For the past three years, we’ve been featuring the startups in Dallas-Fort Worth who YOU say are the hottest in all the land, and we’re so excited to bring you this year’s feature. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex only continues to prove that it’s nothing but ripe soil for new businesses to take root and grow fast, and the companies you’ll see on this list are taking full advantage of all DFW has to offer.
These companies showcased below were all born and raised in DFW, and they range in industry from tech and innovation to fashion and accounting. You’ll see a few familiar names from last year’s list, but you’ll also see several new businesses join the ranks of your top startups. As a reminder: the startups are featured by the number of votes received from their biggest fans. And if you need a refresher on what constitutes a “startup,” click here!
We know you’re itching to hear the results, so without further ado…
Here are DFW’s 15 Hottest Startups in 2019!
15. Bonfire – Dallas
Bonfire exists to combine simple online reservations with payment processing so campground owners can run efficient operations and get paid immediately. RV parks and campground are still using pen and paper for reservations or they are using an incredibly outdated software. A younger demographic is getting into the RV past time, and campgrounds are struggling to keep up with current technology tools. Bonfire has found a foothold in the camping industry with its reservation management product. In 2020, they will be launching their booking engine product, RVSpotfinder.com. Long story short: it’s campground management made easy.
This is a lean startup with a killer reservation management product for an outdated industry.
14. VidaBowls – Dallas
VidaBowls’ vision is to provide local after school programs with healthy bowls through a concept called ‘buy a bowl give a bowl.’ They’re a pop up experience fueled by purpose and focused on serving fresh, local, and organic acai bowls. They pop up everywhere from office spaces to private events and workouts. If you need a healthy catering or an experiential pop up offering, they’ve got you covered.
We all know, we love a good acai bowl! How many companies in Dallas do you see with a Acai Bowl bar on the go or for events, etc. An amazing idea.
13. ProsRent.Com – Richardson
ProsRent.com has revolutionized the way rental equipment in the construction industry is sourced online. Their mission is “providing a one-stop shop for construction rental equipment, while providing a faster and easier solution.” Prosrent.com focuses on a customer-driven rental experience built on great relationships and outstanding service. After taking a top spot at CodeLaunch 2016, ProsRent.com was awarded Best Financial Opportunity and Best Pitch. Their intent is to reduce the amount of time it takes to source equipment, decrease the cost associated with renting equipment, and provide project managers, construction managers, and owners alike with the ability to work with one company on their entire rental process and fleet.
It’s like a Hotels.com model for renting equipment, saving contractors time because Prosrent.com shops around for them to get them good prices. They have sold over 1 million dollars just in their first 10 months and have created an efficient way to save project managers time and money so that they can have more time worrying about other construction needs.
12. ParkHub – Dallas
ParkHub is bringing innovation to the world of parking operations. ParkHub helps venues boost revenue, cut costs, and wow guests with fast, reliable, and easy-to-use technology. ParkHub created its own software that processes payments and provides analytics, all to make parking easier for operators and drivers. They lease this parking software to the companies who need it and receive a percentage of the parking revenue each month. The ParkHub team is comprised of industry experts, problem solvers, and creative engineers, all dedicated to connecting people with the places they want to go. They service big-time venues like the Super Bowl, American Airlines Center, and Levi Stadium. In a world where parking can be a nightmare (aka DFW), ParkHub is working to make the parking experience better for everyone.
ParkHub is an industry leader comprised of passionate employees, dedicated to developing cutting-edge technology and first-rate service to help parking operators streamline their operations, boost revenue, cut costs, and wow guests with fast, reliable, and easy to use technology.
11. FlyghtClub – Frisco
Frequent flyers, get excited for FlyghtClub. FlyghtClub was born from a passion to help travelers save time while creating a more enjoyable journey for everyone. They’re on a mission to change the aviation industry for the better and bring a new age of travel into the marketplace with “social aviation.” Their app includes features like a dynamic networking app for travelers, food delivery, and duty free shopping. If you travel often for work or pleasure, this app is worth checking out.
Good for frequent travelers, on the go business people. Use time that would have been wasted to create network and get new ideas
10. Vouch App – Dallas
Vouch was made by Sean Lowe, Dallas’ most famous Bachelor (turned husband, father, and now app creator / matchmaker) and is spearheaded by a powerful, local female CEO, Christina Yebra. If you’re single, you can sign up and invite close friends and family to join the app as your “Vouchers.” They’ll help you build your profile, vouch for you, and approve your matches to help increase your chance of finding the right person. By allowing a single user to add friends to help them swipe, the experience is more fun. Also, “Vouchers” provide context to their single friend, providing for a safer experience. Vouch is available for both iOS and Android.
The Vouch App is trying to break the mold of isolated digital dating and creating a NEW culture within digital dating that can bring friends together! This makes digital dating not only safer but also more fun.
9. Clean Finances – Dallas
It’s no secret that bookkeeping is one of the least-fun things about operating a business. Clean Finances helps businesses and nonprofits reclaim their time and focus on leading business endeavors by taking care of their bookkeeping endeavors from start to finish. They use dedicated and professional account managers to help clients clean up their books and answer any questions the client might have along the way. They’ve created their own custom dashboard to help every client have a better snapshot of their numbers through a clean and easy-to-read interface that’s automatically updated each week. Their dashboard is mobile-friendly, so businesses have the ability to know their numbers down to the penny- anytime, anywhere. They’re on a mission to help business leaders eradicate their financial clutter and achieve financial clarity, helping them take the distraction of finances away to focus on what they do best.
When bookkeeping and finances feel cold and impersonal, Clean Finances provides a human touch with precise attention to every detail. They’re unmatched in their efficiency and strength of character, which speaks to this company’s reputation.
8. Pursuit Sales Solutions – Dallas
Pursuit Sales Solutions partners with outside businesses by recruiting superior sales talent to various organizations and industries. They believe in humanizing the recruiting process by getting to know exactly what companies need and finding the perfect person to match that profile, not just a resume. They specialize in recruiting for software sales, oil and gas, medical, and B2B industries, and their ability to specialize in sales recruiting means that their team understands what it takes for someone to be a sales rep for the specific organizations they work with. They have a noteworthy company culture themselves, allowing them to hone in on other company cultures to recruit and ultimately hire the perfect fits for various roles and industries. If your company needs help hiring great talent, Pursuit has a team of experts that can help.
With a focus on client satisfaction and perfect job matches, they embrace the candidate’s needs as well as the client’s. By humanizing the recruiting process, they are changing the game in our industry.
7. Veryable – Dallas
Veryable is an on-demand labor marketplace for manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing. The Veryable model provides businesses with labor pools of workers who have flexible work arrangements to enable higher productivity and fewer administrative burdens. Veryable’s goal is to unshackle businesses and allow them to scale while maintaining a lower and more constant cost structure. They’ve created a technology that has a real-time marketplace for labor that puts more people to work and relieves the burden on producers, improving overall productivity and enabling organic growth.
Veryable enables DFW businesses and workers to connect directly via their virtual marketplace, allowing the businesses to scale their labor force flexibly and the workers to control their own flexible schedule while getting daily pay.
6. Balanced Media Technology – McKinney
BALANCED’s mission is to help solve the world’s biggest problems by integrating tools for training artificial intelligence and machine learning directly into video games, allowing BALANCED to harness the minds and efforts of billions of individuals in a way that maximizes results while reducing recurring costs. Put simply, BALANCED’s technology platform, called HEWMEN, bring purpose to time playing videogames. HEWMEN has brought communities together, given hope to a child fighting cancer, analyzed diagnostic medical imagery, and processed research data to help make cancer treatments more effective, all through empowering regular people playing video games. HEWMEN combines the processing power from gaming computers with the intuition of game players, creating a cloud platform that allows humans and machines to work together to solve problems in new and innovative ways.
Their goal is to combine video game playing with cloud-based data collection and distributed processing to help research in an assortment of scientific and medical disciplines. It’s simply brilliant!
5. Marciante And Company – Dallas
Marciante and Co. is a creative startup dedicated to manufacturing and selling quality leather shoes and other leather products at reasonable prices.They do this by selecting top grade tanneries and small batch factories to produce designer-level quality at a fraction of the high-end fashion cost. With honest pricing, and integrity in their design, Marciante is an extension of their family legacy. Their products come from fair trade shops and factories in Leon, Mexico (the leather shoe capital of the western hemisphere). They’ve worked tirelessly to listen to their customers, get ahead of trends and never compromise on quality or comfort, and their product is truly a testament to their dedication.
They’re a brand on mission from top to bottom. From the quality of their product to the people involved, each element reads as authentic.
4. Neighborhood Goods – Plano
We all know that department stores aren’t exactly thriving in 2019, but entrepreneur Matt Alexander, being passionate about fashion and retail, wanted to find a way to change that. Matt partnered with real estate investor Mark Masinter to create Neighborhood Goods, a new age department store that was created to rethink how department stores actually work. Located in Legacy West in Plano, Neighborhood Goods brings together retailers with limited (or no) brick and mortar stores as activations rather than booths and is centered around experience. They’re creating something more vibrant and socially oriented, and they have the ability to bring in some of the most interesting brands from around the world. It’s only been a few months since it opened, but Neighborhood Goods is already making huge strides in retail.
Neighborhood Goods is the first retail concept I’ve seen to talk about a deeper, local meaning – with a passion behind it to deliver more than just a new venue for displaying products.
3. Artist Uprising – Dallas
Artist Uprising spends its days working to meet the needs of the ever-evolving worlds of art and business. Since its inception in 2015, Artist Uprising has launched a technology, a publication, and now a service-based agency that curates and books talent of all types for brands and organizations across the US. You’ve seen them on our list for 3 years running, and it’s because every year, they’ve managed to evolve into something even bigger, bringing in more offerings and an even bigger following. Artist Uprising helps corporations and nonprofits create memories using art, music, and entertainment. They recently acquired another Dallas company, Pulley Project. With the merger, Artist Uprising is able to offer companies a seamless way to connect with cutting-edge creatives who help elevate the organization’s brand overall– by design, through experiences, and with a purpose– all while elevating local artists.
They are bringing a much needed service to the dfw area to help connect artists and business in a way that leaves a lasting impact on the community! They do an amazing job and helping artists gain confidence in their work and step out to do more than what they may have thought possible!
2. Southern Scholar – Dallas
Taking the #2 spot is Southern Scholar, a “gentleman’s collection” of superior socks. The team at Southern Scholar firmly believes that gentlemen today shouldn’t have to settle — in quality or style — when selecting the best dress socks. In a world of fast fashion, it’s common to come across companies that place precedence on the quick and easy processes over a commitment to superior quality. Southern Scholar partners exclusively with expertly skilled factories, source only the best materials, and meticulously design each and every pair of socks in-house. Using classic color pallets and timeless designs, they pay close attention to detail to produce quality socks you’ll love. They’re actually so confident in their product that if they aren’t the best dress socks you’ve ever worn, they’ll give you your money back.
High quality product, competitive price, awesome customer service, well managed, and highly in tune with consumer demand, Southern Scholar is the best sock subscription plan I’ve used.
1. Deadsoxy – Dallas
Speaking of socks… our #1 Hottest Startup for 2019 goes to another phenomenal Dallas-based sock company, DeadSoxy! DeadSoxy started with one question: “Why was no one getting a basic men’s essential right?” The mission behind DeadSoxy is that socks don’t have to be a staple, boring wardrobe item, and the goal of the company is creating socks that people love to wear. They’ve built their own high-performance fabric that never slips or falls, is affordable, and never shrinks. They carry both men’s and women’s socks, and they carry several accessories like laces and pocket squares. They are a company that stands firmly behind their product, and their passion and quality makes DeadSoxy’s socks easy to sell. They too believe in their product so whole-heartedly that they offer a money back guarantee on all of their styles.
Best quality socks on the market. They are growing extremely fast and have created a super valuable presence in Dallas. I think there are great startups across Dallas but none like this group.
