fort-worth
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Frost Prioleau and the value of thinking small
From a family foundry to Simpli.fi, Frost Prioleau kept returning to customers other people overlooked. His next chapter includes a planned CEO handover and a seat on Fort Worth’s school district board.
Mark Stadler took the other road
His brothers joined the family trucking business. Mark Stadler went to college, then spent a career building teams and businesses. At AccessHope, the founding CEO’s next assignment was growth.
Scott Parker and the art of keeping time on the internet
He studied classical percussion, found his way into advertising, and became CEO of Social Factor. Now Scott Parker’s work turns on a familiar problem: getting people, tools, and timing to work together.
Valor finds the oil money that paperwork forgot
A producing well can send checks and still leave royalties unpaid. Valor pairs mineral specialists with its own software to find the gaps, fix the records, and keep owners in the picture.
How Kearley Made Credit-Union Marketing a 45-Year Business
The Fort Worth agency found its edge before most firms found their niche: learn one complicated industry deeply, then connect every customer touchpoint to an outcome the C-suite can understand.
The DEC Network Is Betting $2.4 Million on the Founders Next Door
At a former Southern Dallas mall, The DEC Network puts desks, mentors and business training within reach. Its bigger experiment is whether a neighborhood address can widen the circle of people who get to build a business.
The Texas Company Quietly Behind the Flashlight in Your Junk Drawer
It doesn't put its name on a single box. But NEBO, HALO, TRUE and Thaw sit in 50,000 stores - and Alliance Consumer Group owns all of them.
The Biotech Map Has a Middle - and Bios Partners Is Betting on It
From a Fort Worth office, Bios Partners is testing a contrarian idea: great science is spread across America even when venture money is not. Its portfolio turns that geography lesson into a working investment strategy.
The Company That Turned a Dead Battery Into an 80-Year Business
For 79 years Schumacher Electric has sold the same quiet promise - your battery will not leave you stranded. The bet now is that the promise scales from a dead sedan to an electric car.
American Airlines Is a City in the Sky - and Loyalty Is Its Most Valuable Runway
American moves more than 200 million people a year, but the seat is only the beginning. Behind every boarding pass sits a carefully timed network, a loyalty currency, a cargo hold and a century of operational bets.
Conner Industries, Inc.
Conner Industries is a Fort Worth, Texas manufacturer and distributor of industrial lumber and custom, mixed-material packaging - wood pallets, crates, skids, foam, corrugate and plastic. Founded in 1981, it has grown into one of the largest players in U.S. industrial wood, running roughly 18 manufacturing sites across 14 states and reporting revenue near $200 million. Under CEO David Dixon, the company has pivoted from a commodity lumber business into an integrated packaging platform, using a string of acquisitions to add engineered protective packaging, foam fabrication and logistics services like 3PL, VMI and kitting.
David Dixon
David Dixon is the Chief Executive Officer of Conner Industries, a Fort Worth, Texas-based industrial packaging and wood products company. Since taking the helm in 2017, he has led the transformation of a financially challenged industrial lumber business into a diversified, integrated packaging platform operating roughly 19 manufacturing locations across 14 states with revenues approaching $200 million. A CPA and Six Sigma Black Belt with deep experience in private equity-backed turnarounds, Dixon spent earlier chapters of his career at Price Waterhouse, Cummins, Goodyear, Eaton, John Zink, and The Crosby Group before bringing that operational discipline to Conner.
Todd Graetz
Todd Graetz is the co-founder and CEO of Aerolane, a Texas aviation startup building autonomous towed cargo gliders called Aerocarts, which let ordinary planes tow extra payload for only a marginal increase in fuel burn. Before Aerolane he spent his career at BNSF Railway, where he co-founded the railroad's uncrewed aircraft systems program and helped launch some of the first long-range beyond-visual-line-of-sight commercial drone flights in the U.S. under the FAA Pathfinder program. He is an active private pilot, an AUVSI board member, and a veteran of multiple FAA advisory and rulemaking committees.
Tom James
Tom James is a Certified Franchise Consultant and the founder of Prophecy Consulting, a Fort Worth, Texas advisory practice that helps corporate executives and military veterans decide whether to buy a franchise, and if so which one. A FranServe affiliate and member of the International Franchise Association, he matches candidates across 700-plus franchise brands through a free, structured coaching process. His approach is shaped by having owned a franchise himself, a SpeedPro large-format printing operation in the Los Angeles area, and by a corporate career spanning HR, IT, operations, project management, finance, and sales and marketing.
Simpli.fi
Simpli.fi is a Fort Worth, Texas-based advertising technology company that built one of the industry's leading programmatic demand-side platforms (DSP) on unstructured data rather than pre-packaged audience segments. Its Advertising Success Platform combines programmatic media buying - across connected TV, mobile, display, video, native and audio - with agency management and workflow software used by more than 2,000 media teams, agencies and brands. Backed by Blackstone and GTCR at a $1.5 billion valuation, the company specializes in granular, localized, addressable targeting at scale.
Cali Tran
Cali Tran is CEO of Simpli.fi, a programmatic advertising platform backed by Blackstone and GTCR that runs 140,000+ ad campaigns monthly for 40,000 advertisers. Born in a Vietnamese refugee camp at Camp Pendleton and raised as the youngest of six in a family restaurant, he built a career spanning investment banking, venture capital, startup co-founding, and C-suite leadership at Ancestry, Valassis, Centerfield, Brandwatch, and Cision. At Valassis, he engineered a 5x expansion of digital revenue for a $2 billion company. He is an advisor at SignalFire, a board member of OneVietnamNetwork, and a Bowdoin College alumni council member who graduated cum laude in History before earning his MBA from Harvard Business School.