Tagged: austin
30 results
Kendra Scott
Kendra Scott is an Austin-based jewelry and lifestyle brand founded in 2002 that pairs accessible, colorful, customizable designs with a mission of 'Family, Fashion, and Philanthropy.' Built from a $500 startup into a company valued at more than $1 billion, it sells fashion, demi-fine and fine jewelry - plus watches, fragrance, eyewear and home goods - through 150-plus stores, a strong e-commerce channel and wholesale partners. Its signature Color Bar lets shoppers design their own pieces, and the company has given tens of millions of dollars to causes supporting women and youth.
Michelle Peterson
Michelle Peterson is the Chief Marketing Officer of Kendra Scott, the Austin-based fashion and fine jewelry brand. A chemical engineer turned marketer, she spent 18 years at General Mills before leading marketing at Life Time, Holiday Inn Express, and the juice brand Pressed. At Kendra Scott she unified the brand and performance teams into a single 'brand builder' organization, driving record direct-to-consumer traffic, customer growth and loyalty around a 'connection before transaction' philosophy. She was named a 2023 Adweek Marketing Vanguard.
Eric Klasson
Eric Klasson is the founder and CEO of Resilienci.ai, an Austin-based company that uses AI, machine learning and behavioral data to map hyperlocal infectious-disease risk and supply-chain disruption. A longtime entrepreneur and finance executive with a 40-year career spanning Price Waterhouse, PepsiCo and several technology startups, he previously co-founded the social-analytics firm Snaptrends and founded Pandemic Insights. He is also a longtime food-security advocate who has chaired and served on food-bank boards.
Colton Pace
Colton Pace is the co-founder and CEO of Ownwell, an Austin-based proptech company that helps property owners lower the cost of real estate ownership by appealing over-assessed property taxes. A former asset manager who oversaw billions for wealthy families, Pace built Ownwell in 2020 to give everyday homeowners the same optimization tools that sophisticated investors use. The company has processed more than 1 million appeals, saved customers over $400 million, and raised a $50 million Series B in early 2026.
Danny Tomsett
Danny Tomsett is the founder and CEO of UneeQ, an enterprise AI company that builds lifelike digital humans for customer service, training, and marketing. A New Zealand entrepreneur who started building games at age eight and exited a telecom company at 25, he launched the business in 2009 as the video chat startup FaceMe before pivoting to CGI-driven digital humans. Under his leadership the company delivered high-profile projects like Nadia and Digital Einstein, won Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Business Challenge, and partnered with NVIDIA. He relocated the company's center of gravity to Austin, Texas in 2019.
Bulzi, Inc.
Bulzi, Inc. (styled Bulzī, pronounced 'bulls-eye') is a dual-use technology company that uses edge-AI and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to deliver situational awareness, security, and safety solutions. Originally built to measure out-of-home advertising audiences by passively detecting nearby mobile devices, Bulzi adapted its RF-sensing platform for defense and public-safety missions with roughly $2M in SBIR funding from the U.S. Air Force and Army. Its products span passive C5ISR sensing (SAFER), base access control (z-BASE), and medical-grade vital-signs monitoring (BioSCOUT), serving warfighters and first responders alongside commercial advertising customers.
DuraStat
DuraStat is an Austin, Texas medical device company that makes a purpose-built surgical instrument for repairing tears in the dura - the membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Its handheld device automates suture passage so surgeons can create precise, watertight closures to prevent cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks, even through the limited access typical of spine and neurosurgical procedures. Invented by practicing spine surgeons, DuraStat and its companion fascial-closure device TissueStat are stocked in surgical facilities across all 50 U.S. states, and in late 2024 the company entered an exclusive U.S. commercial partnership with Medtronic.
Equal Parts
Equal Parts is an Austin-based insurance company that acquires established independent insurance agencies and equips them with shared infrastructure and AI-driven automation. Founded in March 2025 by Mike Witte, Graham Yennie and Mike Meller, it positions itself as a growth network - preserving each agency's identity and local relationships while standardizing back-office workflows so agents can focus on clients. The company raised a $23M Series A led by Inspired Capital in February 2026 and aims to become a top-5 insurance distributor by acquiring 25 agencies in 2026 and reaching $1B in premiums.
FloSports
FloSports is an Austin-based direct-to-consumer sports streaming company that broadcasts underserved and niche sports - wrestling, cycling, track and field, motorsports, gymnastics, grappling, hockey and more - with the depth typically reserved for major professional leagues. Founded in 2006 by brothers Martin and Mark Floreani, the subscription platform streamed roughly 40,000 live events in 2024, reached more than 23 million viewers, and reported record revenue and sustained profitability ahead of its 2025 Series D round led by Dream Sports.
Dave Hendricks
Dave Hendricks is the co-founder and CEO of Vertalo, an Austin-based platform that acts as an SEC-registered transfer agent and tokenization engine for real-world assets. He has spent close to a decade building infrastructure to turn illiquid private securities into compliant, transferable digital assets. A serial entrepreneur, he previously co-founded LiveIntent, the programmatic email advertising platform, and helped build CheetahMail into the world's largest email service provider before its 2004 sale to Experian. Earlier he ran the worldwide relationship between Arthur Andersen and Oracle and worked on large securitization projects. He is known for a pragmatic, institution-focused view of crypto and a habit of dismissing hype cycles in favor of durable financial plumbing.
David Schofman
David Schofman is the CEO and co-founder of Coro Health, an Austin-based company that builds therapeutic music and multi-faith spiritual streaming programs for senior living communities, hospitals and hospices. A serial entrepreneur who built one of the first online golf retail businesses in the 1990s and later ran global ecommerce for Callaway Golf, Schofman turned to health technology in 2008, translating research on music and the brain into a subscription platform now used across thousands of care communities in the US and Canada.
ListingSpark
ListingSpark is an Austin-based real estate technology company that gives homeowners a flat-fee, software-driven way to list and sell their homes on the MLS without paying a traditional listing agent's commission. Its platform automates pricing analysis, listing syndication, paperwork, scheduling and offer management, and pairs the software with a licensed brokerage in Texas, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. The company says it has helped more than 7,400 families sell their homes and save over $70 million in commissions.
Praetorian
Praetorian is an Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity company that helps organizations prevent breaches by combining an adversarial, offensive-security mindset with automation and AI. Founded in 2010 by CEO Nathan Sportsman, the firm pairs elite red-team engineers with its flagship Chariot platform for Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) and attack surface management, plus services spanning penetration testing, cloud and product security, and adversarial emulation. Its clients include large technology, finance, healthcare, and automotive organizations, and it maintains open-source tools such as the Nosey Parker secrets scanner.
Share One
Share One is a Round Rock, Texas company that turns customers into storytellers by producing verified video testimonials. Founded in 2020 by Dan Lievens, it pairs professional human interviewers and editors with a tracking platform to capture, verify, and distribute authentic customer stories, positioning genuine human narratives as a trust signal in a market flooded with AI-generated content.
Swarmer
Swarmer builds combat-proven, hardware-agnostic autonomy software that lets a single operator command hundreds of drones - across air, sea and ground - as one coordinated swarm. Born out of the war in Ukraine and founded in 2023, its STYX, MINAS and TRIDENT products translate human objectives into autonomous action while keeping people in control of life-or-death decisions. The company's software has supported more than 100,000 real-world combat missions, raised a record $15M Series A, and went public on the Nasdaq in 2026 under the ticker SWMR.
Veridise
Veridise is an Austin-based blockchain security company spun out of the UToPiA program-analysis research group at the University of Texas at Austin. It hardens Web3 by pairing expert human auditors with proprietary tools built on formal methods, fuzzing and program analysis. Veridise audits smart contracts, zero-knowledge circuits, blockchain implementations and dApps, and has completed 150+ audits for infrastructure protocols including Scroll, Linea, Succinct, Manta Network, RISC Zero and Semaphore.
Vertalo
Vertalo is an Austin-based fintech that operates an SEC-registered digital transfer agent and tokenization platform connecting the digital asset ecosystem. Since 2018 it has helped issuers, fund managers, broker-dealers and custodians move private securities on-chain - handling digital cap tables, investor onboarding, compliance and settlement across multiple blockchains. More recently it has pivoted toward 'agentic' infrastructure, exposing its regulated transfer-agency operations through APIs and an MCP server so AI agents can issue, record and transfer securities.
Ivan Lvov
Ivan Lvov is the CEO of TraceAir Technologies, a Seattle-founded construction site intelligence platform that uses drone data and AI to help homebuilders and land developers measure, verify, and manage grading and earthwork from land acquisition through finished lots. He joined TraceAir in 2016 as Chief Strategy Officer and stepped into the CEO role in September 2025, succeeding co-founder Maria Khokhlova. Before TraceAir he spent years scaling a digital mapping and navigation franchise (2GIS) to 16 offices and 450 employees, and he holds an MSx degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Osano
Osano is an Austin-based data privacy platform that helps companies comply with GDPR, CCPA, and 95+ global privacy laws through consent management, cookie banners, subject rights automation, data mapping, vendor risk monitoring, and privacy assessments. Founded in 2018, it is the first data privacy platform certified as a B Corporation and backs its software with an industry-only 'No Fines, No Penalties' guarantee. Osano processes over a billion consents a month for thousands of companies.
Marlow Nickell
Marlow Nickell is co-founder and CEO of Grocery TV, the largest in-store retail media network for U.S. grocery. From a University of Texas physics degree and a stint at McKinsey, he took the unusual path of writing the original software himself before running the company that now puts screens in over 6,500 grocery stores reaching roughly 95 million shoppers.
Matthew Marx
Matthew Marx is the co-founder and CEO of Evocalize, a Seattle- and Austin-based collaborative marketing platform that lets franchises, brokerages, lenders and multi-location brands push automated, compliance-friendly digital ad campaigns down to their local partners. A Babson MBA and 20-year marketing-technology operator, he built Evocalize after product leadership stints at Bazaarvoice, Oracle Retail, PA Consulting in London, and the MassPRIM pension fund.
Megan Dusenbery
Megan Dusenbery is the Chief Executive Officer of Knack, a student success platform that helps colleges run paid peer tutoring programs. Appointed in October 2025 alongside the company's Series B led by New Markets Venture Partners, she succeeded founder Samyr Qureshi, who moved to executive chairman. She spent nearly two decades building higher-ed partnerships at Kaplan (rising to Senior Vice President of Higher Education) and at ACUE, where she was Chief Partnerships Officer before taking the Knack job.
Michael Mazur
Michael Mazur is co-founder and CEO of AI Clearing, an Austin-based platform that ingests drone imagery, BIM designs, schedules and ground data to produce autonomous progress tracking and quality control for large infrastructure builds. A former PwC partner who ran the firm's global Drone Powered Solutions unit, Mazur left in 2020 with co-founder Adam Wisniewski to spin the idea out as an independent company; in October 2023 the company closed a $14M Series A led by Prudence, on the back of 15x revenue growth.
Michael Witte
Mike Witte is co-founder and CEO of Equal Parts, an Austin-based insurance platform that acquires independent agencies and layers AI automation on top of the humans who already sell the policies. In February 2026 the company closed a $23M Series A led by Inspired Capital, bringing total acquisition capital to $50M. Before Equal Parts, Witte co-founded RigUp (later Workrise) and helped scale it to a reported $3B valuation.
Michelle Davey
Michelle Davey is the co-founder and CEO of Wheel, an Austin-based virtual care platform she started in 2018 with Griffin Mulcahey. Wheel powers back-end telehealth infrastructure for retailers, payers, pharma companies, and digital health brands, and connects them to a nationwide network of clinicians. Before Wheel, Davey ran talent at a telehealth company and had earlier stints in recruiting and operations at Google, Favor, and Medtronic. She has raised more than $216 million for Wheel across four rounds, including a $150 million Series C in 2022.
Mike Love
Mike Love is the CEO and a founding team member of Fintiv, an Austin-based fintech that builds patented digital wallet infrastructure bridging traditional finance, loyalty, and Web3. A computer scientist by training and a career-long payments architect, he helped lead technology transformation at First Data (Fiserv) before joining Fintiv in 2012, and also founded Cloud Payments Network. He describes himself as a serial technology entrepreneur with over four decades in TMT and work across 75+ countries.
Mike Wior
Mike Wior is the CEO and co-founder of Allen Control Systems, an Austin-based defense company building Bullfrog, an autonomous AI-powered gun turret designed to shoot down small drones with rifle rounds instead of missiles. He previously founded Omnivore, a restaurant POS transaction network acquired by Olo in 2022, then took over the top job at ACS from co-founder Steve Simoni, and in mid-2026 closed a $200 million Series B at a $2.2 billion valuation.
Mohamed Badawy
Mohamed Badawy is the founder and CEO of Scalvy, an Austin-based hardware startup building modular 'Power Neuron' electronics that replace centralized inverters, chargers and DC-DC converters in electric vehicles, energy storage and AI data centers. A former tenured associate professor at San Jose State University who founded and directed its Center of Power Electronic Converters, he left academia in 2024 to commercialize the modular architecture he had been researching. In March 2026 Scalvy closed a $13.9M Series A co-led by Silicon Badia with Azolla Ventures, Climate Capital and SkyRiver Ventures.
Nathan Sportsman
Nathan Sportsman is the founder and CEO of Praetorian, an Austin-based offensive cybersecurity firm he started in 2010 and bootstrapped for a decade before taking a Series A led by McKinsey in 2020. Beyond running the company, he hosts and produces 'Where Warlocks Stay Up Late,' a long-form interview series documenting the hackers who built the field. He is a contributing author to 'Hacking Exposed,' a U.S. patent holder, and a former adjunct professor at UT Austin.
Nic Halverson
Nic Halverson is the co-founder and CEO of Occuspace, an occupancy intelligence company that reads Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals to tell buildings how busy they are without cameras. He started the company in 2017 with roommate Linus Grasel after failing to find a seat at UC San Diego's Geisel Library, and has since deployed the sensors across dozens of universities, Fortune 500 offices, and, most recently, 180 million square feet of federal real estate for the GSA.