All Damn Year – Even Norton Won’t Save Us This Time

You land dwellers finally did it – you proved that even the threat of death won’t make people take anti-virus seriously. I’d pat you on the back if I could find a six foot blade of marsh grass. We’ve still got a few S+B themed masks in the online store if you’d like to pop one on while we tell ya that we told ya so.

January – Accountz Reeceevable Don’t Take No Personal Dayz Off

Ceterus have been at it since 2008. They brought their ledger of investment up to 30 million at the start of the year with nine million more raised. LinkedIn says they have 69 current employees and signs point to life. It’s hard to get excited about accounting, but it’s a bit easier to get excited about local success stories that seem to be making steady progress towards success.

February – Let’s Make a Deal To Meet Another Time

The Charleston Deal Alliance (CDA) formed, had one meeting, and then socially distanced like good little capitalists. From their site you might get the impression that is all this secretive membership organization got up to. Signals elsewhere indicate that they’ve had at least one virtual event (featuring local startup https://sprockets.ai/ that did a $3.4 million round this year) and maybe also orchestrated a bout of hyperinflation in the Florence area.

March – Punch it, Chewie.

Shrimp And Bits Global Publishing Inc. had a fairly quiet year but did manage one bombshell article breaking the news that the #chstech hype bubble had well and truly burst. Who knew? With our hype-ohm-meters reset back to stun and our hype-o-dermics filled only with orange tang, relative sanity was restored until… Former Jack Russel founder Tom Wilson launched Hyper63, the first Charleston startup based around development of an actual open source project. Read the details in our exclusive interview.

April – But, we’re just talking about Shaft!

DIG SOUTH also went fully virtual and got plaudits in spades. The usual crowd shoveled the usual mixture of enthusiasm and marketing double speak, waging trench warfare against out-dated business models and punching holes in conventional wisdom.

August – Less Bar, Also Less Camp

It’s hard enough getting computer nerds to interact with other hoo-mans. Take away the promise of schwag and a shot at a high five from Tom Wilson and it’s nearly impossible. A virtual instance of the greatest local tech meet-up that everybody loved but nobody wants to put time into organizing happened. It was on Zoom. There were some talks.

September – AVOXI Lady, I’m Comin’ to Get Ya

A reputable sounding group put AVOXI on a list of companies that are not horrible jerks. The announcement on AVOXI’s blog was not overly self-congratulatory and they have 4.4 stars on Glassdoor so we won’t make too much fun of this one.

October – The Acorn Merges Into The Oak

Blue Acorn became part of Infosys, the world’s second largest IT company, an employer of 200K+ persons world wide. An interest nugget from the announcement on the BA blog is that they have co-CEOs. How quaint. Coverage from the India Times told us that “with its earlier acquisition of WONGDOODY that offers creative and marketing services, BlueAcorn iCi brings complementary capabilities to help global CMOs and businesses in a digital commerce world”. WONGDOODY? Ahem. We also learned that “The acquisition is expected to close during the third quarter of fiscal 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.”, so possibly this deal is not yet done?

November – Putting the Ra in Electoral College

Astute readers will notice that there was a US presidential election this year. Spineless, tech-obsessed sea creatures such as ourselves don’t generally occupy our minds with such mammalian issues, but we did stick our heads out of the water long enough to take in this particular quadrennial spectacle. While we take no stance, it does seem like the change of guard will have a limited but positive effect in our pond. Volatility and visa limits don’t help the ones and zeroes get out there like they should.

December – Your Flagshipment Has (Almost) Arrived

The floor of The Harbor is covered with retired Flagships, given the history of spaces employed by the venerable Charleston Digital Corridor (CDC). The newest location is some space within the Charleston Tech Center (CTC) development. The CDC site makes it sound a whole lot like they are the operators and driving force behind the CTC, but from what we can see they are really just a glorified tenant. The CTC is claiming that 70% of the space is already spoken for, which doesn’t seem hard to believe given the general market trend toward more modest digs.