Founder Friday: 2022 Triangle Tweener List
Research Triangle Park, RTP, Research Triangle, or simply The Triangle, the Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill market has long been one of the South’s leading tech mechas. One of The Triangle’s serial startup founders is Scot Wingo. Since 1995, Wingo has successfully started four startups, had three exits, and his recent venture, the on-demand car washing (and now brake service) startup Spiffy, announced a Series B investment of $22M. Oh, and along the way, he launched The Triangle Tweener Fund to help support startups with between $1M to $80M ARR.
It’s safe to say that Wingo knows startups and is deeply entrenched in The Triangle startup ecosystem. Wingo has put together the Triangle Tweeners List for the past seven years, highlighting the area’s tech startups. The 2022 Triangle Tweener List highlights 250 entries.
One thing Wingo does that we love before jumping into the list is he breaks down what the last year has looked like for the 2021 Tweener list…
- The Big Picture: general numbers on the number of exits, deal flow, and how the list of qualified startups has grown.
- Acquisitions: 14 Tweener exits due to M&A.
- Graduates and Closures: Only one graduated from the list (that means they exceeded the $80M/yr in ARR mark), and there were zero closures of Tweener listed companies.
- Tweener Financings of Note: 38 deals are listed! Now that’s a lot of investment glowing into The Triangle.
- New to the Tweener list: 37 new Tweeners were added in 2022.
From there, Wingo dives into the 2022 list. He doesn’t simply list the names either; he shares details on the company (pitch, size, investors, CEO, and a LinkedIn page). That’s a ton of work.
Every startup community has its champions. Scot Wingo is a fantastic champion for The Triangle’s founders and startups.