Startup

Alto Expands Service to Silicon Valley as It Builds a New Dallas HQ and Aims to Go All‑Electric

by | Mar 8, 2022
Dallas-based ridesharing company Alto is entering its sixth market, after launching in Dallas and expanding to Houston, L.A., Miami, and Washington, D.C. With $60 million in funding since its 2018 launch, CEO Will Coleman talks about building a new HQ in the Dallas Design District, aiming to be in 25 metros over the next few years, and planning to be 100% electric by end of 2023.
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Follow the Money: Blue Star Invests in Payments Unicorn, Ryan Scoops Up Property Tax Firm in All-Local Deal, and TPG Co-Leads $160M Investment in Video Game Developer
by | Mar 8, 2022
What companies are finding funding or having a big exit? From startup investments to grants and acquisitions, Dallas Innovates tracks what’s happening in North Texas money.
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DI People: Jacobs, DRC, Dallas College, Megatel, JLL, ENO8, and More Make Moves
by | Mar 4, 2022
In this week's roundup of hires, promotions, and accolades in North Texas, you'll also find news from XpressDocs, Alternative Biomedical Solutions, Ventra Health, VAZATA, Medecision, Firehouse, Six Flags, TCU, nDivision, and Gamestop.

Plus, The Real Estate Council unveils its 2022 board and executive committee.
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Fetii, ‘the Uber for Large Groups,’ Plans to Roll Into Dallas As It Expands in 2022
by | Mar 4, 2022
Fetii, founded in 2020 by A&M and UTD grads, calls itself "the world's first group rideshare platform." Its 15-passenger vans allow groups to go places together instead of splitting into multiple vehicles, at an average cost of $5 per person per ride. Now operating in Austin, College Station, and Lubbock, Texas, it plans to expand to Nashville in April and Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio later this year. It's raising $500,000 on WeFunder—with aims to ultimately "go global."
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Dallas-Based ROBO Global Launches Emerging Tech Venture Fund

by | Mar 2, 2022
With around $4 billion total under management in its U.S. and Europe ETFs, ROBO Global tracks the performance of robotics, AI, and healthcare tech companies worldwide. Now it's leveraging that expertise to launch its first private fund in those areas, aiming to invest in early-stage startups "that are using innovation to grow the business."
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Aiming to Make Fort Worth a Hub of ‘Energy 2.0,’ Electric Motor Maker Launches Production with $17M Funding
by | Mar 2, 2022
With 95 patents issued or pending on its tech, Fort Worth's Linear Labs wants to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., seeing the electrification supply chain as a "national security strategic imperative."

Brad Hunstable launched Linear Labs in 2014 after incubating in the TechFW program. This year his company aims to produce 20,000 electric motors and intelligent drive systems—with twice the torque and half the size and weight of competitors.
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Dallas Invents: 135 Patents Granted for Week of Feb. 1
by | Mar 2, 2022
Dallas-Fort Worth ranked No. 10 for patents out of 250 metros. Patents granted include: A9.COM's visual search with attribute manipulation, Astrapi's transmitting and receiving data using non-periodic functions, AT&T's time-spaced messaging for facilitating network communications, Bank of America's digital passport with verified data provenance, Hunt Energy Enterprise's distributed energy control, Toyota's traffic flow prediction and more.
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Real Estate Tech Startup Nada Relocates Dallas HQ as it Looks to Quadruple Headcount
by | Mar 1, 2022
The startup's new digs in Oak Lawn will give it room to grow its workforce from 15 to around 50 by end of year. Enabling people to invest in single-family rental homes and fractionally invest in owner-occupied homes, Nada has attracted over $2 million from investors into its Cityfunds in Dallas, Austin, and Miami. Now it's expanding to Houston and other cities, launching a debit card, and expecting new funding soon.
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Hypertrucks being bought by GreenPath

Dallas’ Alternative Fuel Trucker GreenPath Logistics Orders 50 Electric/Natural Gas ‘Hypertrucks’

by | Feb 28, 2022
GreenPath uses only vehicles powered by alternative fuels to haul freight for Amazon, UPS, the USPS and more. Now it's ordering 50 Hypertruck ERX units from Texas-based Hyliion. The Hypertruck's electric powertrain is recharged by an onboard natural gas generator.
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New Dallas Regional Chamber VP of Innovation: ‘We’re only getting stronger’
by | Feb 28, 2022
Jorge Varela has spent decades building startups in Silicon Valley, San Antonio, and even in Central America—his place of origin. Now his efforts will center on North Texas' innovation economy.

“The shift from Silicon Valley and the East Coast to Texas and DFW is real,” Varela says.
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DI People: Techstars, Critical Start, VolunteerNow, Corganics, and More Make Moves
In this week's roundup of hires, promotions, and accolades in North Texas, you'll also find news from the Richardson Chamber, PICKUP, BPS Technology, the Frontiers of Flight Museum, UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth, and Giving DNA. Plus, Governor Abbott appoints three North Texans to the Governor's Commission for Women.
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Techstars Seeks Physical Therapy-Focused Startups for Its First North Texas Cohort in Fort Worth
by | Feb 25, 2022
Applications opened to startups everywhere on Tuesday.
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Dallas Accounting Platform Rebrands as Once, Then Gets Selected by Industry Accelerator Program

by | Feb 24, 2022
Last week, Dallas-based BaCo Tech—whose accounting platform turns redundant CPA tasks into "touch-it-once" solutions—rebranded itself as Once Accounting Technologies. Today, it became one of two Dallas-area startups selected for the 2022 Startup Accelerator, sponsored by the American Institute of CPAs and CPA.com.
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Dallas Fintech Startup Emerges From Stealth to ‘Democratize Banking’
by | Feb 23, 2022
Emerging from stealth this quarter, Deposits.com, a platform that Co-Founder and CEO Joseph Akintolayo describes as the “Shopify of banking," is looking to add financial literacy and wellness tools to its technology. It plans to do that in a partnership with Utah-based MX, a financial data platform valued at $1.9 billion.
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After Opening a New Office in Miami Beach, CourMed is Bringing its Concierge Health Care Platform Home to North Texas
by | Feb 23, 2022
McKinney-based CourMed, a concierge health care services delivery company, has expanded with a regional office in Miami Beach and a growing presence in several Western states. “There's an opportunity for us to really create something new in the marketplace that doesn't exist,” its founder and CEO Derrick Miles tells Dallas Innovates. “This is a totally different type of care. We call it the antithesis of seven-minute medicine.”
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Partha Panda Cysiv CEO and Co-founder
Irving-Based Cysiv Sees Record Growth as Demand Rises for SOC-as-a-Service
by | Feb 23, 2022
The spinout from Trend Micro has grown fast since its launch within that company in 2018. In 2021, the Security Operations Center (SOC)-as-a-Service startup doubled its client base with global revenue up more than 100%. Cysiv also won Tech titans' 2021 Fast Tech Award with 1,848% three-year revenue growth. Its CEO and co-founder, Partha Panda, tells us how Cysiv helps clients detect and respond to the "needle-in-a-haystack true threats" they worry about most.
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