RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Triangle entrepreneur and investor Scot Wingo is out with a third “Tweener” list – his analysis of promising startups across the region.

“Think of Triangle Tweeners as the ‘Goldilocks’ companies in the Triangle — not too small and not too large,” Wingo explains.

“These are our future breakouts, IPOs and big M+A’s. They are also great for folks moving to the area or if you are at a big company and want to try something more entrepreneurial.”

Drawing on his own sources, feedback and email, Wingo has identified 38 newcomers for 2018.

“These come to me a variety of ways — some from their investors, others email me directly, etc.” he explains in a blog post.

The full list:

  • 3 Birds Marketing
  • Academic Benchmarking Consortium
  • Appraisalnation
  • Arya/Leoforce
  • Boss Key Productions
  • Broadvine
  • BulkTV
  • CARS/ez-recovery
  • Compostnow
  • Creative Allies
  • CrossComm
  • EmployUS
  • Eton Solutions
  • Exit Intelligence
  • Feelgoodz
  • Global Data Consortium
  • Inspectionxpert
  • InterviewUp/ThinkOptimal/optimalresume
  • Keen Decision Systems
  • Macgregor partners
  • Map My Customers
  • Market Vue Partners
  • Medicom
  • Mobile Reach
  • Myxx
  • Percona
  • Remarque Systems
  • Republic wireless
  • Sift
  • Slingshot Coffee Company
  • SMT (SportsMEDIA Technology Corp)
  • SnapSolv
  • Sports Endeavors
  • SyncFusion
  • Tethis
  • TiO Home Automation
  • Virtue Labs
  • Wastezero

Wingo, who invested in car maintenance startup Spiffy and is also its CEO, is best known for his role in co-founding and growing ecommerce services provider ChannelAdvisor. He began publishing the Tweener list in 2016.

Criteria to be listed as a Wingo Tweener include “companies headquartered out of the Triangle with at least $1M/yr in sales or 10 people. They generally are technology companies (mostly around software, e-commerce, tech enabled services and some materials/devices) and are independent and not public. Once a company is over $80m/yr in revenue and/or 500 employees they ‘graduate’ off the list.”

The graduates

Previous Tweeners that have graduated through merger and acquisition, growth, or an IPO include, with comments from Wingo:

  • Bandwidth — Bandwidth had an IPO in 2017, so has graduated off the list.
  • Bivarus — Was acquired before I could get then on the list — by a Boston firm.
  • Dude solutions — Graduated off the list by crossing 500 employees.
  • Junxure — I found in Q3 17 and before I could get them on the list this year they were acquired by AdvisorEngine.
  • KnowledgeTree — Acquired by SAVO
  • Transloc — Acquired by Ford in Jan 2018
  • Wedpics — Was acquired by Mixbook in 2017
  • Windsor Circle — Was acquired in early 2018 by OSG
  • Zift Solutions — Merged with another company and moved HQ to NJ

You can read more from Wingo online.