Bookkeeping errors drove a Dallas entrepreneur to create his own software

Entrepreneurs are often born when they discover a problem that needs fixing.

In Marcus Cooksey’s case, it was his frustration with available bookkeeping and accounting software available that became the launchpad for Dallas-based Duke.ai.

Cooksey, 49, put up his own money in 2019 to create a software platform needed for a trucking business he started. Today the software has 7,000 users at 10 trucking companies and topped $1 million in revenue last year.

Adding to Duke.ai’s accomplishments is a vote of confidence and $100,000 from tech giant Google. Cooksey this month joined Deposits’ Joseph Akintolayo as North Texas founders selected by Google for Startups’ Black Founders Fund.

“I was overwhelmed,” said Cooksey about the honor. “Often most of the hard work goes unnoticed. It’s not just the funding amount; it’s the support that helps accelerate growth and connects you to the right people.”

Cooksey previously worked as a UPS loader and sorter to help pay for college. Then, in 2015, he founded the trucking business LUI Transport, which grew from one truck to five trucks in 2019.

While working on bookkeeping for LUI, he grew frustrated with the accounting software options.

“I was running a trucking business and found a lot of inaccuracies,” said Cooksey, who also spent 13 years working at Dallas-based Texas Instruments.

Duke.ai has grown to 25 employees and expects to surpass $2 million in revenue this year, he said.

Cooksey has two pieces of advice for entrepreneurs.

“Start earlier than I did,” he said. “And you always underestimate the amount of work and money needed to be successful. Whatever you think it is, multiply that by three.”

Cooksey and Akintolayo are the latest in a line of North Texas companies recognized by Google for Startups Black Founders Fund. Here’s where past winners are now:

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 expanded 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. Before 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.

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 and Star Carter. 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 with 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 are on their DEI journey.