1. craig j. lewis’enthu-
siasm about being part
of the Dallas startup
scene is contagious.
Maybe that’s because he has
raised funds across the country
and helped launch successful
companies elsewhere, but he
knows what’s possible here. ¶
The North Texas native and for-
mer college basketball player—he
also played professionally in
Europe—most recently served as
chief strategy officer at Kairos,
a facial recognition tech startup.
Launched in a San Francisco
accelerator, Kairos was backed
by Google for Entrepreneurs and
Andreessen Horowitz, a Menlo
Park, California, venture capital
firm. ¶ That now-Miami-based
company raised $1.8 million and
is expected to pull in $2.1 million
in sales for fiscal 2014. Lewis is
the second-largest individual
shareholder after Kairos founder
Brian Brackeen, but he stepped
away in 2013 to launch Visage
Payroll, the“world’s first free
payroll service for startups.Ӧ
“This is the company I’m meant
to be spending time with,”says
Lewis, 33, who once was the
“young, hip guy”that payroll
companies brought in to talk
about social media and how
technology impacts the payroll
industry. ¶ Visage, which offices
out of The Grove, a co-working
space in the West End, plans to
close on a $2 million funding
round in early 2015. It has more
than 50 small businesses signed
up with a campaign to bring on
250 more soon, and will earn
revenue from advertising and a
cash-flow product that defers tax
payments. ¶“I’m really excited
about building a Dallas-based
business and getting the DFW
community behind us as we roll
out nationally,”Lewis says.
NEW
FACES
DALLAS
TECH
the
of
if you’re concerned about the vitality of technology entrepreneurs
in Dallas, don’t be. Young tech business leaders are rising through our high
schools, flourishing in university programs, and collaborating in co-working
spaces. As you’ll see in the following profiles, these entrepreneurs are driven,
smart,innovative,andmotivatedtostarttheirownbusinesses—ortwoorthree.
They’re also not afraid to go up against the status quo, or seek advice from
mentors in areas where they want to grow. In fact, they don’t seem to be afraid
of anything. The young tech entrepreneurs interviewed here are calculated
risk-takers who have the confidence and fortitude to keep pushing forward.
Theseemergingleaderssaythey’reproudtobepartofanecosystemofstartups
inDallas,andwanttohelpothersthriveinthisrichcommunityoftalent.That’s
good news for the rest of us, who will likely benefit from their disruptive ways.
36 D CEO JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
Five of the region’s hottest young technology
entrepreneurs disrupt their industries—
and look for the Next Big Thing.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 D CEO 37
LEWIS
craig j.
by KAREN NIELSEN
photography by JONATHAN ZIZZO
Chief Entrepreneur Officer
Visage Payroll
C

2. some kids snag a
pizza delivery route
to earn extra cash in
college; Nick Valenta
created a tech-based venture
with franchise potential.The
Southern Methodist University
sophomore—he’s a triple major
in finance, public policy, and eco-
nomics—developed Didici MTS,
which employs college students
to help older generations navigate
the rapidly changing world of tech-
nology. ¶ The idea for Didici, which
means“to learn”in Latin, has been
brewing since Valenta was a junior
at Coppell High School. It finally
came to fruition after he presented
it with a full business plan in an
SMU class on entrepreneurism. ¶
“The whole goal behind this is, I’m
in college and busy, but I spend
money all the time and I need to
find a way to make money,”says
Valenta, 19, who’s also working on
developing an unrelated app with
a friend.“Didici’s typical client is
someone who is very busy and
doesn’t have time to learn stuff
like this. ...We believe in forming
relationships, as well as teaching
what my employees and I have
grown up with.Ӧ Valenta gets
free consulting help from a family
friend, and his company’s over-
head is low: $1,500 for a website
and incorporation and merchant
terminal, and independent
contractors as employees. He has
hired a handful of personable and
tech-savvy students who have
helped more than 50 clients. His
plan is to bring in up to $25,000
in 2015 and double that in 2016. If
revenue tops $100,000 he would
consider franchising Didici.”I would
love for this to blow up,”he says.
Whether or not his entrepreneurial
ventures work out,Valenta has a
backup plan: an investment bank-
ing job on Wall Street.
justthree years ago,
retailers didn’t view
independent, digital
content creators as
influential, or even as a helpful
marketing resource.Amber Venz
Box remembers calling retailers
to discuss ways to monetize
fashion blogging, and being
forwarded from PR to market-
ing—all to no avail. ¶ The Dallas
fashionista with the signature red
hair finally broke through, though.
Today, she is a recognized disrup-
tor of the fashion blogging world
with her company rewardStyle,
an invitation-only monetization
platform for top-tier digital pub-
lishers and retailers around the
world. ¶ The site has more than
9,000“publishers”(or clients), in-
cluding influential style bloggers,
YouTubers, fashion magazines,
and others that mention fashion
items in posts or copy and pro-
vide easy links for consumers to
buy them. ¶“In June of 2011 we
worked with 12 retailers.Today
we work with 4,000—everyone
from Gucci to Forever21,”says
Venz Box, president of reward-
Style.The 27-year-old co-founded
the company with her then-
boyfriend, Baxter Box, who’s now
her husband and serves as CEO.
¶ In 2013, rewardStyle publishers
generated $155 million in retail
sales, with an expected $270 mil-
lion in 2014, according to Baxter
Box. In March, the company also
launched LIKEtoKNOW.it, a ser-
vice that facilitates the purchase
of“liked”items on Instagram. ¶
The company has 90 employees
and offices in Dallas and London.
Several new products are in the
works that will“further quantify
and increase the value of the
content digital creators are
producing,”Venz Box says.“We
will be righting some wrongs we
currently see in the space, and
continuing to empower the inde-
pendent content creators.”
38 D CEO JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 D CEO 39
VENZ
BOX
BOX
VALENTA
amber
baxter
nick
President and Co-founder
rewardStyle and LIKEtoKNOW.it
CEO and Co-founder
rewardStyle and LIKEtoKNOW.it
Founder,
Didici MTS
J

3. menswear might be
a $130 billion industry,
but the fact remains
that many, if not most,
men hate to buy clothes. ¶ Matt
Alexander is reshaping the way
men shop with Need, a refined
online retailer and monthly life-
style publication for city-dwelling
men ages 26-42.The year-old
venture has attracted $500,000
in seed funding and has more than
200,000 registered members.
Need keeps its offerings—which
have sold out each month since its
launch—stylish and simple, and its
descriptions witty. ¶ “You can drop
a guy onto a site, but unless they
have some sort of knowledge or
know where to look, they will buy
the wrong thing,”says Alexander,
27, a London native who previously
ran and sold a boutique consult-
ing firm, and has been involved
in several other digital media
ventures.“It’s not so much the
brand, but why it’s interesting
and relevant.That’s why they’re
gravitating toward it.Ӧ Also keep-
ing Alexander busy is a second
venture called Unbranded, an
experimental pop-up and event-
space concept in Deep Ellum that
launched this past November. He
hopes to expand the concept with
Foot Cardigan’s Bryan DeLuca. He
also has a third unnamed project
in the early fundraising stage. ¶
Need recently moved down the
street from its co-working space
at WELD to a 4,000-square-foot
space of its own in the Dallas De-
sign District.Alexander continues
to be a WELD ambassador, touting
the benefits of a collaborative, cre-
ative environment that supports
innovation. He also isn’t shy about
seeking advice from industry
giants such as Carl Sparks, the
former CEO of Travelocity and
former president of Gilt Groupe
who now sits on Need’s board. ¶
“One of the symptoms of being an
entrepreneur is you make a habit
of punching well above your own
weight,”Alexander says.“Don’t
agonize over what will happen, if it
will fail or work, because it results
in paralysis. My remedy for that is
doing it.”
maybe it’s his silicon
Valley upbringing,
but Daniel Black, 25,
isn’t fond of work-
ing for someone else. In college,
Black, who pursued a dual major
in economics and government,
formed three companies and was
named entrepreneur of the year
during his senior year. ¶ His latest
venture, Dallas-based Glass Media,
uses digital projection marketing
to transform storefront windows.
Black and his co-founder, Wesley
Oldaker, have raised $110,000
and planned to close on another
$500,000 by the end of 2014. ¶
Austin College in Sherman, World
Blend in Fort Worth, and Malarkey’s
Tavern in Addison are among the
enterprises that were scheduled
to pilot the proprietary projection
and display technology. Installa-
tions also are occurring throughout
Texas, California, Louisiana, Florida,
and Utah, among other states,
and at several Fortune 500 and
Fortune 100 companies, Black
says. ¶ “Most businesses have
never thought about digitizing
their storefronts before,” Black
says of Glass Media’s cloud-based.
on-demand technology, which can
promote messages such as res-
taurant specials or in-store sales
with proven return-on-investment
results.“Seeing is believing.” ¶
The digital signage’s customized
messages also are projected on
istore ceilings and walls, such
as the 92-inch screen promot-
ing weekly events at the Dallas
Entrepreneur Center, one of the
places where Glass Media offices.
¶ Black moved the early-stage
startup to Dallas after meeting his
fiancée, and is encouraged by the
lending community and plethora of
businesses here that are open to
using his technology. ¶ “In the Bay
Area, there’s fatigue,” he says.“So
many startups are approaching
businesses wanting something for
free. It’s much harder to penetrate
the market for pilots, whereas in
Dallas, no one ever comes to these
businesses, so their eyes are wide
open” when we approach them.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 D CEO 4140 D CEO JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
ALEXANDER
BLACK
matt
daniel
Founder and CEO,
Need LLC
Co-founder and CEO
Glass Media
M