NC Tweener Talks

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.

NC Tweener Talks is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 0 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 82. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts NC Tweener Talks, a business show with 0 episodes published.

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  Episode #109

  Adam Steege, Founder & CEO of Trio Labs: The Startup Failure That Became a Med-Tech Manufacturer

  Aug 20, 202641 min

  Adam Steege, founder and CEO of Trio Labs, joins me to talk about building a company that 3D prints tiny, complex metal parts for medical devices out of Morrisville, North Carolina. The conversation covers Adam's path from a failed first startup in laparoscopic surgical devices to founding Trio Labs in 2015, the five years it took to reach bench-scale proof of concept, and the road from Series A funding in 2021 to commercial launch in 2023. Adam explains why his first company stalled, the manufacturing gap between traditional machining and semiconductor-style nanofabrication that Trio Labs fills, and why the company chose to sell finished parts rather than printing equipment. What makes this episode distinctive is how directly Adam connects his first company's failure to the thesis behind his second, along with a clear, first-principles explanation of why metal 3D printing at this precision is so difficult that Trio Labs describes itself as half ASML, half TSMC. It's a grounded look at what it actually takes to build a hardware company over more than a decade. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open & sponsor thanks 01:15 Welcome to NC Tweener Talks 01:35 Scot's intro: Adam Steege & Trio Labs 02:25 Interview begins 02:50 Guest welcome 02:55 NC Tweener Fund's investment history with Trio Labs 03:30 Adam's origin story begins 04:00 Growing up in NC, Carleton & Columbia 04:55 Why med tech pulled him in 05:40 The genesis of the Trio Labs idea 06:10 Technical founder staying on as CEO 08:10 What happened to the first company 09:05 The "stakeholder visibility mismatch" 11:20 From the first company's ashes to Trio Labs 13:15 Trio Labs' basic pitch 13:50 Why minimally invasive devices keep getting smaller 16:10 The manufacturing gap Trio Labs fills 18:05 Founding timeline: 2015 to Series A to commercial launch 20:00 Gen 1 to gen 3: iterating the printer 22:05 The "third dimension is nonlinear" analogy 24:00 "Half ASML, half TSMC" 25:05 Why metal instead of plastic 28:50 Facility tour: the machines, wafer fab in a box 30:05 The parts Trio Labs makes: robotics & endovascular 31:40 Where Trio Labs is in its scaling journey 34:50 Staying focused on med tech 37:35 Why they don't sell machines 40:05 Where to find Trio Labs 40:35 Wrap and credits ----- Where to Find Adam Steege: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-t-c-steege-814b6821/ Trio Labs: https://triolabs.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/

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  Episode #108

  Nick Genty, Co-Founder & CEO of AgEye: From a Storefront Full of Robots to a Deal in Qatar

  Aug 13, 202649 min

  Nick Genty, co-founder and CEO of AgEye Technologies, joins me to talk about building robotics and AI software for indoor farms right here in North Carolina. The conversation traces Nick's path from state government IT work to an early Triangle startup acquired by SAS, into a mobile development agency serving national retailers, and eventually to a regulated medical device project that revealed the science behind AgEye: using environmental variables like light to influence plant biology. They cover how AgEye found its first customers in a channel with almost no LinkedIn presence, why the company nearly built its business around cannabis before a licensing crash forced a pivot to leafy greens and produce, and how a deliberately low-tech approach to robotics helped growers hit a realistic return on investment. Nick also walks through AgEye's data and hardware moat, the shift toward agentic AI models, and the corporate venture investors, including a Dutch agricultural giant and a German filtration company, who backed the company when traditional RTP investors weren't ready for a physical-world business. Nick is a natural storyteller with a knack for turning technical detail into something anyone can follow, and this episode is packed with concrete numbers on funding, robotics costs, and go-to-market strategy for anyone building at the intersection of hardware and software. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open & welcome 00:24 Sponsor thank-yous 03:15 Scot's intro & series preview 03:27 Guest introduction: Nick Genty, AgEye 04:06 Nick's background: Raleigh, ECU 04:59 Meeting his co-founder at the NC court system 06:27 Joining rPath & the Triangle's founder "mafias" 08:10 Founding Iconic Solutions 11:36 The hardware-software link & the genesis of AgEye 13:37 Edge AI arrives: NVIDIA Jetson & the Inception program 16:03 How Scot discovered AgEye (the lunch story) 20:02 Finding first customers on Reddit 20:41 The cannabis pivot to leafy greens 23:56 Why indoor farms exist even where crops "should" grow 27:56 Competitive moats: hardware + proprietary data 31:53 The "leaf model" & licensing the AI 34:34 How the robotic grow towers work 38:03 ARIS: the imaging robot & 3D plant modeling 42:15 The fundraising grind: $5M raised & corporate VCs 45:51 Company update: distributors & the Middle East push 48:09 Where to find AgEye & closing Where to Find Nick Genty: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasgenty/ AgEye: https://ageyetech.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/

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  Episode #107

  [REDACTED] Episode 8: We Hired an AI Sales Rep and Became Its Manager

  Aug 12, 202643 min

  Today, on Episode 8 of Redacted, we use this episode to show exactly what running a company with AI looks like day-to-day. Taylor walks through the agent system now handling Offline's lead generation and CRM cleanup, including a daily process that scans market signals, reconciles HubSpot data, and writes sales outreach briefs automatically. David then demos a redesigned mobile app and email system, and shares a candid breakdown of how many hours a recent landing page redesign actually took with AI assistance compared to how long the same project would have taken the old way. What sets this episode apart is the honesty about the mechanics: a story about an AI-generated email that silently failed for 10,000 recipients, a framework for treating AI agents like new hires who need onboarding and supervision rather than a one-time prompt, and real numbers on where the time actually goes when AI is doing the heavy lifting. It's a useful listen for anyone trying to figure out whether AI is actually saving them time or just moving the work around. Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open 00:22 Welcome to Redacted, episode 8 01:30 What Taylor's been building 03:39 Two things to show: internal ops + a product feature 03:51 What an "outreach brief" is 06:20 The automated dashboard demo 06:58 The daily sweep ritual 08:32 Catching drift between the backend and HubSpot 12:33 Closing the loop with Steve's feedback 16:14 The jungle-and-bulldozer metaphor 19:18 Structured data over meetings 20:14 Demo: a real outreach brief (Max Speed Shop) 22:23 "Iterative loop" and moving into the manager seat 23:02 Segment two: the Offline mobile app 26:00 Turning the design system into a reusable skill 31:03 HubSpot pain vs. mobile app gratification 32:01 The B2B landing page blog post 33:03 Breaking down 64.39 hours 36:11 Old world vs. new world time cost 37:37 Compounding as the X factor 37:44 The offline accountability / biz dev chart 39:32 This morning's market signals 42:00 The "hiring" framing, wrap-up 42:07 Upcoming guests: Josh and Parker 42:29 Where to find Offline and the hosts 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/

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  Episode #105

  [REDACTED] Episode 7: How a Marketer with One Broken Assembly Class Built a Lead-Gen Tool Solo

  Jul 29, 202643 min

  Ben Pope, who leads the new AI Solutions business unit at Levitate, joins Redacted as its very first guest. Ben spent five years on Levitate's marketing team as the company grew from six million to roughly fifty million in annual recurring revenue, before shifting a month ago to help small businesses fold AI into their own workflows. This episode is mostly show and tell: Ben screen-shares a lead-scoring web app he built entirely on his own, despite having no formal engineering background, along with the morning briefing and post-meeting automation skills he uses every day to prep for calls and follow up with clients. Along the way, the conversation turns into a practical breakdown of how to actually build with AI tools in a real business. Ben talks through why he prefers lightweight Claude skills over traditional workflow automation platforms, how he decides when a process needs to be deterministic versus handed to an LLM, and how he manages the sprawl of having built around a hundred skills over the past year, many of which he's since retired. What makes Ben's story distinctive is the contrast between his background and his output: a marketer who taught himself to ship production web apps, and whose client consulting work is now feeding directly back into Levitate's core product roadmap. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open, welcome to Redacted 00:34 What Redacted is about 01:33 Meet Ben Pope and Levitate's pitch 02:28 Ben's five years at Levitate, from $6M to $50M ARR 03:06 Founding story: Jess, his wife Brooks Bell, and word-of-mouth software 03:58 Ben's new role: launching the AI Solutions business unit 04:40 Levitate by the numbers: 9,000 customers, 300 employees 05:06 Why Ben wanted this role (the GWC test) 08:24 Demo starts: the lead-scoring web app 09:35 Walking through a live example (Union Special bakery) 11:36 Turning a business search into an enriched lead 12:16 What Ben used to build it: Claude, Codex, pre-November 2025 tools 14:20 Hardest parts of building solo, trial and error 17:21 How the scoring tool works under the hood 18:37 Killing Webflow, migrating to a Claude-editable GitHub site 21:03 Claude Club and internal hackathons at Levitate 21:45 Example client: an LA family-law attorney's intake workflow 22:50 Product-market fit and figuring out the sales process 25:29 Building Claude skills to interview clients automatically 26:35 Ben's morning briefing skill, demoed live 29:07 Manual runs vs. cron, why Ben hasn't automated it yet 33:05 Skill bloat: ~100 skills built, many abandoned 35:57 Deterministic vs. probabilistic, when not to trust the LLM 37:24 AI Solutions as Levitate's forward-deployed engineering arm 39:17 Where to find Ben 40:08 Shoutout: Simon Willison's agentic engineering resource 42:04 Show notes, sanitized skills repo, and wrap-up Find Redacted wherever you listen to podcasts, or on YouTube for the full screen share. 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-/ Where to Find Ben: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmpope/ Levitate: https://www.levitate.ai/ --- 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/

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  Episode #104

  Natrx: The Company Growing Coral Reefs Out of Concrete

  Jul 23, 202643 min

  Tad Schwendler, COO of Natrx, joins Scot Wingo to talk about manufacturing concrete structures that work with nature instead of against it. Natrx, a North Carolina company and Tweener Fund portfolio company, has developed a patented dry-forming process that injects moisture into dry material to create rough, complex structures capable of slowing water, encouraging natural sediment buildup, and even supporting live coral growth. Tad walks through the company's founding story, which traces back to coastal engineers doing oyster reef restoration at LSU and a chance meeting with NC State-connected software co-founders, and shares how his own background in corporate development and M&A led him into a hands-on operating role at a manufacturing startup. The conversation covers the physical scale of what Natrx builds, from three-foot units weighing just under a ton to twelve-thousand-pound structures bound for a coral restoration project in Hawaii, along with the company's growth: more than 85 physical deployments, over 100,000 units placed, and roughly 80 percent revenue growth year over year. It's a hands-on, visual episode and the first in a new series on North Carolina's under-the-radar physical manufacturing companies. Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open and sponsor thanks 01:30 Welcome and series intro: NC's under-known manufacturing companies 03:12 Introducing Tad Schwindler, COO of Natrx 04:00 Formal welcome to the show 04:42 Tad's background: Atlanta, Duke, the Triangle 05:56 What does a COO actually do at Natrx? 07:58 Duke, Tulane, and a lifelong pull toward marine science 09:31 The founding story of Natrx 09:43 Two coastal engineers, oyster reefs, and LSU 11:13 Founded in 2018, commercializing by 2021 11:33 Nick's background: mechanical engineering meets software 12:52 What Natrx actually builds 13:13 Stopping water vs. working with it 15:44 Families of shapes: lattice, wave slope, and scaling up 19:02 How big are these things, and how deep do they go 21:12 What is "dry forming"? 22:07 The voxel: injecting moisture into dry material 22:55 The patent and the 10,000 sq ft Louisiana facility 23:37 Walking through the manufacturing process 26:01 How much does a unit weigh? 26:44 Shipping, barges, and why manufacturing stays centralized 29:13 Every unit is a little different: the voxel "snowflake" effect 30:02 How long do these structures last? 31:03 Growing live coral on the structures 32:30 How units get deployed in the water 33:56 Who's the customer? 35:50 Company scale: deployments, team size, revenue growth 37:14 What's next for Natrx, including a Series A 40:16 Why North Carolina is built for companies like this 41:40 Where to learn more: natrx.io 42:15 Credits and close ----- Where to Find Tad Schwendler LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tadschwendler/ Natrx: https://natrx.io/ 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/

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