This week on NC Tweener Talks, Scot sits down with two of the three co-founders of Opine, a Research Triangle Park startup building an AI-native context layer for revenue teams.

About a quarter of the conversation is about what Opine does. The other three quarters is a master class in founder lessons: how to pivot without losing your mission, how to argue with your co-founders without breaking the company, and how to build an engineering org where agents run for 8+ hours at a stretch (TokenMAXXING For the Win! 💪 💪 💪)

Subscribe now

We couldn’t bring you 100% original founder-to-founder content like this without the support of our awesome-sauce sponsors:

Loving our content? It wouldn’t be possible without our amazing sponsors and our paid subscribers, so THANK YOU!

Featured Platinum Sponsor

Featured Gold Sponsor

Featured Silver Sponsor

And special thanks to our friends at Walk West for partnering with us to produce this pod!

Opine’s DNA…

Akash Ganapathi is the CEO and co-founder of Opine. He’s a second-time founder; he dropped out of UNC Chapel Hill in 2013 to start Trill AI, a deep-learning startup selling risk signals to quant hedge funds. After Trill reached its “natural conclusion,” he spent three years as the first solutions architect at JupiterOne, the local cybersecurity unicorn.

Austin Kelleher is a co-founder of Opine and runs much of the technology side. A Penn State CS grad, he moved to North Carolina out of college to work at Interactive Intelligence (later acquired by Genesys), then spent time at eBay working on open-source software before joining JupiterOne as one of its earliest engineers. Along the way he built a game with over 100,000 users, a hint at his appetite for building things early.

Their third co-founder, Charlie Duong, also came from the JupiterOne crew. Austin and Charlie have known each other for over a decade.

How we met…

I got to know Austin during the eBay years, back when Austin was dating Melinda, who happened to work at Spiffy (Melinda is now Austin’s wife. I told her to make sure she knew what she was getting into.)

Akash entered the picture once he and Austin connected at JupiterOne. A year before Opine even existed, I told Austin: “If you ever leave to start a company, I want to be the first check in.” Austin said okay. A year later an email arrived, and, as a man of my word, the Tweener Fund wrote the first check into Opine’s $2M pre-seed.

Listen/Watch Our Interview:

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.

How to watch:

Visit Tweener Talks to listen for all audio podcast players

We have a video version on YouTube (make sure to subscribe!)

📌 What’s Next

Subscribe to NC Tweener Talks for more conversations with North Carolina founders, operators, and builders shaping the future of the ecosystem. Paid subscribers help us keep creating more episodes, events, and founder-focused content across the state.

Subscribe now

Recap: What Happened to Tweener Talks?

Earlier this month we launched [Redacted], a new podcast under the NC Tweener Talks network.

This podcast shows you the messy middle of how AI is made and tested. As we made some of the first episodes, we learned that we frequently had personal information and business secrets on screen. Instead of deleting that part totally, we’re keeping it REDACTED (where appropriate) and showing you the steps in between that everyone else skips.

What’s the [Redacted] Blog All About?

[Redacted] is a YouTube-first, twice-monthly show where David and Taylor:

• Walk through what they actually shipped that week

• Screen share real systems inside their business

• Break down what worked, what didn’t, and why

You’ll be able to listen and watch on our normal NC Tweener Platforms. As a special, [Redacted] is getting it’s own sub-substack with us which you can find in the menu.

Episode 2: 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 publicly

• How Offline compressed from 34 full-time employees to a much smaller team while still serving hundreds of restaurants and thousands of subscribers

• Why CRM cleanup is way harder than it sounds

• The difference between n8n workflows and locally built AI agent systems

• Taylor’s attempt to build a multi-agent flow for HubSpot cleanup

• The “AI existential crisis” that happens when a system kind of works, but not enough

• David’s shareholder update experiment using Claude Code

• How AI pulled context from financials, GitHub commits, payroll, board notes, and prior updates

• Why the best AI workflows are often context problems, not prompt problems

The takeaway: AI can do a lot more than send one email, but only if you teach it where the business actually lives.

How to watch:

It’s best viewed on YouTube to fully see the examples (make sure to subscribe!)

But also available on all audio podcast players through Tweener Talks!

What’s Next?

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 here.

After Tweener Madness, we’re back to regular programming with a special conversation featuring Marc Minor, CEO & Co-Founder of Higharc.

Higharc is one of the Triangle’s most compelling growth-stage companies, building AI-powered software for home builders. The platform helps builders move from design to sales to construction by generating homes in 3D, producing construction documents, estimating data, and buyer-facing sales experiences directly from a generative model.

Subscribe now

We couldn’t bring you 100% original founder-to-founder content like this without the support of our awesome-sauce sponsors:

Loving our content? It wouldn’t be possible without our amazing sponsors and our paid subscribers, so THANK YOU!

Featured Platinum Sponsor

Featured Gold Sponsor

Featured Silver Sponsor

And special thanks to our friends at Walk West for partnering with us to produce this pod!

Marc Minor: One of the Best Story Teller Founders You will Ever Meet.

One of the reasons I was especially excited for this conversation is because I consider Marc one of the best storytellers I’ve met. Beyond Tweener being an investor in Higharc through NC Tweener Fund, I have spent time with Marc over the years and consistently walked away impressed by how clearly and compellingly he explains complex ideas. The Higharc pitch deck is the best deck I’ve ever seen, bar none.

Throughout the episode, you’ll notice I repeatedly point out that Marc’s ability to tell a story, whether in fundraising, product vision, or company strategy, is a major part of what makes Higharc so compelling. It’s not just about the technology itself, but how Marc paints a picture of the future in a way founders can learn from.

When you listen/watch this one, see i fyou can decode the techniques he’s using.

Listen/Watch Our Interview:

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 homebuilding

• Why the company spent four years building before going to market

• How Marc raised Higharc’s first $4.7M seed round

• Why founders need confidence, conviction, and a willingness to ask

• How Higharc thinks about spatial AI and proprietary data

• Why “buildings as data” is a major competitive advantage

• What founders can learn from great storytellers

• Why peer groups are so valuable for CEOs

If 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.

How to watch:

Visit Tweener Talks to listen for all audio podcast players

We have a video version on YouTube (make sure to subscribe!)

📌 What’s Next

NC Tweener Talks is all about learning directly from the people building companies here in North Carolina, from early experiments to scaling teams, raising capital, and finding product-market fit.

In upcoming episodes, we’ll keep sitting down with founders across the state to unpack the real stories behind their companies: the pivots, failures, breakthroughs, and lessons they picked up along the way.

Subscribe to NC Tweener Talks for more conversations with North Carolina founders, operators, and builders shaping the future of the ecosystem. Paid subscribers help us keep creating more episodes, events, and founder-focused content across the state.

Introducing Our Tweener Claw Discord Community

The most frequently asked request we got from members of our new Tweener Claw community was the desire to keep the community rolling between meetings (news on meeting 2 coming very soon!).

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE TWEENERCLAW DISCORD.🦞

And Now for Robbie’s Talk..

On April 9th we hosted the Triangle’s first OpenClaw meetup (more info here). This week we’re featuring our third and final talk with Robbie Allen!

If you want to catch the other two:

Corey Nida’s talk on building startup testing and building Claws is here.

Ryan Eade’s talk on Ephemeral UI’s using the Claw is here

TweenerClaw would not be possible without our awesome sponsors, we want to thank you for your support of this additional new program.

How ACG Uses Agents- Robbie Allen

Robbie has 20+ years building AI products. He ran engineering teams at Cisco, founded three venture-backed AI startups that all exited, wrote multiple technical books for O’Reilly, and has over a dozen patents.

Currently Robbie not only is the General Partner at NC Tweener Fund, but is also the founder and managing director of Automated Consulting Group, or ACG. ACG helps executive teams turn AI from hype into results focusing on AI strategy, readiness assessments, operating model design, and hands-on execution.

In his talk, Robbie covers:

• Why AI isn’t just automating tasks, it’s expanding the amount of work worth doing

• The difference between automating a task vs. automating a job

• Why most “multi-agent” systems are overcomplicated

• How a single-agent + shared knowledge base model can outperform role-based agents

• The real unlock: turning conversations into action, content, and execution automatically

“Once coding became essentially free, I started automating things I never would have attempted before.”

This is one of the clearest looks yet at how agentic systems actually show up inside a business.

Robbie Allen’s Slides

Here are Ryan’s Slides if you want to follow along while listening/watching→

Acg Openclaw Talk Robbie Allen

685KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

We were able to piece together the video and audio (we’ll do much better next time, promise) to bring a recording of this talk to you

How to Watch/Listen?

Here’s the YouTube:

Or check out the audio here for all your favorite podcast links, or listen right from substack here:

What’s Next?

We will be hosting another TweenerClaw meetup in late May. Stay tuned for details and get those claws up! 🦞

Until then remember to join our new Discord Server to keep the conversation rolling.

Michael Tavani is the CEO and Founder of Switchyards, a fast-growing “neighborhood work club” concept redefining how people work outside the home. Based in Atlanta (woahhhh, what???) Michael has spent his career building consumer-focused startups at the intersection of design, brand, and real-world experiences, one of the toughest corners of startup land.

What?! Someone From Atlanta on our NC Founder Pod!?

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 Tovani is building right here in the Triangle. That makes this one very much a local story.

Subscribe now

We couldn’t bring you 100% original founder-to-founder content like this without the support of our awesome-sauce sponsors:

Loving our content? It wouldn’t be possible without our amazing sponsors and our paid subscribers, so THANK YOU!

Featured Platinum Sponsor

Featured Gold Sponsor

Featured Silver Sponsor

And special thanks to our friends at Walk West for partnering with us to produce this pod!

A sneak peak inside Raleigh’s Switchyard

Listen/Watch Our Interview:

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.

How to watch:

Visit Tweener Talks to listen for all audio podcast players

We have a video version on YouTube (make sure to subscribe!)

✨Exclusive Offer✨ For Paid NC Tweener Times Subscribers

Read more

First, we highlighted 2025 Triangle Tweener companies that executed on the top exits and fundraising rounds (note: the awards are backwards looking so this…

Read more

Subscribe now

Today, we’re launching something new under the NC Tweener Talks network. It’s called [Redacted]. One of our most popular episodes recently was our two parter from Feb 12th where David Shaner showed us how he has automated big portions of Offline with AI:

After that episode - I said to David, you’re a natural at this, you should do a new podcast series fo…

Read more

On April 9th we hosted the Triangle’s first OpenClaw meetup (more info here).

We had well over 100 attendees come to hear 4 OpenClaw experts share their experiences and learnings, and this week we’re featuring Ryan Eade!

Read more

Good Morning NC Builders! I hope everyone is recovering from RDSW, we’re finally digging out of a huge avalanche of emails and work that piled up while we were busy networking, talking, volunteering and RDSW’ing with everyone - what an amazing week.

As part of our activities, I was invited to speak at the Strategy talk about Competitive Moats in the AI …

Read more

We had well over 100 attendees come to hear 4 OpenClaw experts share their experiences and learnings. It was really invigorating to see this many people that were completely and absolutely Claw Pilled and ClawMAXXing on one room. Everyone’s jaws dropped when an 11 year old started talking abo…

Read more

The offic…

Read more

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

Read more

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

Read more

Q1 marked a fundamental shift in the future of the Tweener Fund.

We announced a strategic partnership with NC IDEA, and changed the fund from the chrysalis from, Triangle Tweener Fund to it’s new form: NC Tweener Fund.

This partnership includes:

• $4M committed over 5 years

• Expansion beyond the Triangle to cover the whole state→ Charlotte, Wilmington, Triad, Mountains, and beyond

• A significantly larger pool of companies and opportunities and capital to deploy 🔥

Why now? We’ve effectively covered the Triangle “tweener” market:

• ~300 companies on the Tweener List

• ~100 bootstrapped (not raising)

• ~40–50 too late-stage for our model

• Leaving ~150–200 investable companies → most already in our portfolio

The NC state-wide expansion unlocks hundreds of new investable companies across the state and dramatically increases our long-term upside.

As shared in the Q1 LP meeting:

“We incubated this in the Triangle, it worked very well, and now we’re ready to take it statewide.”

Check out the ✨official✨ announcement here!

Thank You, LPs 🙌

Before we jump into the recap: thank you to our investors! This milestone doesn’t happen without you. With your support: We’re approaching $12M invested across 170+ companies, while maintaining a ~10% failure rate, far below traditional VC benchmarks

Always open for new investors/LPs!

Do you want to join with our 200 lifetime Limited Partners (or LPs, what we call our investors in VC) in helping us support NC startups? We’re structured as a rolling fund, which means, unlike closed funds that only let investors in every 5-10 years, we are ‘always open’ for new LPs. Here’s the details:

• Must be an accredited investor - SEC rule, not ours

• 1yr commitment, $30,000 for the year or $7,500/Q

• 1% management fee, 20% carry and a small AngelList administrative fee

For more details - visit www.tweenerfund.com where you can see our pitch and hit the invest button to get started!

We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors:

Featured Platinum Sponsor

Featured Gold Sponsor

Featured Silver Sponsor

Our amazing sponsors have also put out an official Q1 press release here, check it out!

Q1 Investing Highlights

Our Tweener Fund Q1 2026 Snapshot:

• $700K invested

• 14 total investments

  • 7 new

  • 7 follow-ons

• 10 tweeners / 4 pre-tweeners

What stood out this quarter?

1. Statewide deals are already happening

• Investments in Winston-Salem, Wilmington, Charlotte

• Early proof that expansion is working immediately

2. Stronger mix toward “true Tweeners”

• After feedback, we’re leaning more heavily into later-stage, revenue-generating companies

3. Fundraising environment improving

• More priced rounds returning

• Less reliance on SAFEs as bridge capital

• Early signal: market thawing

New Portfolio Companies

• Beam Dynamics (PT) - Operating system for managing enterprise physical assets, compliance, and lifecycle data. (Winston-Salem)

• BEAMRaiL (PT)- Building public safety intelligence platform. (Cary)

• Lucid Bots (T)- Builds drones and software for automated cleaning of large structures like parking garages. (Charlotte)

• NeuroTech Insights (PT)- AI platform combining gait and cognitive analysis to measure brain-body function for clinical care. (Wilmington)

• OOGA Technologies (T)- NDT (Non Distruptive Testing) platform connecting organizations with experts and AI tools for faster, reliable inspections. (Cary)

• Skillmaker (PT)- AR platform upskilling blue-collar mechanics to address national workforce shortage. (Carolina Beach)

• Spidr (PT)- Unified API platform providing payment processing, KYC, and fraud monitoring infrastructure. (Charlotte)

Also, Tweener Fund made additional investments in 7 portfolio companies:

• Futureproof Ops (PT) - AI-powered financial operations platform for startup bookkeeping and cap table management. (runfutureproof.com)

• Truentity (T) - AI platform enabling community pharmacies to offer clinical services and generate revenue.

• Keebler Health (T) - GenAI platform accelerating insurance claims coding and processing.

• Blue Sky Robotics (PT) - AI vision systems and robotics for warehouse and hospital automation with 50% labor savings. (crunchbase.com/organization/blue-sky-robotics)

• Arpio (T) - Cloud-aware disaster recovery software for business continuity.

• Cycle Labs (T) - Testing platform helping retailers validate new warehouse management system implementations.

• Troupe AI (PT) - AI platform measuring and optimizing go-to-market messaging performance across channels.

Q1 Tweener Events

Q1 was one of our most active quarters on the community side. Our Q1 event was the LP + Founder Happy Hour at Ruckus. With the close knit crew we enjoyed the amazing weather and had some high-quality conversations.

Other Key moments include:

• 2026 Founder Productivity Series (4 parts): one of our best-performing content series ever

  • Part 1: Productivity Hacks for Founders

  • Part 2: Founder Health Optimization

  • Part 3: GTM Tech Stack Playbook

  • Part 4: DevStack for Ludicrous PR-Production

• First Wilmington event at UNCW CIE

• Multiple NC IDEA shoutouts across podcasts and collaborations

• Tweener Madness now in championship the Fab 4 round!

Become a Sponsor

Would your company benefit from exposure to NC’s fastest-growing startups?

Our audience is made up of NC founders and operators, primarily at startups doing over $1M/year and many much larger. When a company hits Tweener status, they’ve got real traction, funding (usually), a growing team, and momentum.

Thanks to strong demand, we’re upgrading our sponsorship opportunities across Tweener Times, Tweener Talks, and more.

If you’re looking to connect with this high-impact community, now’s the time. Send us a message or an email to contact@tweenerfund.com.

Let’s build together!

Subscribe now

🙌 Thank You

This quarter marks a clear shift:

Before:

• Triangle-focused

• Limited deal pool

• Early-stage heavy

Now:

• Statewide platform

• Larger, more diverse pipeline

• Truer tweener-stage companies

• Stronger ecosystem integration

We’re entering the next phase of the fund:
👉 More scale
👉 More access
👉 More impact

From a strong investing quarter → to a statewide expansion that redefines the future of the fund.

We’re just getting started.

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

Read more

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

Read more

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

Read more

Here’s what we’re tracking this week across Tweener, the NC ecosystem, and the signals shaping what comes next.

Before we jump in, shout out to our sponsors! 👇 None of this would be possible without them 💪🏻

Featured Platinum Sponsor

Featured Gold Sponsor

Featured Silver Sponsor

First some general news from the NC startup ecosystem→

NC is Scaling, Not Just Growing:

NC IDEA announced 21 SEED semi-finalists
A few standouts are already pushing toward Tweener territory, plus some are highlighted in our 2026 Tweener Madness Cohort! Selected from a competitive pool of 184 applicants, the 21 Spring 2026 NC IDEA SEED Semi-Finalists include:

• AKALAKA – Durham, NC

• Auditrol – Charlotte, NC

• Beiing Human – Asheville, NC

• BeneDoc – Asheville, NC

• Innatrix – Durham, NC

• Joyntly – Charlotte, NC

• League Linq – Asheville, NC

• Nuream – Wilmington, NC

• On Holiday – Winston-Salem, NC

• OTTER Reading – Concord, NC

• Phaseshift – Wake Forest, NC

• Play Action AI – Charlotte, NC

• Rooted-in-tech – Apex, NC

• Shuttlebee Dispatch Solutions – Asheville, NC

• SonoVoice – Raleigh, NC

• STEM PLUG – Chapel Hill, NC

• Tada AI – Charlotte, NC

• Utilyst – Raleigh, NC

• Ver Coaching – Durham, NC

• Vet Sleeve – Wilmington, NC

• VibraPower – Raleigh, NC

RIoT Labs & NC IDEA: 22nd Accelerator Cohort

Following their recent joint venture, RIoT Labs and NC IDEA announced the 10 startups for their newest accelerator cohort. While these are earlier stage, they are the primary pipeline for future Tweeners.

Durham’s AI “Talent Halo”
The All Things Open AI Conference brought 4,000+ people to Durham this week. North Carolina isn’t “trying” to do AI anymore, it’s becoming a real hub.

Also, large entities like Siemens and Labcorp announced major Q1 hiring and infrastructure updates this week. This is significant for Tweeners because it creates a deeper pool of local senior talent that often migrates into the 10-50 person “Tweener” startups.

Asheville’s Tech-Enabled Recovery

As of March 31, Shuttlebee Dispatch Solutions and League Linq (both Asheville-based, both listed as semi-finalists in that release) are gaining traction as “tech-enabled services.” They are key examples of Western NC companies using technology to solve logistics and community problems, moving closer to that Tweener revenue threshold despite the regional recovery efforts following Hurricane Helene.

The 8th Annual Ecosystem Summit

NC IDEA is bringing its 8th Annual Ecosystem Summit to the shores of Wrightsville Beach on November 12–13, 2026!

Raleigh Durham Startup week is underway!

Raleigh-Durham Startup Week is a regional movement powered by a team of founders, entrepreneurs, and support organizations dedicated to showcasing the vibrant entrepreneurial community in the Triangle area. On April 20-24, 2026, founders come together to learn, connect, and grow.

🎙️ Tweener News:

Tweener Madness Is Rolling!

8 founders. One bracket. $25,000 on the line.

Round 1: Utilyst VS BeneDoc

👀 Watch the competition
🎧 Listen to the matchup

Utilyst (Triangle) – PowerTech

• Building a cognitive digital twin for utility operators

• Captures institutional knowledge before experienced workers retire

• On-prem AI solution (critical for security-sensitive infrastructure)

• Early traction with utilities like DC Water and Cincinnati

BeneDoc (Durham) – HealthTech

• End-to-end regulatory intelligence platform for medtech

• Uses AI to streamline FDA processes, compliance, and paperwork

• Focused on software as a medical device (SaMD) and regulatory workflows

• Currently in private beta with early partners

Round 1: Iguana Cyber VS HAM

👀 Watch the competition
🎧 Listen to the matchup

Iguana Cyber (Charlotte) – Cybersecurity

• Blocks AI-generated exploits that traditional systems miss

• Uses a dual-server validation system to detect unknown threats

• Positioned as a last line of defense in enterprise security stacks

• Early traction with beta testers and MSSP pipeline

HAM (Charlotte) - AITech

• Reduces token usage (cost) for AI coding agents

• Optimizes how agents retrieve context instead of scanning entire codebases

• Open-source entry point with a developer-led GTM motion

• Focused on engineering teams already using AI tools

📅 Next episode: April 7th

Subscribe to NC Tweener Talks to stay up to date! This one’s going to be fun.

Tweener Awards are Open!

2026 NC Tweener Awards
Join us as we unveil the latest Tweener List and celebrate the founders, fundraisers, and exits shaping North Carolina’s startup ecosystem.

🗓️ Tuesday, April 21st
🕓 5:00pm - 8:30pm
📍Durham Bulls Athletic Park

Learn more and register → https://luma.com/b8g6sqc5

What Stuck With Us This Week:

What Moats Actually Matter?

Michael Bloch dropped one of the clearest frameworks this week: AI compresses doing, but not waiting.

The only defensible advantages left:

1. Proprietary, living data

2. Network effects

3. Regulatory barriers

4. Capital at scale

5. Physical infrastructure

Key Takeaway: If your moat is bottlenecked by intelligence, you're on borrowed time. If it's bottlenecked by years... you're building something that lasts.

Check it out:

Eye Spy Real AI-Native Products

If Claude Code had a baby with a desktop email client, it would be Exo. Exo (open-source) is one of the best examples yet of what “AI-native” actually looks like:

This isn’t just an email app with an AI “plugin”, it’s AI-native from the ground up.

Why it’s interesting:

• Automatic Triage: It analyzes every email before you open it, prioritizing by what actually matters.

• Agent-to-Agent Communication: Exo’s agent can talk to your company’s internal knowledge base to answer questions like “What’s the status of the Acme deal?” while you’re drafting.

• Writing Style Learning: It extracts samples from your sent mail so the drafts actually sound like you, not a generic LLM.

• Memory System: It remembers your priority overrides and specific instructions (e.g., “always be formal with investors”).

Take a look: https://github.com/ankitvgupta/mail-app

Your AI Coworker: Plus One

The team at Every just launched Plus One, a hosted version of OpenClaw that lives in your Slack. Instead of a “vanilla” AI, it comes pre-loaded with specific skills:

• Cora: For managing email.

• Spiral: For writing in your voice.

• Animate: Turning screenshots into animations via Remotion.

It’s a play toward the “parallel org chart” where AI agents have names, managers, and real responsibilities within a team’s existing workflow.

Read More →

The Secret Battle for DeepMind’s Soul

In an excerpt from The Infinity Machine, we get a fascinating historical deep dive into the 2015-2017 period at DeepMind. We finally get the “inside baseball” on Project Mario, Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman’s attempt to spin DeepMind out of Google into a “post-capitalist” governance structure.

Highlights from the excerpt:

• The Failed SpaceX Meeting: A 2015 safety board meeting hosted by Elon Musk ended in disaster, leading Musk to found OpenAI as a rival.

• The 3-3-3 Board: DeepMind proposed a semi-independent structure with three members from DeepMind, three from Alphabet, and three independents.

• The $5 Billion Plan B: At one point, Hassabis and Suleyman considered raising $5B from outside investors (like Reid Hoffman) to walk away from Google entirely if they didn’t get their safety guarantees.

• The “Realist” Pivot: Ultimately, Google (led by Sundar Pichai) pulled back, realizing AI was too core to Google’s search and cloud future to let it sit in an independent “moonshot” bucket.

Worth the read: https://colossus.com/article/project-mario-demis-hassabis-deepmind-mallaby/

Final Thoughts

See you same time next week, more reads, more ecosystem news, and whatever we’ve been cooking up at Tweener.

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

Read more

Tweener Madness would not be possible without our awesome sponsors.

Read more