About

I'm Cole. I grew up in Atlanta, went to Vanderbilt for undergrad, and moved to Charlotte in 2014 when my wife Whitney took a job at a developer here. We never left. We have a 1920s craftsman bungalow in Dilworth, a golden retriever named Otis, and a strong opinion about which coffee shop in South End makes the best flat white.

I started my career as a software engineer at MailChimp in Atlanta in 2005. I was there for about three years before going to UNC Kenan Flagler for an MBA. After business school I joined AppFolio, which at the time was a small property management SaaS company in Santa Barbara. I worked there for four years, mostly on the product side, and that's where I first got my hands on multifamily as an industry.

From 2014 to 2018 I was at a Charlotte real estate operations company as VP of Product. Good company, good people. I learned a lot. The reason I left is a longer story but the short version is that I had been working on the wrong slice of the problem for too long and I wanted to try to solve a bigger version of it.

I founded Plotline in October 2018. We are now 51 people, headquartered in South End, with customers across 14 states. We closed our Series B last month, led by Camber Creek with participation from RET Ventures and a few others. The Series A almost killed us, which I wrote about earlier this year.

What I work on

Most of my time goes to Plotline. Product strategy, customer conversations, hiring, the occasional sales call when something big is on the line. I try to spend a couple of hours every Friday on the actual product instead of meetings about the product, although I am not always successful at protecting that time.

I sit on the board of Charlotte Tech Talent, which is a small nonprofit that runs apprenticeships for engineers transitioning into tech in Charlotte. I have been mentoring there since 2021. I have learned a lot from the apprentices, more than they have learned from me probably.

I advise three early stage companies, all in PropTech or B2B SaaS. I do not take any new advisor roles unless the founders are people I genuinely want to spend time with, regardless of the equity.

Outside of work

Road cycling. I do about 80 to 110 miles a week when the weather cooperates. I am part of a Saturday morning group that does the Davidson loop with reasonable regularity. We are not fast. We are consistent.

I read mostly nonfiction. Currently working through The Power Broker, which I expect to finish in 2027 at the current rate.

Whitney runs Lamphere Brand Studio, a Charlotte brand consultancy. She is much better at design and writing than I am, although she would say my product taste is better than I give myself credit for. We have been married since 2012. We met at Vanderbilt.

Otis is eight. He is a good dog. He turned eight in March.

Where to find me

The fastest way to reach me is email: cole@colelamphere.com. I read everything but I am bad at replying within a week. If it's urgent and Plotline related, my work email is cole@plotline.com.

I am on LinkedIn and on Twitter as @colelamphere, although I am less active on Twitter than I used to be.