Two local startups have been selected for the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund, a $10 million initiative.
Doss Group Inc. — a holding company for businesses such as AskDoss and Doss Home Warranty — and Sotaog LLC are among 50 startups nationwide Google selected for the fund's second cohort. The 2021 group also includes four startups in the Austin area and three in the Dallas area.
Each startup will receive up to $100,000 in non-dilutive capital — meaning the founders do not give up any equity in their companies — as well as Google Cloud credits, Google.org Ads grants, and hands-on support to help their startups grow, according to a Google for Startups blog post.
The Google for Startups Black Founders Fund was launched in 2020 as a response to the financial and societal pressures Black founders face, according to a Sept. 21 Google blog post. The first cohort consisted of 76 Black-led startups, including four in Dallas and five in Austin, which also received up to $100,000. No Houston-area companies were selected for last year's cohort.
“The Google for Startups Black Founders Fund is transformational for Sotaog,” said Robert Estill, chairman and president of Sotaog. “In addition to the tremendous ongoing support from Google resources, it also provides validation of a lot of hard work by our team, provides innovation recognition and provides a next-level launching point for SOTAOG. We expect so many more opportunities to open up due to the association with Google."
Sotaog also participated in the Google for Startups Fellowship program, in which it had an active duty military service member work at Sotaog for three months. The program helped the service member transition back into the workforce.
Sotaog's Internet of Things platform helps empower energy and heavy-industrial companies to make smarter decisions with real-time intelligence, analysis and insights, the company says.
Estill has held various executive roles throughout his 30-plus years in the energy industry. He served as CEO of Madagascar Oil, vice president of strategy and portfolio at Houston-based Marathon Oil Corp. (NYSE: MRO), and president of European operations and senior executive at Texaco Inc.
Estill happened to receive the news that Sotaog was selected for the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund on his birthday.
"Who do I send the balloons to?" he said in a video provided by Google.
Bobby Bryant, CEO of Doss Group, has been in the real estate industry for over 20 years. In 2009, Bryant launched iBuy Realty, a buyer’s-agent brokerage firm. The basic business model called for clients to search for and tour homes themselves, with the firm coming in during the negotiation and contracting process.
In 2016, Bryant sold iBuy Realty and launched AskDoss following a commercial agreement with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to use the Watson supercomputer.
AskDoss allows a real estate agent or customer to verbally search for information or specifications on a home or property, rather than using a desktop-based real estate portal. The "Siri for real estate" component is just one feature. When Doss is asked a question, it pools pricing information, neighborhood and school district all in the same place, giving an agent up-to-date information from their smartphone, Bryant told the Houston Business Journal in 2016.
"The Google for Startups Black Founders Fund gives us a beyond favorable chance to successfully launch our next-era digital real estate search, service and transactional marketplace,” Bryant said. “The support will be used to accelerate our development by hiring a data engineer. DOSS applied for the Google Founders Fund because of the opportunity for our digital real estate search platform to be funded by the most helpful search engine on the planet."
Here are the other Texas-based startups chosen for the second cohort of the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund:
To view the rest of the 2021 and 2020 list, click here.
Also on Sept. 21, Google announced the creation of the Latino Founders Fund to support Latino-led startups as part of the company's $15 million commitment to economic justice for the Latino community. Like the Black Founders Fund, the Latino initiative will award Latino-led recipients up to $100,000 along with business mentorship and Google resources.