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 NC Tweener Fund, with 118 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 82.

NC Tweener Fund hosts NC Tweener Talks, a business show with 118 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #115

  [REDACTED] Episode 11: Getting Humans to Stop Doing the Robot Work

  Sep 23, 202646 min

  This week on Redacted, we bring on our fourth guest: Ben Eckerson, founder of Agentcy, an AI-enabled consultancy helping small-to-mid-market companies close the gaps between the software they already pay for. Ben spent roughly 20 years in client services, including time at the ad agency McKinney, running Viget's Durham office, and co-founding Savas Labs, before launching Agentcy in early 2026 alongside business partner Eric out of the 24 and Up venture studio in downtown Raleigh. Most of the episode is a live demo: Ben walks through the internal tool he built from scratch, which turns a raw meeting transcript into extracted pain points, pricing and staffing estimates, and a styled, client-ready proposal deck. From there, the conversation turns into a real debate about whether it's worth building your own AI-native tools instead of buying an off-the-shelf AI CRM, what gets lost when you strip away the UI and go headless, and how much of client work still comes down to a human reading the room. It's a practical, behind-the-scenes look at how one small agency is actually using AI to run its business day-to-day, ending on a genuinely optimistic note about what all that automation is supposed to free people up to do. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open 00:43 What Redacted is about 01:09 Meet guest #4: Ben Eckerson, founder of Agentcy 01:44 Housekeeping + an Offline update 02:52 Ben joins the show 03:34 20 years in the agency trenches: McKinney, Viget, Savas Labs 04:58 What Agentcy does and "humans doing the robot work" 05:29 The real problem: tool sprawl at client companies 07:59 From stealth to launch: Agentcy's first year, with partner Eric at 24 and Up 08:33 Demo time: inside Agentcy's homegrown CRM 10:01 Where the tool started: turning Fathom transcripts into next steps 12:11 Building a new lead: the WellCare walkthrough 14:27 Adding a call transcript and hitting "Analyze" 18:58 The internal TLDR: stage, stakeholders, pricing 22:15 One click to a client-ready proposal deck 24:41 Exporting to Claude, Manus, or GPT for design polish 26:32 What's next: living inside Claude Projects 28:15 Why build your own AI CRM instead of buying one 33:45 Going headless: is the UI just a commodity now? 38:41 Meeting clients where their AI maturity actually is 41:35 The future of human work and the last-mile problem 44:27 Where to find Ben and Agentcy 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 #114

  Will Duckett, Co-Founder & COO of Equity Shift: Opening Up How Private Company Ownership and Markets Operate.

  Sep 10, 202652 min

  Will Duckett, co-founder and COO of Equity Shift, joins me to talk about building the infrastructure behind secondary liquidity in private markets. The conversation covers Will's path from a hedge fund back office in New York to co-founding a regulated broker-dealer in Raleigh, what it actually takes to get licensed with FINRA and the SEC, and why Equity Shift describes its platform as a digital operating system for private companies rather than just cap table software. Will and I dig into the mechanics that most founders never see up close: tender offers, the daisy-chained SPV structures that made SpaceX famous for not knowing all of its own shareholders, and how Equity Shift built a system meant to prevent that. We also trace the company's growth from small business customers up into some of the largest private equity firms in the world, and the underlying blockchain patent portfolio that powers it all. Will offers a candid look at what it's like building a capital-intensive fintech company in North Carolina, plus hard-won founder lessons from seven years and two economic shocks: expect everything to take twice as long as planned, and don't underestimate the value of a strong co-founder. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open & sponsors 01:36 Welcome & meet Will Duckett of Equity Shift 02:16 From Chapel Hill (and ancient Roman history) to Wall Street 02:40 Hedge fund back office to a Columbia MBA 03:06 Moving home and meeting co-founder Tom at a blockchain meetup 04:41 Why a blockchain meetup, in 2018 07:21 Founding Equity Shift with Tom Gordon 08:24 First customer and becoming a broker-dealer 09:53 Secondaries 101: SpaceX, Pendo, and tender offers 10:41 What Equity Shift actually does 13:17 The SpaceX SPV daisy-chain problem 14:45 How Equity Shift compares to Carta 16:19 Life as a regulated FINRA broker-dealer 18:14 The taxi medallion analogy 19:07 Splitting CEO/COO responsibilities 22:39 Fundraising milestones and the NC Tweener Fund seed round 25:07 Climbing from startups to private equity customers 30:30 Finding the bigger market beyond Carta 35:59 Go-to-market: enterprise sales, not self-serve 39:17 Founder lessons: it's always harder than you think 44:35 Coming home to North Carolina 47:13 What's next for Equity Shift 51:07 Wrap-up and credits ----- Where to Find Will Duckett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wduckett/ Equity Shift: https://equityshift.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 #113

  [REDACTED] Episode 10: A Non-Technical Founder Doesn't Need a Technical Co-Founder Anymore

  Sep 9, 202654 min

  Parker Mayes, founder of Signify, joins us on Redacted for a guest episode built around a live demo of his actual sales pipeline. Parker built Signify after spending four years running a go-to-market agency doing high-volume cold email, calls, and LinkedIn outreach for B2B clients, and getting frustrated with the low-trust, low-response nature of outbound at scale. Signify sits between a prospect database like Apollo or ZoomInfo and your CRM, scoring and enriching companies every day based on real buying signals like new hires, company news, and job postings, so reps know exactly who to reach out to and why. The conversation walks through the four daily automations running Parker's pipeline, the hard line he draws between automated cold outreach and human-run warm conversations, and how he's teaching an AI agent to write in his own voice. Parker also makes the case that a non-technical founder no longer needs a technical co-founder, as long as they have an AI sidekick that can write code. Along the way, David and Taylor pull in their own experience running Offline to compare notes on why the restaurant industry might be uniquely hard to sell into. Find Redacted wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch the full conversation on YouTube. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open 00:46 Welcome to Redacted 01:17 What Offline is 01:24 Meet this week's guest: Parker 01:49 Taylor recaps speaking at Parker's meetup 03:16 Bringing Parker into the conversation 04:05 How David and Parker first met 05:46 From go-to-market agency to building Signify 08:12 What Signify actually does 09:47 Getting leads in: imports and the "generate list" feature 11:05 Under the hood: signals, scraping, and daily scans 13:04 Why doesn't ZoomInfo already do this? 15:16 Parker as sales rep #1: results, then scaling with branded reps 17:06 The four daily automations in Parker's pipeline 18:55 How Cowork connects into Signify 20:04 Where should the AI live vs. the human in the loop? 22:29 Point tools vs. platform: Signify's acquisition thesis 23:36 Teaching the agent to document its own process 29:00 Live demo: the daily LinkedIn scan and connection run 30:51 Teaching the agent to write like Parker 34:09 Templates, guardrails, and how the agent learns his voice 38:00 Tangent: the tangled world of restaurant sales 43:11 Enrichment, credits, and Signify's pricing 44:27 The stack: Anthropic, Claude Sonnet, and building with Claude Code 47:02 Curiosity about Anthropic's "watch and skillify" feature 48:05 Keeping cold outreach human: screenshots and selfie videos 52:34 Closing thoughts for builders 52:40 Where to find Signify, Redacted, and Offline 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 #112

  Steven King, Founder of Blue Sky Robotics: How a Metaverse Project Pivoted to Hospital Robotics

  Sep 3, 202636 min

  Steven King, CEO and co-founder of Blue Sky Robotics, joins me to talk about building a computer vision company that has pivoted twice in three years, from metaverse avatars to warehouse robotics to hospital automation. Steven, a longtime UNC professor, explains how a side project meant to capture realistic 3D avatars for the metaverse turned into a vision system for robotic arms, and how a client's ambitious accuracy target forced his engineering team to rebuild the company's core technology from scratch. That rebuild became the foundation for Blue Sky's current focus: helping hospitals like UNC Health and Mayo Clinic catch operational errors, from mislabeled dining trays to missing surgical instruments, before they become patient safety issues. Along the way, we cover why the company built its early customer base on paying clients instead of venture capital, how real-world data has become Blue Sky's biggest competitive advantage over synthetic simulation, and why the team turned down deals that wouldn't scale even when it hurt short-term revenue. Steven also shares candid lessons on choosing a co-founder and staying flexible enough to let a company's direction change completely without losing its footing. It's a grounded, detail-rich conversation about building a hard-tech company in North Carolina, with real numbers on accuracy, team growth, and what's coming next. Timestamps 00:02 Cold open and sponsor thanks 01:34 Scot's preview: meet Steven King and Blue Sky Robotics 03:34 Welcome Steven King to the show 04:29 Life before Blue Sky Robotics 05:41 15 years at UNC: from photojournalism to computer vision 06:34 The Washington Post years and the trip to Liverpool 08:15 The spark: from innovation lab to startup 08:48 First idea: volumetric capture for the metaverse 09:45 The pivot: turning the camera outward for robots 10:25 Founding day and the first client 12:04 Bootstrapping with paying clients instead of VC 12:42 The 99.5% accuracy bet on fishing tackle 16:01 Edge inference with NVIDIA Jetson 18:18 Why fishing tackle data transfers to surgical tools 21:03 Saying no to deals that won't scale 23:07 Inside the use case: dining trays and dietary errors 24:45 Solving the 20% of surgeries that start unprepared 26:08 Building the "IoT toaster" for hospitals 27:00 UNC Health and Mayo Clinic partnerships 32:39 A 16-person team built on Triangle universities 34:00 What's next: raising capital and scaling to more hospitals 34:52 Founder lessons: pivots, pride, and picking a co-founder 35:40 Credits and sign-off ----- Where to Find Steven King: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-king-b93885b/ Blue Sky Robotics: https://www.blueskyrobotics.ai/ 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 #110

  [REDACTED] Episode 9: He Gave His AI Assistant 64 Tools and Zero Permission to Delete Anything

  Aug 26, 202643 min

  Josh Guter, founder of Elephants, joins us for a live product teardown of the AI operations assistant he built for small teams. The conversation covers the architecture behind the assistant: roughly 64 purpose-built tools, an approval-gated write system that never lets the AI act without human sign-off, and the logging system Josh built to audit a codebase that, by his own admission, has become a black box even to him. Josh walks us through his full build process, from sketching UI mockups in Adobe Illustrator to having Claude draft implementation plans and Codex tear them apart before anything ships, plus how he red-teams his own assistant before any change touches its tools or system prompt. He also shares how Elephants evolved from a low-code personal relationship manager built on Glide Apps and Make.com into a full-stack platform now running the daily operations of NC State's Entrepreneurship Clinic. It's a candid look at what it actually takes to ship an AI feature people trust with real operational data, including the parts that still keep a solo founder up at night. Timestamps 00:00 Cold open: "The devil's in the details" 00:45 Welcome back to Redacted 01:20 Introducing guest Josh Guter 02:33 Josh joins and how he and David met 02:56 What Elephants is: ops software for small teams 07:03 The real product: the AI assistant 08:04 The big question: model, cost, context, trust 14:04 Behind the scenes: Anthropic's API and the Make.com origin story 15:12 64 tools and counting 16:01 Managing the internal prompt library 18:07 Rebuilding full-stack with Opus 4.8 and Codex 20:38 Auditing a black box: breadcrumb logging 21:57 Claude Code as the new Make.com 25:10 The build process, start to finish 26:23 Illustrator mockups and the Claude/Codex review loop 29:05 QA without a QA team: red-teaming the assistant 31:51 Taylor's tangent: rebuilding an interview ingestion pipeline 34:09 The founders who never read their own PRs 35:02 Why nothing ships without user approval 36:57 It's a PWA, not an app 39:00 The "AI psychosis" moment 39:37 Josh's product vision: enterprise-knowledge AI 41:48 Where to find Josh and Elephants 42:08 Sign-off 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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