As an undergrad, Stauffer found inspiration at UNT’s Murphy Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Read more about plans for the revamped center at northtexan.unt.edu/ tech-startups#extras.
Sutaria doesn’t foresee any problems reaching that mark — or his goal of building a company that is “sustainable, scalable and valuable” — thanks to the mentoring and investment he’s received from the DFW startup community. While about half of the funds he raised for CalcuQuote were through the friends-and-family route, the rest came from entities such as Dallas-based Venn Ventures. “The startup community here is phenomenal,” says Sutaria, who occasionally returns to campus to impart his entrepreneurial experiences at events like TAMS career nights. “There were so many showcase events I could go to, like New Tech and 1 Million Cups. You learn how to pitch your business to a broader audience.”
FINDING INVESTORS When Jesse Stauffer (’15) told his dad about Bitzy, an ephemeral social media platform the UNT junior was creating with his brother, Casey (’15), he suggested the two call Mark Cuban to pitch a partnership. Stauffer laughed off the advice.
Jesse Stauffer (’15) Co-founder and CEO, Xpire
“I remember thinking, ‘That will never happen,’” he says. But a year later, Stauffer wanted an expert opinion on Bitzy, and who better to ask, he figured, than Cuban, the DFW tech scene’s most recognizable name. So he tried nearly 50 different email combinations — mcuban, mark.cuban, markcuban — and sent his message into the void. Fewer than 24 hours later, as he sat in history class, Stauffer’s phone dinged. It was a response from Cuban. “I just got up and left,” Stauffer says. “I couldn’t really deal with it in the moment. I was like, ‘This is crazy.’” Following a few email exchanges, Cuban invited the Stauffer brothers to a Mavericks game. After that, he told them he wanted to partner. With Cuban’s undisclosed seed investment, Bitzy became Xpire, an app that works with existing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Xpire allows users to create self-deleting posts, permanently delete old posts, and judge the appropriateness of their posts based on the app’s Social Scoring algorithm. Stauffer launched the Dallas-based company in June 2014, nearly a year before he earned his B.S. in computer science. Although he says his experiences in the computer science program prepared him for his role as CEO, the days leading up to the launch were filled with nervous anticipation, especially as all eyes were on Xpire due to Cuban’s involvement. “To go from building something in my bedroom to all of a sudden being on the national news, it was nerve-wracking,” he says. “I’d have these dreams at night where I’d be like, ‘My servers are crashing.’” Four years later, Stauffer continues to finetune Xpire. He is working to add artificial intelligence capabilities that will enable the app to read phrases with more nuance and recognize potentially damaging photos. Casey, who also earned a B.S. in computer science, still pitches in when he’s not working full-time as a product manager at Pivotal Labs. As an early advocate of digital privacy,