RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Welcome, TechWire readers and followers, to Startup Monday. So what is it? Read on.

It’s all things startups – with no paywall.

Since the relaunch of TechWire in December 2016 we have endeavored to continuously expand our coverage of the North Carolina entrepreneurial ecosystem. And we have reached the point where an entire news cycle – Monday mornings – is now devoted to stories, calendars, and much more about startups, emerging companies and the organizations that support them.

Our coverage is more than an occasional feature or breaking news. We highlight events, feature calendars to help you find sources for information you need and as well help entrepreneurial organizations promote their events (at no charge), and continue to expand our exclusive Startup Guide. Rest assured, we also cover startups every business day, from fundings to M&As, launches to closings. But Mondays are now more startup special.

Rick Smith, WRAL TechWire’s editor and a cofounder, writes The Skinny.

Overall, our daily coverage Monday-Friday is recaputered twice by our newsletter – the “first edition” goes out at 8 a.m. and the “final edition” at 4 p.m. There are nine spots in each. So our Monday first edition news cycle, if you will, features – in addition to breaking news or company/entrepreneur profiles – the following:

  • The latest updates to our exclusive Triangle Startup Guide
  • A preview or feature about an upcoming event, such as today’s look at the second day virtual presentation of Venture Connect from the Council for Entrepreneurial Development
  • Our Triangle focused monthly calendar
  • Our North Carolina focused monthly calendar
  • A look ahead at what’s coming in the next month
  • The three calendar stories all link to our extensive interactive calendar of events
  • Our most recent edition: Startup Rewind, which includes all the headlines from the preceding week about startups and emerging companies
  • Our weekly updated list of Triangle area meetups
  • And TechWire rewind, a look back at the 70-80 or more headlines from the previous week

Now there will be exceptions to account for breaking news. But if one of the above features isn’t in your Monday “first edition” rest assured it will appear later in the day.

More is coming

And we have plans to further expand the startup emphasis in coming weeks with news being published beyond the Monday “first edition.” In other words, if you follow startups then be sure to check back after 8 a.m. for breaking news as well as in-depth interviews and features.

Why do this?

We believe that Startup Monday is a way for us to clearly demonstrate the depth and breadth of our coverage and our commitment to nuturing the ecosystem that has been so vital to the growth and transformation of our regional and state economy over the past two decades. (TechWire dates back to January 2002. Our archive is well over 50,000 stories and is accessible through the “search” tool at WRALTechWire.com.)

Sometimes the forest of our coverage is lost amongst the trees of daily headlines.

And in these days of COVID-19 when so much news coverage is overwhelmed/overlooked by the attention paid to the pandemic, we believe Startup Monday is a way to ensure that entrepreneurial companies get their day in the spotlight.

How to find TechWire news elsewhere

TechWire’s growth over the past two years has been remarkable with readership and page views in six figures. Plus more people are signing on to follow us through three other means:

As always, feedback and story ideas/tips are welcome. Contact me at rsmith@wral.com