This year has brought changes for nearly every business. And a local tech company is finishing the year out with one last change.
After expanding its offerings beyond mobile technology over the years and seeing a stretch of high growth, Addison-based software development firm SevenTablets is rebranding to 7T. And with new trends emerging in the tech and startup ecosystem from the pandemic, the company sees more opportunities to build on the region’s status as a growing tech hub.
“The company has evolved. It came down to killing it in mobile work,” Shane Long, president and COO at 7T, told NTX Inno. “Even during this year… we’ll have a record year.”
Part of the reason for the rebranding stems from the fact 7T’s software offerings have come to encompass more than mobile offerings since it launched in 2012. The company’s services now include cloud integration and data analytics solutions to augmented reality and machine learning.
“Mobile code is different. You have tight budgets; you have to be efficient,” Long said. “What that makes you do as a mobile developer is become very precise, very efficient and we took that same kind of fast response, fast APIs, fast code and put it on the desktop. People had a great response. People loved it.”
7T founder and CEO Kishore Khandavalli said the rebrand was natural, as many clients have long-called the company that. And it has been seeing a lot more clients recently. Long said 7T has seen 440 percent three-year growth. It has also grown its team, adding a division in India with about 35 employees.
The company has been gaining some recognition along the way, too. In 2018, 7T landed on the Inc. 5000 list in the No. 1,086 spot. That year, it also took home the Tech Titans Emerging Company Innovation Award. Earlier this year, the company landed on the SMU Cox Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship’s list of the 100 fastest growing companies in DFW.
Long attributed much of 7T’s growth to its motto of business first, technology follows, working to understand its core problems before looking for software solutions. He also attributed it to the pandemic, which has caused many companies to look at tech tools to cut costs.
“We make our clients ask these hard questions and when we do that upfront, it doesn’t matter if I’m building a single app or a full AI platform,” Long said.
In addition to pushing the 7T’s team remote, the pandemic has caused changes in the types of solutions companies are looking for. Long said one of the biggest trends emerging is implementing AI and machine learning to help optimize business processes and workflows. He said about half of the projects 7T worked on this year were related to AI and ML and expects that number to increase to about 60 or 70 percent next year.
“The internet first came out about 25 years ago and everyone said, ‘Oh my lord,’” Long said. “The same thing is happening with AI. You can apply AI to everything. And go back to the internet, it’s the same thing; go back to electricity, it’s the same thing, applying technology to your business needs.”
As 7T has grown, its work has been brought into contact with a number of local startups. However, it sometimes goes beyond helping companies with their software solutions. Since its founding 7T has invested in about 10 local startups, focusing on companies looking to solve core issues in various industries. Some of those companies are also portfolio companies of Health Wildcatters, which 7T sponsors.
“If you get someone who really sees the core problem, who sees an unfair advantage and has that passion, the money is easy and those are the companies we invest in,” Long said.
With DFW continuing to grow as a tech hub, landing in the No.2 spot on CompTIA’s Tech Town Index, Long said he sees the ecosystem's strength in health care and fintech.
“There’s this opportunity for Dallas to be a health care mecca in the next ten years, and that’s kind of cool,” Long said.
