Dallas, we are open for business
The new Capital Factory + The DEC location is open at The Centrum in Oak Lawn in Dallas! We’re excited to take the next step in bringing the Texas Startup Manifesto to life. Entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors — please come make this your home! We have classrooms, conference rooms and a big stage to host your events and meetups, plus beautiful offices and workspace with tons of natural light and dozens of restaurants within walking distance. Most importantly, we’ll help connect you into our mentor network and the rest of the Texas and global startup ecosystem. Join us!
Thank you
There are a lot of people to thank for helping to make this happen but I have to start with Trey Bowles, founder & CEO of The Dallas Entrepreneur Center. Trey is the biggest champion of the Dallas startup scene there is and has been working tirelessly for the past 5 years. Ben Lamm was the one who encouraged Trey and I to collaborate. Trey sent this from vacation with his family!
Come by and see Trey and the whole DEC team at The Centrum where they have a bunch of great programming scheduled throughout the summer like the #WEDallas “Top Women in Tech” event on June 27 with LinkedIn celeb Goldie Chan and top female entrepreneur Nina Vaca.
We’d also be remiss not to thank Chad Cook and Ty Lee at Quadrant Investment Properties. They had the vision to transform The Centrum building and turn it into a tech mecca for Dallas and we were eager to join in. Also thanks to Mike McDonald who connected us together.
The seeds have been planted and now they are sprouting
Since we first partnered with The DEC last year, we’ve made a half dozen bus trips to Dallas bringing up Austin entrepreneurs to meet with Dallas mentors and to pitch Dallas investors. We’ve also brought Dallas entrepreneurs down to Austin for the same thing. In January we brought a dozen Texas entrepreneurs to San Francisco to pitch investors and this past week we brought a dozen more to New York City. This is really working!
I’m going to be spending a lot of time here. I’m not moving my family here, but Capital Factory got an apartment across the street from The Centrum and I’ve stayed there 5 nights in the past 2 weeks. I’ve got a Surf Air membership that makes it easy for me to come in for day trips and my plan is to be in Dallas every week that I’m not traveling somewhere else. I’m frequently on a Von Lane Bus or in a Krew Rideshare. I want to meet new entrepreneurs, mentors, angel investors, venture capitalists, and corporate innovators while I’m here and will also block off time each trip for doing office hours with our new members.
Surf Air acquired Rise which was started by DEC and Capital Factory mentor Nick Kennedy.
We’re building a Dreamteam in Dallas. We’ve already got 5 full time employees and they are already off and running! Chad Shuford is heading up our corporate partnerships and Catherine Taylor is heading up our events and programming. We just announced that Bryan Chambers will be joining as an Accelerator Director and Venture Partner to work directly with our entrepreneurs and create a strong connection to UT Dallas.
We’ve had a dozen Dallas startups join our Accelerator including Arcade, CooPals, Counterfind, DesignVr, FastVisa, Fetch, KinTrans, Partake, Primal Sensors, Roomored, Telecalm, and TradeJester. We’ve made four investments in Dallas startups such as Counterfind, HyperGiant, Roomored, and Shearshare.
The coworking space is already filling up!
We started with dozens of members who moved in from The DEC’s West End location and have added other members that we’ve met along the way. Only a few offices are available and about half of the dedicated desks have been reserved. We got a last minute upgrade when Varidesk came in and donated their awesome standing desks and other accessories for all of the offices. We have wicked fast wifi from Cisco Meraki with 4TB of bandwidth from Zayo. I expect to be at 100% capacity by the end of the summer! Apply for your membership now and talk to our Membership Coordinator Melissa Schwartz.
Host your next tech authentic event with us!
We have 26,000 square feet but only about 7,000 square feet is office space. The rest is event space with capacity (including parking) to host a half-dozen events at once and seating for groups of 20 to 150 people. We also have an amazing courtyard! Submit a request to host your next meetup or conference!
Here are some reasons why hosting your meetup at Capital Factory will make it a better and get more people to participate:
- The Centrum is centrally located just north of downtown, on the border of Oak Lawn and Turtle Creek, with easy access to IH-35, the Tollway, and Love Field.
- Events hosted at Capital Factory are listed on our website calendar, in our newsletter, promoted on social media, and displayed on large projection screens around the space.
- Hosting an event in our space adds a sense of innovation and collaboration. People feel differently when they enter our space — the energy is palpable and contagious.
- There is parking on site with a tech-enabled system that recognizes your license plate.
- Our rooms have easy-to-use audio-video setups with big projection screens, Airplay, and audio speakers.
- Every classroom and the big stage is set up with video streaming cameras that can broadcast to Facebook Live or YouTube and also record in HD.
- We use Cisco Webex videoconferencing to connect our offices together and have Cisco Spark Boards available.
- Most importantly, our incredible Dreamteam staff is here to help make your event a success.
