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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Jim Reinhart is the CEO of TEKVOX, a New Braunfels, Texas company reshaping the professional audiovisual industry with factory-built, pre-programmed Drop-In AV systems for classrooms, meeting rooms and complex spaces. A Rice University electrical engineer with more than 35 years in technology, he built his career across semiconductors and startups, co-founding and leading Luminary Micro, the lead partner on ARM's Cortex-M3 processor, through its 2009 acquisition by Texas Instruments. At TEKVOX he pushes a simple conviction: AV is IT, and it deserves the same discipline, standardization and lifecycle management as the rest of an organization's technology stack.
Patti Soch is the Chief Executive Officer of Liquibase, an Austin-based database DevOps company that started life as Datical. She joined in 2016 as CFO after finance leadership roles at Gazzang (acquired by Cloudera), Phurnace Software (acquired by BMC), and Tango Health, and stepped into the CEO seat in 2022. She is known for an inclusive, transparent leadership style and for pushing Liquibase's open-source database change management platform into enterprise and public-sector accounts.
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.
ACT-ion Battery Technologies is a Dallas-based advanced materials startup building a cleaner, faster way to make cathode active materials (CAM) - the single most expensive ingredient in a lithium-ion battery. Spun out of Hunt Energy Enterprises in 2019 and led by CEO/CTO Jin-Myoung Lim, ACT-ion uses a continuous, chemistry-agnostic manufacturing process to produce surface-engineered single crystal cathode powders in a fraction of the time and cost of incumbents, with less energy, water and waste. The company is scaling its process at a pilot plant in Carrollton, Texas, with the goal of anchoring a domestic battery-materials supply chain.
Maxxsure is a Dallas-area cybersecurity company that turns cyber risk into a number executives can actually use. Its flagship product, the M-Score, quantifies an organization's cyber risk on a 0-to-1000 scale by collecting thousands of internal, external, and third-party variables and running them through AI and machine-learning models. Rather than handing boards another vulnerability report, Maxxsure frames risk in financial terms - 'down to the dollar' - so leadership can decide what to remediate, what to accept, and how much cyber insurance they actually need.
Jin-Myoung Lim is the co-founder, CEO, and CTO of ACT-ion Battery Technologies, a Dallas-based deep-tech startup reinventing how cathode active materials (CAM) are made for lithium-ion batteries. A PhD mechanical engineer from Seoul National University with 2,272+ research citations and an h-index of 27, Lim spun ACT-ion out of Hunt Energy Enterprises in 2019 with a bold thesis: that the biggest bottleneck in the battery supply chain isn't the chemistry - it's the manufacturing process. His Hydro4Crystal platform produces coated single-crystal CAMs continuously, with lower energy, cost, and emissions than any incumbent method, and it works across chemistries from LFP to NMC. In 2024, the technology won an R&D 100 Award. By late 2025, ACT-ion had raised $11.5 million from BASF Venture Capital, LG Technology Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, and Korean institutional investors, and was breaking ground on a pilot plant in Carrollton, Texas.

Kevin Thomsen is a revenue and partnerships executive who turned a career building channel ecosystems at Zoom and Vonage into a cybersecurity mission. As Chief Revenue Officer (and acting CEO-level lead on growth) at Maxxsure, a Dallas-area cyber risk quantification firm, he champions the M-Score - a way to translate cyber risk into a single financial number that boards, CFOs, and insurers can argue about in plain English.
Bedrock Energy is an Austin-based geothermal startup making heating and cooling for commercial buildings cheaper and cleaner. By reengineering oil-and-gas drilling technology with real-time subsurface sensing and simulation software, Bedrock drills geothermal boreholes up to 5x faster, then designs and delivers ground-source heat pump systems that can cut a building's HVAC energy costs in half while slashing related air pollution.
Bret Kugelmass is the founder and CEO of Last Energy, an Austin-based company building factory-made 20-megawatt nuclear power plants designed to be shipped, assembled, and switched on like industrial equipment rather than built on-site like cathedrals. A Stanford-trained roboticist who once helped build a lunar rover control device at NASA, he sold a drone startup, then interviewed more than 800 nuclear experts on his Titans of Nuclear podcast before concluding that the technology was never the problem - the cost of slow, custom construction was. Last Energy has raised about $164 million, closing an oversubscribed $100 million Series C in December 2025, and is racing to plug a pilot reactor into the Texas A&M-RELLIS grid by mid-2026.
Chad Collins is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Corganics, a Dallas-based clinical cannabinoid company that sells pharmaceutical-grade, broad-spectrum CBD exclusively through healthcare professionals. A 20-year veteran of biopharma, payor systems and medical devices - including stints as a VP at Galderma and CEO of Boston Select Asset Group - he co-founded Corganics in January 2020 with Reggie Gatewood to drag CBD out of what he calls the retail 'Wild West' and into the clinic. He is also the author of 'Run to the Fire,' the true story of his father, a doubly amputated Vietnam veteran, with a foreword by NFL Hall of Famer Roger Staubach.
Plant People is a plant-based functional wellness brand making science-backed, zero-sugar supplements built around functional mushrooms, adaptogens, and vitamins. Founded by Hudson Gaines-Ross and chef Gabe Kennedy, the company sells a line of 'Wonder' gummies and chews - WonderDay, WonderSleep, WonderFocus, WonderCalm and more - direct-to-consumer and through major retailers including Whole Foods, Sprouts, Target, REI and Amazon. A Certified B Corporation, Plant People grew profitably for roughly seven years before raising a Series A led by Manna Tree Partners in November 2025.
Kevin D. Williamson is an American journalist and author who roams the country as national correspondent for The Dispatch, filing the Monday-morning newsletter Wanderland and the recurring column Econ for English Majors. A former roving correspondent who spent 15 years at National Review, he writes about economics, liberty, and the texture of American life with a prose style that prizes wit, contrarianism, and the long view. He is the author of seven books, including The Smallest Minority and Big White Ghetto.
Ranga Mohan is a technology executive with roughly two decades of experience building digital platforms at the intersection of engineering and go-to-market strategy. Currently VP of Digital Technology (GTM-Marketing) at ServiceNow, he joined the Santa Clara-based enterprise cloud leader in 2025 after five years as VP of Digital Technology & International at 7-Eleven, where he led the construction of a global convenience tech platform. Earlier stints at Capital One - where he helped create the industry's first online-only mortgage pre-approval experience - and Bank of America shaped his deep fluency in scaling digital customer experiences inside large, complex organizations.
Homebound is a tech-enabled homebuilder headquartered in San Francisco that manages the entire home construction process from design to move-in. Founded in 2018 in the wake of the devastating California wildfires, the company combines a proprietary software platform with a vetted trade partner network to offer semi-custom homes at fixed prices. Homebound handles everything from lot sourcing and permitting to interior design and construction management, compressing what typically takes years into an industry-leading timeline. With over $308 million raised and 500+ homes built across markets in California, Texas, Colorado, and Florida, Homebound is rewriting the rules of residential construction for a new generation of homebuyers.
Abhimanyu Choudhary is Co-Founder and Chief Sales Officer of Xoxoday, a B2B SaaS rewards, incentives, and loyalty platform serving 5,000+ enterprise clients across 175+ countries. After a decade-long career at Tata Steel rising to General Manager of Sales, he joined Xoxoday in 2018 to lead its commercial growth engine. Today, Xoxoday processes ~250,000 transactions daily and has raised over $100M in funding, most recently a Series C in January 2026 from Apis Partners and 57 Stars.
Chris Hull is Co-Founder of Jasper, the enterprise AI platform for marketing teams that went from zero to $90M ARR in under three years. A serial entrepreneur from Austin, Texas, Hull co-built three companies with the same two partners - Dave Rogenmoser and JP Morgan - cycling through a digital marketing agency, a Y Combinator-backed social proof tool called Proof, and finally Jasper, which became one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies of the AI era, raising $130M and hitting unicorn status in roughly 18 months.
Stress-Free Auto Care is a tech-enabled chain of automotive repair shops modernizing a $200B+ legacy industry. Founded in 2016 and based in Mountain View, California, it operates 30+ ASE-certified shops across California and Texas, pairing proprietary software with neighborhood mechanics to offer transparent pricing, digital vehicle inspections, text updates, and live video feeds of repair bays.
Ryan Trahan is an American YouTuber, entrepreneur, and philanthropist from Sugar Land, Texas, best known for his creative challenge series — most famously traveling across the country starting with just a single penny while raising millions for charity. With over 23 million subscribers, he has turned audacious social experiments into a force for good, raising more than $11.65 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in 2025. Beyond YouTube, he co-owns candy brand Joyride Sweets (sold at Target and Walmart), founded Neptune Bottle, launched the Howdy clothing line, and continues to push the boundaries of branded storytelling on the internet.
Yuval Bachar is the founder and CEO of EdgeCloudLink (ECL), the company building the world's first off-grid hydrogen-powered modular data centers. A 20+ year veteran of hyperscale infrastructure at Cisco, Juniper Networks, Facebook/Meta, LinkedIn, and Microsoft Azure, Bachar co-founded the Open19 open hardware standards project and holds eight U.S. patents. At ECL, he is reimagining what a data center can be - deploying capacity in nine months (vs. the industry's 3-4 years), generating zero emissions, and producing cooling water as a byproduct of hydrogen fuel cells. In May 2024, ECL unveiled the world's first off-grid hydrogen-powered AI data center in Mountain View, California, and Lambda deployed the first hydrogen-powered NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems there. ECL's TerraSite-TX1 near Houston is planned as a 1-gigawatt AI factory on 600 acres.

Dwarkesh Patel is a 25-year-old Indian-American podcaster, writer, and emerging intellectual force in Silicon Valley. Through the Dwarkesh Podcast - launched from a college dorm room in 2020 - he has become the go-to long-form interviewer for AI leaders, economists, and historians, landing everyone from Elon Musk and Jensen Huang to Terence Tao. Named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2024, and called Silicon Valley's favourite podcaster by The Economist in 2025, he co-authored The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025 with Stripe Press. With 1.2M+ YouTube subscribers and 76,000+ Substack readers, Patel has built his platform entirely through obsessive preparation and organic growth.