Architel

Simon Sinek Speaking at Architel

Alexander Muse — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:37:29 +0000

Next week Architel is hosting Simon Sinek for a private event at our offices in the INFOMART. The author of ‘Start With Why‘ maintains a blog called Re:Focus and is known on twitter as @simonsinek. Simon teach leaders and companies how to inspire people by revealing the most important question any organization should ask, “Why do you do what you do?” Knowing Why is the single most important question to be answered. In fact, it’s the one thing that all the leaders of companies that have achieved an unbalanced amount of success and influence in the world have in common-they all start with Why.

Simon has shared his concepts with audiences from members of Congress and the United Nations to Hollywood studios, from small business entrepreneurs to senior executives at corporations like Microsoft and American Express. He also teaches his concept of The Golden Circle at the Strategic Communication Program at Columbia University.

When: Wednesday, March 24th between 6pm and 8pm
Where: 1950 Stemmons Freeway, Suite 2022, Dallas, TX 75207
To RSVP: email jdonica@architel.com (space is limited)

Simon at TED:

ShopSavvy came out on top at SXSW!

Alexander Muse — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:25:09 +0000

ShopSavvy, the breakthrough comparison shopping (www.biggu.com/apps) app, was named the winner in the Entertainment Technology category at the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW Interactive 2010 event. The two-day event is an annual competition where startups pitch their businesses to a panel of judges, including venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and industry experts, in front of a live audience.

Of more than 200 applicants, 32 semi-finalists in four categories were invited to Austin for a chance to demo their product or service – and get grilled by the event’s judges. Judges included Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners; Chi-Hua Chien, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Paul Graham, Y Combinator; Guy Kawasaki, Alltop; and Robert Scoble, Rackspace and Scobleizer. Big in Japan beat out two other startups, PocketTales and BandCentral, in the final round of the competition on Tuesday.

“This event is a wonderful showcase for the best and brightest young companies, and the caliber of competition this year was outstanding,” said Alexander Muse, co-founder of Big in Japan. “We’re proud to come out on top in an event with previous winners like Twitter and Ribbit.”

“We were thrilled with the quality of submissions we received for the second annual Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW,” said event coordinator Chris Valentine. “We’re confident that we’ve chosen a strong group of winners.”

Note: ShopSavvy is incubated by Architel. . .

SXSW Update

Alexander Muse — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:31:02 +0000

Several of our folks (ShopSavvy team) are speaking at various times at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin over the next few days. First, Jake Marsh is on the ‘Is App-vertising the Answer?’ panel on Saturday, March 13th at 12:10pm in Hilton D. Rylan Barnes will be hosting a talk during the T3 Workshop titled, ‘Mobile Development Across Platforms’ on Monday, March 15th at 9:30am in Ballroom F. Alexander Muse will be presenting ShopSavvy during the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator contest on Monday, March 15th at 5pm in Hilton G.

New People at Architel?

Scott Ryan — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:05:54 +0000

Alex and his team just announced the acquisition of Snappr, a mobile barcode scanning company, and as a result you might see a new face around the Architel offices. Additionally, you might have seen a new face or two on the Architel team. Specifically a couple of you noted that one of the ‘new faces’ was in our latest television commercial (seen here). We are not quite ready to make the announcement formal, but since the rumors are out there I thought I would make this pre-announcement. Architel recently acquired another Dallas-based managed service provider. We retained all of the employees and are in the process of on-boarding their customers. Look for a formal announcement in the next few weeks.

Verizon Suffering Nationwide Data Outage

Scott Ryan — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:09:56 +0000

According to Verizon their data network has been up and down all morning. Most people are now online, but some users are still experiencing slow network connections. [via]

Architel Makes Beautiful Music with Elan

Scott Ryan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:51:49 +0000

Architel and the Dallas Roundtable are excited to participate in a concert fundraiser featuring the St. Petersburg Quartet this Wednesday, March 3, to benefit the Elan International Music Festival.

Elan is a two-week chamber music and string orchestra seminar with world-class faculty bringing students from all over the world together for intensive musical instruction.

Gary Levinson, a successful recording artist considered by many to be one of the top 10 violinists in the world, is the force behind Elan. He recently performed at a meeting of the Dallas Roundtable — getting up at 6 a.m. for us despite performing the night before.

That’s a $6 million Stradivarius he’s playing, by the way! We’re grateful for all that Gary is doing to bring music to our community. You can learn more about the festival here.

Startup Happy Hour Tonight!

Scott Ryan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:36:38 +0000

Since its founding in 2008, this monthly gathering has hosted more than 2,500 entrepreneurs, investors and others with an interest in the Dallas-Fort Worth startup scene. On the first Monday of each month, they meet at the Infomart’s High Tech Bar to seek advice, make pitches, evaluate potential investments – and get to know one another. Architel’s goal in sponsoring the event is to ensure that entrepreneurs across North Texas have an opportunity to pursue their dreams.

Join us tonight at 5PM at the High Tech Bar in the INFOMART (I-35 and Oaklawn).

Roster of Startup Events Next Week

Alexander Muse — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:11:55 +0000

Ryan Roberts posted the roster of next week’s events (via LaunchDFW):

Monday March 1st – Dallas Startup Happy Hour

The first Monday means Startup Happy Hour. The Dallas Startup Happy Hour is the talk of the startup community in Dallas. Check out the coverage in the Dallas Morning News here. As a result of the events, several startups have found a) employees, b) co-founders, c) angel investors and d) had a few free drinks.
Monday March 1, 2010 from 5:00pm – 8:00pm
High Tech Bar at the INFOMART
1950 Stemmons Freeway
Dallas, Texas
Sponsored by Architel – you are invited to attend.

Wednesday March 3rd – Ignite Dallas

Fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking, social, local, global—Ignite is all of these and more. It’s a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea—and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd.
Wednesday March 3rd
Doors Open at 6:00pm
Pre-show game starts 6:30pm
First speaker begins 7:30pm

At the: Granada Theater
Buy Tickets

Friday March 5th – Find a Founder

Dallas-based microseed fund and business accelerator, Tech Wildcatters, is hosting a Find a Founder night. Show up on Friday, 5pm-7pm, at 2211 Commerce St, 2nd floor, Dallas, TX. Read what the Dallas Morning News had to say about Tech Wildcatters here.

After next week, it seems like all my clients will be headed down toSXSW. And then Startup Weekend visits Dallas April 16-18.

Companies Are Getting Smarter About IT Spending, Thanks to Downturn

Scott Baradell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:39:02 +0000

In the current economy, companies are paying closer attention to costs they have taken for granted for years. Since the downturn began, Architel has helped new clients save tens of thousands of dollars by transitioning from internal IT departments to outsourced IT support.

This kind of belt-tightening is good for small and midsize companies, because it enables them to focus on their most important priority: building their businesses.

It’s a new level of discipline we expect will continue even with a return to economic growth in 2010. And that’s a good thing.

As Nick Sharma points out at CIO Update:

As 2010 dawns, the recession is slowly retracting. Companies learned valuable lessons, streamlined operations and are starting to hire and to refocus their energy on making this a profitable year. For example, in 2009, CFOs were highly involved with determining IT budgets … One benefit of this in 2010 will be … leaner but more efficient budget(s), as companies continue to maximize return on investment and operational expenditure.

If you’re a small or midsize company that has been doing IT the same way forever, with steadily rising costs and increasing headaches, there’s never been a better time to consider a course correction — for navigating the current economy, and beyond.

Managed Services Positioned to Explode

Scott Ryan — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:52:27 +0000

AMI Partners has reported that SMBs will increase their remote managed IT service spending 3.3 times over the next five years, an annual growth rate of 28%. Our in-house research team has been talking to more than 200 local small and medium sized companies each day about the IT support solution. Over the course of the next 30 days they will have talked to more than 4,000 Dallas-area companies. The research to-date reveals that the vast majority of local SMB’s still use in-house staff to support their IT infrastructure. When asked if they are or would consider moving to a managed services model more than 50% indicate they were either somewhat or very interested in exploring an MSP solution. To meet the industry’s growth targets Architel needs to add an additional 2,800 users each year. Our existing sales support model can only support an additional 2,000 users over twelve months so we will need to make one ore more acquisition over the next quarter. Of course AMI’s study is an national picture, Dallas’ MSP market opportunity might even be bigger. What are you seeing in the MSP space? Do you think the sector is positioned to explode?