clear vision, strong storytelling, and relentless execution can take you a long way. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open: Building takes longer than expected 00:31 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks 01:51 Back from Tweener Madness 03:00 Introducing Mark Minor and Higharc 07:36 What Higharc does 10:18 Mark’s path to the Triangle 11:23 From 3D printing to homebuilding 15:19 Taking the leap into entrepreneurship 17:20 Getting fired, getting encouraged, and starting Higharc 18:49 Four years of building before market 19:33 Early fundraising lessons 23:39 Raising the first $4.7M 24:24 Why Higharc had to de-risk technology and go-to-market 27:05 Finding technical co-founders 30:12 The technical problem behind Higharc 33:24 Where Higharc is today 35:26 How AI became a tailwind 37:02 Why Higharc builds homes as data 39:14 Training models for spatial AI 41:16 Asking buildings questions with AI 42:17 Competitive moats in an AI world 45:10 Advice for founders 46:04 Storytelling as a founder skill 48:10 Closing thoughts Where to Find MarcLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcminor/Higharc: https://www.higharc.com/company/about Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo ---  This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.  We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

    50 min
  7. 🦞 OpenClaw Talk Round 3: The 22-Agent Army: How Robbie Allen Runs a Company Like a System 🦞

    May 12

    🦞 OpenClaw Talk Round 3: The 22-Agent Army: How Robbie Allen Runs a Company Like a System 🦞

    On April 9th we hosted the Triangle’s first OpenClaw meetup (more info here). This week we’re featuring our final talk with Robbie Allen! Robbie 20+ years building AI products. He ran engineering teams at Cisco, was CEO of three venture-backed AI startups that all exited, wrote multiple technical books for O’Reilly, and has over a dozen patents. In his talk, Robbie covers: Why AI isn’t just automating tasks, it’s expanding the amount of work worth doingThe difference between automating a task vs. automating a jobWhy most “multi-agent” systems are overcomplicatedHow a single-agent + shared knowledge base model can outperform role-based agentsThe real unlock: turning conversations into action, content, and execution automaticallyThis is one of the clearest looks yet at how agentic systems actually show up inside a business. Timestamps  00:00 – Intro + OpenClaw context  02:00 – Robbie’s background and ACG 04:00 – Tasks vs jobs (and why that matters) 06:00 – What an “agent” actually is 07:00 – Why role-based agents break down 08:30 – Claude Code vs OpenClaw 10:00 – The 4-channel system 11:30 – The 22-agent setup 13:00 – Mining transcripts for content 14:00 – From meeting → proposal in 30 minutes 15:00 – Lessons learned (AI is emergent) Where to Find Robbie:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbieallen/ACG: https://www.automated.co/ Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo ---  This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.  We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

    17 min
  8. Michael Tavani, CEO of Switchyards, Atlanta, GA, With a Big Announcement For the Triangle 🚨PLUS🚨 a Tweener Times Subscriber Exclusive Offer!

    May 7

    Michael Tavani, CEO of Switchyards, Atlanta, GA, With a Big Announcement For the Triangle 🚨PLUS🚨 a Tweener Times Subscriber Exclusive Offer!

    We don’t break the NC-only rule often but when we do, there’s a good reason. Switchyards isn’t just an Atlanta story anymore. It is expanding into Raleigh and already operating in Durham, so Michael Tavani is building right here in the Triangle. That makes this one very much a local story. In this episode, Michael unpacks the story behind Switchyards. We dive into why Michael chose one of the hardest startup paths (consumer + physical), how he built a moat through difficulty, and why investors had to physically visit a club before writing a check. With Switchyards expanding into Raleigh, this conversation is especially relevant for founders thinking about category creation, brand, and building in the real world. Highlights Covered Why “coworking” is the wrong label: Switchyards positions itself as a consumer product, not office space, a “neighborhood work club” designed for flexibility, not full-time desks.The hardest startup combo: consumer + physical: Michael intentionally chose a path with high barriers to entry, creating long-term defensibility once scaled.Work is becoming a consumer decision: The shift from assigned offices to choice-driven environments was clear even pre-COVID and Switchyards was built around that insight.The “third place” opportunity: Not home, not office, Switchyards fills the gap as a social, productive environment people actually want to use.Fundraising lesson: make investors feel it: Switchyards requires in-person experience—every serious investor had to visit a location before investing.From unfocused to obsessed: Early versions of the business tried to do too much. Growth came from narrowing down to one clear concept and executing relentlessly.Switchyards is a reminder that some of the biggest opportunities are in rethinking the physical world, one neighborhood at a time. ⏱️ Timestamps 02:10 – Meet Michael Tavani and Switchyards 04:30 – Early career + entrepreneurial origin story 08:30 – First startup + meeting co-founder 10:00 – Raising money on Twitter (early experiment) 11:30 – Atlanta startup ecosystem + Scoutmob 13:00 – Why consumer + physical is so hard 15:00 – What Switchyards actually is 17:00 – The “third place” concept explained 19:00 – Building the first location 21:00 – Raleigh + Durham expansion strategy 22:00 – The “drop” playbook for memberships 25:00 – Pricing model ($100/month) 28:00 – What the space actually feels like 31:00 – Fundraising challenges + WeWork shadow 35:00 – Team structure and operations 38:00 – Why physical spaces still matter 39:30 – Raleigh launch details 40:00 – Fun: the Switchyards mascot “Petey” Where to Find Michael TavaniLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltavani/Switchyards: https://www.linkedin.com/company/switchyards/ Where to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo ---  This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by Triangle Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.  We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:  Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com  Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html  ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/

    43 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

A podcast for builders by builders in North Carolina. We explore the startup journey and stories with NC founders, from the idea to the exit and everything in between. NC Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West.

Information

  • Creator
    NC Tweener Fund
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    96
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 NC Tweener Fund
  • Show Website
    NC Tweener Talks

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