4/2/2001
Veteran who led high-growth software firms offers investment, expertise to Web startup
HOUSTON, Texas, April 1, 2001 – Arrangeonline.com, the world’s largest publisher of online obituaries, announced today that T. Allen Walker, a veteran software executive who led two companies through remarkable growth cycles, has joined the Web publisher as an investor and advisor.
Walker, who rose from doing telephone technical support for DacEasy software to become Chief Operating Officer of the highly touted developer of accounting and business software, said Arrangeonline.com represents “the best opportunity I’ve seen in a long time. We all know there’s lots of uncertainty about Web ventures out there, but this is a ‘dot com’ with valuable data that will become more valuable over time and a real strategy for success. I look forward to getting involved.”
Walker will serve as an advisor to Arrangeonline.com CEO Nadine Smith and is expected to join the Board of Managers of the startup’s parent company, Final Arrangements, LLC. He also has made a substantial investment in the venture, although the precise level of his funding was not disclosed.
“We are extremely fortunate to have the benefit of Allen’s experience,” Smith said in announcing Walker’s new role. “He has directed all aspects of software operations, from technical development and customer support to marketing, network operations and after-market sales. Allen has done it all. This is a remarkable vote of confidence.”
Walker, 40, of Plano, Tex., joined DacEasy after earning a B.S. in Computer Science from University of North Texas in 1985. He ascended through the ranks to Vice President of Customer Service, then Vice President of Research and Development and, in 1994, was named Chief Operating Officer and Divisional Vice President of the company, which by that time had been sold to U.K.-based Sage Group, the world’s leading supplier of accounting, payroll and business software to small- and medium-size businesses.
In 1997, Walker left DacEasy to become COO of Ibertech, Inc., developer of the industry-leading Aloha family of software products for managing restaurants and the food-service operations of hotels, stadiums and resorts. In one year, Walker and his management team grew the company from 60 to 140 employees and revenues from $5.5 million to $14 million.
Three years ago, Walker “retired” to his home in Plano to take care of the children, keep house and enable his wife to fulfill a lifelong goal of finishing college. While looking after the family and his investments, he acquired an abandoned jail in the old Victorian center of fast-growing McKinney, Texas, and turned it into a popular restaurant named Prison Bars and Grill, where patrons dine in the reconstructed comfort of a former jail cell. Walker is an active venture capitalist and has made a number of investments in addition to his interest in Arrangeonline.com.
Arrangeonline.com was launched in October 2000 to provide a single place on the Web where people can find and read the obituaries of their loved ones, regardless of where they lived or when the death occurred. The firm’s National Obituary Archive now contains more than 45 million current and historical obituaries and death records, and hundreds of new obituaries are added daily. The venture has the exclusive endorsement of the National Funeral Directors Association and is the principal provider of obituaries to America Online (AOL Keyword: Arrangeonline.
Arrangeonline.com, Inc. is a subsidiary of Continental Computer Corp. of Jonesboro, Ark., producer of the leading software for managing funerals and funeral homes. Continental’s best-selling software package, The Director’s Assistant for Windows, processes 43 percent of the 2.4 million deaths in the United States each year and provides a single-click upload to enable funeral directors to send their obituaries directly to Arrangeonline.com.
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