This is big news for the Triangle! People in the RTP startup community saw how important Launchbox Digital was. I have high hopes for TSF and know Chris Heivly will do a great job.
Yep, this is great news for the Triangle. Sounds like the new TSF is going to be even bigger and better than the old one as well. Mad props to Chris and Dave for pulling this together!
The surprise part was the promise of an additional $20-$150k in convertible notes. That's going to be huge for startups just starting out after the program.
Why wouldn't they? The cost of living here is a lot cheaper than a lot of places, the weather is fairly mild year round, we're relatively close to either the beach or mountains for when you want leisure activities, there's tons of stuff to do here in terms of live music, arts, sports (college sports in particular) etc., and there are lots of well educated, interesting people who come here to attend UNC-CH, Duke, NCSU, NCCU, etc., or to work for some of the major employers in the area.
Honestly, one of the bigger knocks against the Triangle for the "typical HN reader" is the lack of early stage funding / seed capital. And this program is a nice step in the direction of helping with that. If a startup manages to get off the ground initially here, they might as well stay... at that point, they've already conquered the big challenge.
