dallas-startup
(21)
Clifton Harness
Clifton Harness is the co-founder and CEO of TestFit, a Dallas-based real estate feasibility platform that lets developers, architects and contractors solve site plans in seconds instead of weeks. A University of Texas at Austin architecture graduate who grew up around his father's development business, Harness spent two years doing site plan test fits at StreetLights Residential before teaming up with his college roommate, software developer Ryan Griege, to automate the repetitive work. TestFit has raised roughly $22 million, led by a $20 million Series A from Parkway Venture Capital, and Harness has become a leading and often provocative voice on generative design in the AEC industry.
Colin Perry
Colin Perry is the founder and CEO of Perry Weather, a Dallas-based weather safety platform he started in 2013 after studying meteorology at Texas A&M. What began as a weather consulting firm became a software and hardware company that helps more than 5,000 organizations - including schools, cities, golf courses, and pro leagues like the NFL, MLB, and PGA of America - monitor hazardous conditions, automate their safety policies, and keep compliance records. The company has raised roughly $21 million, including a $15 million Series B in 2024, and has sent more than 200 million weather alerts.
Cariloop
Cariloop is a Dallas-area health and wellness company that helps working caregivers manage the demands of caring for children, aging parents, and other loved ones. Sold to employers as a benefit, its Caregiver Support Platform pairs each family with a dedicated, licensed Care Coach and a secure portal for storing documents, finding and booking care providers, and navigating medical, financial, and legal questions. Founded in 2012 by Michael Walsh and Steven Theesfeld, the company has supported more than 300,000 families and raised roughly $43 million across seed through Series C rounds.
FieldPulse
FieldPulse is a Dallas-based software company that builds an all-in-one field service management (FSM) platform for residential and commercial trade businesses - HVAC, plumbing, electrical, garage door, appliance repair and more. Founded in 2015 by Gabriel (Gabe) Pinchev, the platform combines scheduling, dispatching, CRM, estimating, invoicing, payments, inventory and reporting into a single web and mobile app, and now layers AI-driven tools (Operator AI and Chat AI) that answer calls and web chats 24/7 to book jobs automatically. Backed by roughly $79 million in total funding - including a $50 million Series C in August 2025 - FieldPulse positions itself as a flexible, customizable alternative to enterprise-heavy rivals like ServiceTitan and simpler tools like Jobber and Housecall Pro.
Highway
Highway is a Dallas-based logistics technology company that built the freight industry's Carrier Identity platform, verifying that the carrier a broker books is who they claim to be. Founded in 2022 by former TriumphPay CEO Jordan Graft, Highway connects a carrier's digital identity to its physical operations to stop double brokering, impersonation and freight fraud in real time. Its Identify, Connect and Monitor products - plus the newer Trusted Freight Exchange - serve more than 1,050 brokers, including 70 of the 100 largest freight brokers in the United States.
OneDay
OneDay is a Dallas-based B2B SaaS company that helps businesses create, personalize, and automate short videos to build stronger customer relationships and drive sales. Originally built to capture and preserve the life stories of senior living residents, OneDay expanded its video storytelling technology into multifamily real estate and the funeral industry, and now leans on an AI video assistant called AVA for scriptwriting, teleprompting, automated delivery, and engagement analytics. The company partners with thousands of senior living communities across the U.S., U.K., and Canada and has raised roughly $24-25 million to date.
QSIC
QSIC is an in-store audio platform that combines curated music, point-of-sale data and generative AI to help retailers and brands turn store audio into a measurable retail media channel. Its technology powers thousands of stores across three continents, pairing store-specific playlists with dynamically created, localized audio ads and closed-loop attribution so advertisers can tie in-store messaging back to sales.
Scoot
Scoot is a Dallas-based B2B software company that runs an AI sales platform built on top of a customizable virtual meeting environment. Founded in 2017 as Preciate and rebranded to Scoot in 2023, the company puts real-time AI agents inside sales meetings, webinars, and events to coach reps, engage buyers, qualify leads, and automate CRM follow-up. Led by founder and CEO Ed Stevens, Scoot pitches itself as a more engaging, brand-able alternative to static tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams for go-to-market teams.
Stellar
Stellar is a Dallas-based, technology-driven marketplace that connects property managers and homeowners with vetted local tradespeople to get home maintenance and repairs done right. Founded in 2016 as IFM Restoration and rebranded to Stellar in 2022, the company pairs software, AI and a network of thousands of contractors to resolve maintenance at scale, initially for the single-family rental industry and increasingly for homeowners across the U.S. Sun Belt. It serves major single-family rental operators and books repair appointments for homeowners across 30-plus markets.
Talkmap
Talkmap is a Dallas-based enterprise AI company that turns 100% of a contact center's customer conversations - calls and chats - into structured, real-time intelligence. Its Talkdiscovery platform combines patented AI, machine learning, and computational linguistics to automatically detect customer intent, sentiment, and emerging trends, then routes those insights to specialized AI assistants for retention, sales, compliance, coaching, and analysis. Founded in 2017 (originally as discourse.ai) and led by CEO Tim Moss with founder Jonathan Eisenzopf, the company serves large brands in telecom, banking, insurance, and healthcare, keeping customer data inside private cloud environments rather than sending it to third-party models.
TestFit
TestFit is a Dallas-based real estate feasibility platform that uses configurator and generative-design algorithms to turn a raw parcel into a buildable site plan, unit mix, parking layout, cost estimate and pro forma in minutes instead of weeks. Founded in 2016 by Clifton Harness and Ryan Griege, it serves developers, architects, contractors, civil engineers and municipalities evaluating multifamily, industrial, retail and mixed-use projects, and has raised $22M including a $20M Series A in 2022.
Ed Stevens
Ed Stevens is the founder and CEO of Scoot, a Dallas-based platform that positions itself as an AI sales environment where buyers, sellers, and live AI agents meet in real time. A serial entrepreneur with more than 25 years in retail and software, he previously founded and led the ecommerce fulfillment company Shopatron (acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2015) and served as COO of Kibo Commerce. Scoot began life as Preciate, an appreciation and relationship platform, before rebranding and raising a $12M Series A in early 2023. Stevens is also an author, board member, and investor.
Gabriel Pinchev
Gabriel Pinchev is the founder and CEO of FieldPulse, a Dallas-based field service management software company he started in 2015 to help HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other trade contractors run their businesses from a single app. An outsider to the trades who studied at SMU's Cox School of Business, he built FieldPulse into a platform used by thousands of service businesses, raising roughly $79 million across Series A through C, including a $50 million Series C in August 2025 led by Fulcrum Equity Partners. He is known for staying close to customers, talking with contractors daily, and pushing the company into AI-powered tools like Operator AI and Chat AI.
Jordan Graft
Jordan Graft is the founder and CEO of Highway, a Dallas-based freight technology company he started in 2022 to solve carrier identity and fraud in trucking. A three-time CEO before 40, he previously led TriumphPay to become the largest payer of freight invoices in the US, co-founded the software shop CrateBind, and worked in private equity at TA Associates and investment banking at J.P. Morgan. Highway coined the category of Carrier Identity and now partners with the largest US freight brokerage, C.H. Robinson.
Tim Moss
Tim Moss is the Chairman and CEO of Talkmap, a Dallas conversational-intelligence company that turns raw call-center calls and chats into structured, real-time customer insight using patented AI. A Texas A&M political science graduate with more than 30 years in technology and financial services, he previously ran the turnaround of the $800M+ carrier services company Syniverse as COO, launched a new organization as an Ericsson senior vice president, and founded IMG Venture Group and the consultancy Integrity Management Group. Talkmap raised an $8 million Series A led by Stage1 Ventures in February 2022, part of roughly $17.6 million total.
Trey Gibson
Trey Gibson is the co-founder and CEO of SPOTIO, a Dallas-area field sales software company he started in 2014 after a visibility crisis on his own outside sales team, where reps worked territories blind and managers had no idea what was happening in the field. A Texas Tech MBA who spent his early career running foam insulation and construction businesses in the DFW area, Gibson built SPOTIO into a mobile-first platform used by thousands of field reps for GPS activity tracking, territory mapping, and sales engagement. He raised a $4.5M Series A from Ballast Point Ventures in 2020 and now hosts the 'From the Field' podcast, interviewing sales leaders about how modern teams sell, scale, and win.
Zachary Irwin
Zachary Irwin is the co-founder and CEO of Downstream, a Dallas-based marketplace that lets contractors book equipment rentals, dumpsters, portable toilets, and site services with a few taps - the way you might order a pizza. Started in 2022 as 'Trash Gurus' and rebuilt into an AI-driven procurement platform with 100,000+ listings, Downstream raised an $8M Series A in November 2025 co-led by Brick & Mortar Ventures and Moneta Ventures. Irwin came to construction's least glamorous corner from an unlikely place: years as a healthcare-software (Epic) consultant building oncology and pharmacy systems across 22 states.
Craig Peus
Craig R. Peus is the CEO of illuno, a Plano, Texas technology company building the first purpose-built staffing marketplace for off-duty law enforcement officers. Backed by Mark Cuban Companies, illuno lets businesses hire certified, on-duty-grade police officers through an app in minutes, while handling compliance, insurance, and payments and giving departments visibility into officer moonlighting. Peus brings a wide-ranging executive resume - a Stanford biology degree, leadership roles in energy midstream (Gravity Midstream), agtech (Tree3), and capital advisory (Blossom Street Capital) - to a sector he argues is two decades behind on technology.
Cameron Johnson
Cameron Johnson is the founder and CEO of Nickson, a Dallas-based furniture-as-a-service startup that furnishes an entire apartment with 250-plus items in as little as three hours, by app. A former institutional real estate investor who spent 15 years at firms like Goldman Sachs, Walton Street Capital and Greystar before earning an MBA at Harvard, Johnson noticed renters trying to 'rent the model apartment' on tours and built a company around that impulse. In 2021 Nickson raised a $12 million Series A led by Pendulum, the firm co-founded by Barack Obama's former financial adviser Robbie Robinson, with Motley Fool Ventures, Revolution's Rise of the Rest and Backstage Capital joining in.
Nickson
Nickson (Nickson Living) is a Dallas-based startup that turns an empty rented apartment into a fully designed, fully furnished, move-in-ready home before the renter arrives. Renters pick a furniture package, take a style quiz and upload a floor plan; Nickson's designers build a custom layout and install specialists outfit the unit - down to silverware, sheets and artwork - in as little as three hours, all for a monthly subscription plus a one-time install fee. Founded by former real estate executive Cameron Johnson in 2017, the company raised a $12M Series A in 2021 and serves Texas metros and Oklahoma City.
Will Pacio
Will Pacio is the co-founder and CEO of Expo, a Dallas-based AI platform that pulls a restaurant's scattered data - POS, inventory, labor, guest feedback - into one dashboard operators can talk to. A Stanford psychology grad who walked away from a planned medical career to cook on the opening team at Thomas Keller's Per Se, he ran IT for the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, founded the fast-casual chain Spice Kit, then built the restaurant-staffing marketplace Pared before spinning it into Expo. His pitch: bring the 'Moneyball' approach to multi-unit restaurants so non-technical owners can make decisions with data instead of gut feel.