our experience
We believe in complete transparency, and it’s important for you to know that our practice is not built on MBAs or extensive consulting training. Our primary consultant, Mehul Patel, has over 25 years of experience starting and operating a variety of small businesses. When bringing in additional people for a project, we place a premium on real-world experience and expertise. This makes us a little different both in our core approach to this work and our understanding of what our clients may be dealing with. If you’re going to hire us, you should know our background, so below is a summary of major ventures Mehul has been involved with and his areas of focus.
The basics
2015-Present
Co-founder
4 Member LLC
Lockout Austin is an escape room in South Austin focused on creating unique live entertainment experiences. It is Austin’s 2nd largest escape room behind only a large national chain and is known for its memorable experiences and characters created by a loyal staff.
Lockout is currently shut down due to COVID-19 and experiencing the same challenges as many others.
Areas of focus
Hiring a management team and developing a company culture
Game design & development
Streamlining operations
Construction and launch of three different locations
Search Engine Optimization
Navigating a COVID-19 shutdown
key accomplishments
Building a company culture that attracts extraordinary, talented, and dedicated individuals
Awards: 2017 Austin Chronicle: Best Escape Room
The basics
2006-2017
Co-founder
2 Member LLC
Dominican Joe was a coffee shop built to support a non-profit doing educational work in the Dominican Republic. After over 10 years in operation, we sold Dominican Joe to another local coffee shop in 2017. The space lives on as Bennu Coffee on South Congress.
Areas of focus
Developing streamlined operations processes
Staff management
Finance & Accounting
Marketing
Construction, Permitting, Location-Search
Website development and SEO
key accomplishments
Building a thriving business starting with no experience in either the retail or coffee industries.
Developing a sustainable direct-trade model supporting a non-profit while remaining competitive in a saturated coffee market.
Creating a strong company culture with loyal staff and extremely low turnover
Awards: 2011 RISE Award for Social Entrepreneurship
The basics
1996-2008
Founder and CEO
Single member S-Corp
Originally started as a single game side project, swirve.com eventually grew into a general entertainment platform offering a variety of services, including online games, fantasy sports, virtual greeting cards and more.
Swirve games were the first massively multiplayer online strategy games (MMOSG) on the internet and brought together players from around the globe in a social environment prior to the modern age of social media.
In 2008, Swirve was sold to Jolt Gaming and its flagship game, Utopia, still exists today more than 20 years after launch.
Areas of focus
Game design & development
Product development and diversification
Developing a customer base in an emerging new market
Finance & Marketing
Graphic Design
key accomplishments
In its heyday around 1999-2002, Utopia was the largest browser-based MMOSG in the world with over 100,000 active players. The core game design concepts have survived the test of time and the game still has a loyal audience decades later.
Awards
2002 Webby Award: People’s Voice – Best Gaming Site
2003 Webby Award: People’s Voice – Best Gaming Site
The basics
1991-1998
Founder
Sole Proprietorship
SR Games was Mehul’s first business venture and started as a simple attempt to learn computer programming in high school and eventually became a series of global bulletin board system games. These games were eventually sold to John Dailey Software, another gaming company.
Areas of focus
Game design & development
Technology development: Using new data networks to facilitate gaming across national borders
Streamlining sales and financial processes
Key accomplishments
These games were amongst the first to connect players from around the world into a single game environment through international networks and Bulletin Board Systems and helped launch a new era of “Inter-BBS” games.
Nearly 30 years later, the original versions of these games are still available to download and play.