The Friday Nooner returned this week for one final episode. While more podcast/show content is coming in 2025, the Nooner as you’ve come to know it has now wrapped up its run. And what better way to celebrate said run than with some holiday cheer, old friends, and (as often comes with one such old friend) trivia?!

Check out this final installment to test your knowledge of Nooners past, muse about plans for the holidays, and enjoy a certain someone being back on the air (ok fine, it was Pete). You’ll even be treated to some old holiday special snippets, all of which have unimpeachable production value.

(Important note: Despite the GrepBeat Godfather’s prediction that—as befits a series finale—someone involved would die before the end of the show, we all made it out okay.)

Watch the full episode on LinkedIn here or on Facebook here.

The Friday Nooner returned today after a one-week break for Thanksgiving. GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy was joined by co-hosts Melissa Crosby and Kaitlyn Dang and the trio discussed Christmas decoration timing. More specifically, Joe revealed that his distaste for pre-Thanksgiving Christmas trees is… um… fiercer than we realized.

The main event was an interview with Victoria Fritz, who beamed in from D.C. Victoria is the Founder and CEO of Chapel Hill-based Baby Bumps—a startup that connects couples with surrogates (sort of like “Hinge for surrogacy,” as she once framed it for us). She filled us in on her personal journey, the need for Baby Bumps, and how the service is helping couples—with a brief foray into Friends talk in the middle.

Today’s episode of the Friday Nooner was triple-hosted by GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy, Kaitlyn Dang, and––making his Nooner debut, kind of—Cesar Romero. They opened the show with a few words on what they were all bringing to our midday “Grepsgiving” lunch. (We feasted immediately after the show.)

Today’s main course was American Underground Executive Director Tim Scales. Tim spoke about the difference between AU and other “coworking” spaces like WeWork, indulged us in a place-of-origin guessing game, and filled us in on his journey from theater major (fun fact, yours truly was a theater studies minor, but this isn’t about me), to Duke MBA, to a career in Startupland.

Today on the Friday Nooner, co-hosting trio Joe Colopy, Melissa Crosby, and Kaitlyn Dang got us started with some conversation about CED’s GRO Demo Day, which took place Thursday evening (and which you can read more about here).

Somehow this led to the revelations that Joe believes he’s going to die at 86 and Kaitlyn was a talented viola…ist… in high school. Evidently there’s now potential for a future musical episode on which Kaitlyn plans her instrument and I honk through an oboe reed.

Finally we got to the important part and welcomed this week’s guest: Emily Foster, the Founder and CEO of Alpacasews.

Emily took us through her journey: from a pursuit of meteorology driven by a love of clouds, through the Andrews Launch Accelerator program at NC State, and ultimately to adorable plushie designs that have fueled her startup (and earned her internet fame).

She also teased some Black Friday activity and an upcoming “12 Days of Plushies” promotion you’ll want to learn more about. It has to do with helping cats.

On today’s episode of the Friday Nooner, GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy was back in the hosting chair alongside Melissa Crosby and new co-hosting addition Kaitlyn Dang—both of whom, to be clear, were in their own chairs. They started off with a bit of banter about Joe’s brush with death (he nearly crashed his new “GrepBeat red” vespa).

Then, our trio of co-hosts welcomed this week’s guest, Annie Combs. Annie is the Co-Founder and CEO of ECPC Travel, which she describes as the “eco-friendly, socially conscious Expedia.”

Annie filled us in on her startup’s mission to facilitate conscious travel in a way that simultaneously helps travelers find what they want and uplifts destination communities. From there, it was a four-way conversation covering all kinds of travel experiences and goals (including the “sick girls trips” Annie finds a chunk of her customer base enjoying!).

On today’s edition of the Friday Nooner, GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy and Co-Host Extraordinaire Melissa Crosby started off with a bit of conversation about the goings-on at HQ. Specifically, this meant a brief recap of the latest GrepBeat Book Club meeting and a look ahead to some pumpkin painting. Swing by in the coming days (I guess) to see Joe’s rendition of ‘80s Melissa on a pumpkin.

Last and most importantly, Joe and Melissa welcomed Heather McWhorter, who is the Director of the Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at UNC-Wilmington. Heather filled us in on the history of CIE and what it’s doing these days for the entrepreneurial community in and around Wilmington (including a focus on the blue economy). The group also worked in some conversation about ‘80s perm jobs and, naturally, Zanzibar.  

On today’s Friday Nooner, GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy and his co-host Melissa Crosby (who was good enough to beam in remotely despite being on the tail end of a bout with Covid) started off by chatting a bit about the tragic vespa heist that took place outside GrepBeat HQ earlier this week. They also discussed the State Fair and the bizarrely accepted practice of spending more money to win a gigantic stuffed animal than one would buying one directly. 

After that we got to the highlight of the episode as the hosts were joined by Jay Bigelow, the Head of Founder Engagement at CED. Fresh off CED’s aforementioned birthday bash, Jay discussed how the 40-year milestone applied not only to CED but to the entrepreneur community as a whole. Accordingly, he delivered a lot of interesting insights on how (and why) things have evolved over the years.

Watch the full episode on LinkedIn here or on Facebook here.

On today’s Friday Nooner, GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy and his sidekick Melissa Crosby recapped the GrepBeat and Primordial teams’ Thursday excursion to Wilmington. The teams headed down to The Wine Sampler for a kickoff event where we enjoyed some networking, intros, and delicious refreshments with folks from the Wilmington ecosystem. Joe and Melissa also talked a bit about North Carolina joining a multi-state lawsuit against TikTok.

Then they welcomed this week’s guest: Wilmington entrepreneur and OpiAID Founder/CEO David Reeser (who joined us at our launch event in Wilmington Thursday evening!).

David filled us in on OpiAID’s ability to use data science to make addiction treatment safer and more effective. Built on the idea that everyone has “infinite and inherent worth,” the company combines electronic health records with real-time biometric data to provide clinicians with timely, actionable insights—leading to better outcomes for patients with substance use disorders.

For today’s episode of the Friday Nooner, the GrepBeat Godfather and co-hosting maestra Melissa Colopy started off with some talk about storm-ravaged Western North Carolina, and some of the ongoing relief efforts we’ve seen in the community (special shout-outs to the folks at Raleigh Founded and Greenplaces). They also spent a few moments recapping the GrepBeat Happy Hour that took place this past Wednesday at Bull McCabe’s.

Then yours truly popped in with a quick update on the week at GrepBeat.com. We touched on this week’s episodes of the Monday Mix and In The Soup, recapped our written features on local startups Brainery Labs and Roboro, and talked a bit about the Wednesday evening Happy Hour GrepBeat hosted alongside the American Underground.

Rounding into the heart of the episode, Joe and Melissa welcomed this week’s guest: Daniel Summers, the CEO and Founding Partner of Wilmington-based Electronic Lab Logs.

On today’s Friday Nooner, GrepBeat Godfather Joe Colopy and “Survivor” Melissa Crosby opened with a few words about Hurricane Helene and the storms pelting the Southeast (and the very nice but occasionally porous GrepBeat HQ). Then Melissa recapped this week’s Ladies Investing/Local Angels (LILA) meetup and Joe offered a few words on some of the latest with OpenAI.

Joe and Melissa then welcomed this week’s guest: Atlanta-based David Cummings, who has founded or co-founded 10 startups, and is the CEO of Atlanta Ventures. He was also one of the first, lead angel investors in Calendly!

David—who fortunately managed to stay safe and dry as the storms rolled through Georgia—delivered some impromptu Atlanta history before talking us through some of his latest projects. Long story short, these involve buying up a significant portion of South Downtown Atlanta with the aim of turning it into a kind of sprawling startup campus. Somehow Melissa’s old punk rock-ish phase came up, too.