More than two years ago Alex Muse, Co-Founder of ShopSavvy, decided to start hosting a regular startup-focused happy hour for the North Texas area. More 2,500 local entrepreneurs have joined us for some beer and fellowship. The newspaper wrote about the event and lots of new companies have been formed from the relationships created at the event – for example Alex met Rylan Barnes, the creator of GoCart which eventually became ShopSavvy. It has been a very fun couple of years and the event has grown hugely.

Now it's time for a refresh!

The Dallas Startup Happy Hour, Presented by LaunchDFW, Hosted & Sponsored by Architel & ShopSavvy

The Venue

Architel’s facility in the North Tower of Campbell Centre (the gold building on the corner of I75 and Northwest Highway where JR Ewing used to work).

The Date

The first Thursday of the month. The inaugural event of the re-launch will be held December 1st, 2011 (subsequent events on Jan 5, Feb 2 etc etc).

The Format

Cocktails and more cocktails seemed like a great idea two years ago – easy to organize and easy to host – but we can do better. Starting in October we will begin the event at 5PM with cocktails and light hors d’oeuvres, then at 6PM we will have a speaker/program for 30-45 minutes and then have more cocktails and networking until around 8PM. Each quarter we hope to attract a ’significant’ speaker, but don’t worry each month we will have really interesting speakers.

Sponsor the Event

It doesn't cost much to run the event around $1,500 per month or $18,000 per year. We plan to raise the money by offering year long sponsorships at three levels: Angel Sponsors: $500 (up-to-20 sponsors at this level), Series A Sponsor: $1,000 (up-to-3 sponsors at this level), IPO Sponsor: $5,000 (only 1 sponsor at this level). 

We will be announcing the first speaker in the coming weeks. But you are going to want to save the date anyway.