Advertisement
This is member-exclusive content
icon/ui/info filled

businessEntrepreneurs

Here’s where past Google-backed Black entrepreneurs in North Texas are now

The tech giant has given $800,000 to a collection of startup founders in Dallas-Fort Worth since 2020.

Joseph Akintolayo and Marcus Cooksey are the latest in a line of North Texas companies getting a boost from the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund.

Since 2020, the tech giant has awarded $800,000 to Black entrepreneurs in North Texas. Here’s where past winners are now:

Fredrick Burns (left), GiGi McDowell and Kedreon Cole.
Fredrick Burns (left), GiGi McDowell and Kedreon Cole.(Google )
Advertisement

2021 winners

  • Fêtefully, a Dallas-based digital wedding planning platform founded in 2016, announced in June that it closed a seed round of funding worth $1.3 million. The cash injection makes founder and former wedding planner GiGi McDowell one of 98 Black female founders to raise over $1 million in venture funding. McDowell said being a part of the 2021 Google cohort “was huge and really gave us validation. It allowed us to build the momentum we needed to do a big round.” The funding came “at the perfect time” as the company had come out of Techstars Austin’s 2021 accelerator program and was finishing up the Google for Startups Accelerator for Black Founders program, she said. Since winning recognition from Google, she has grown her team from three to 11 members. October is a big month for the company as it will be launching its fully automated wedding planning tool. Couples will take an onboarding quiz that will determine how they like to plan and assign them to the right AI personality type to guide them through the process. McDowell said the idea behind her company is to offer wedding planning at a more reasonable price and to give couples access to wedding planners outside their geographic area.
  • Safer Management Inc. is a software company that sells AI attendance tracking software to schools. The Dallas company was founded in 2020 by Frederick Burns, a software developer and dad who noticed inefficiencies with the sign-in process at his twins’ school. Burns said the Google award “added a layer of trust” for the company as it reached out to new schools and partners. Prior to the recognition, the company had three team members and now has grown to a team of eight, he said. The software is being used by 84 schools in four school districts. Up next, the company is releasing a product with individualized learning plans to help students who fell behind during the COVID-19 pandemic when schools switched to remote learning. The company was also accepted into an Apple entrepreneurship camp in October.
  • XR Sports Group is a Frisco-based company that lets content creators build fan engagement hubs, powered by social competitions and mobile games. It was founded in 2019 by Navy veteran Kedreon Cole, who has worked in the software space for 10 years. In 2021, XR Sports Group partnered with the Southwestern Athletic Conference as its official esports tech provider.
  • CustomerX.i is a Dallas-based consumer insights platform founded in 2019 by Hakeem James to help restaurants and retailers accelerate their digital transformation. In July, the company announced a partnership with restaurant information company Qu POS. Qu is giving all restaurants that use its platform free access to CustomerX.i’s platform.
Business Briefing

Become a business insider with the latest news.

Or with:

Kanarys co-founders Star Carter (left) and Mandy Price.
Kanarys co-founders Star Carter (left) and Mandy Price.(Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

2020 winners

  • ShearShare lets hair salons rent out their space and equipment when it’s not being used so that independent hair stylists can book it. It was founded in McKinney in 2015 by industry veterans Tye and Courtney Caldwell, who released an app in 2017. In late 2021, the couple competed against 19 other startups in Buffalo, N.Y., for a slice of a $5 million fund from 43North. ShearShare won and received a $500,000 investment. It has pulled in $6.2 million in backing since 2018, according to tracking site Crunchbase. Since ShearShare moved its headquarters to Buffalo in 2021, the company has released the second version of its app and expanded to more than 900 cities.
  • Kanarys is a Dallas-based diversity, equity and inclusion technology company founded by Mandy Price, Star Carter and Bennie King. The company launched in 2018 and has raised about $5 million and built a team of 23. Price said the Google funding and recognition was “tremendous” and “truly important” to the company’s growth and success. It has built an impressive roster of clients that include 7-Eleven, Silicon Labs, Neiman Marcus and Yum! Brands. Price said creating the software and platform took about 18 months so they didn’t start selling the product until 2020. She said growth was slow at first but accelerated at the end of 2021. While Price declined to give revenue figures, she said sales grew fivefold in 2021 compared to the previous year. This year, Kanarys and the Dallas Regional Chamber partnered on an assessment of 101 North Texas companies’ diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Also this year, CRM platform HubSpot invested in Kanarys. Through a partnership, HubSpot’s 135,000 customers now have access to a quiz created by Kanarys to help companies determine where they’re at on their DEI journey.
Advertisement