To say that Alexander Muse is a serial entrepreneur is like saying that Warren Buffet is a guy who buys stocks.  Surrounded by diverse team of more than 50 business people, engineers, software developers and assorted creative types the 36-year-old ex-Marine is actively involved in the day-to-day operation of more than ten businesses including: Architel, an IT services company; Big in Japan, a social software company; WhiteBox, a finance and collection company; ServiceGuy, a contractor referral service; and SocialTones, a social ringtone service.  

"I launched my first venture backed startup called LayerOne in my 20's,  he says.  "It was also my biggest failure.  I initially raised more than $20MM for the business, but ran out of money in the summer of 2001 and filed for Chapter 11.  I was able to raise additional capital and buy the business out of bankruptcy in a 363 sale and closed on September 12, 2001 (one day after 9/11).  Within three years we sold the business to Switch and Data for more than $20MM."  (You can read the gory details in Alex's own words here)  

Muse shares his experience and passion for entrepreneurship in the popular Texas Startup Blog, part of a global network of startup blogs he created with David Cohen and Micah Baldwin called SpringStage. Launched in 2005, his blog has more than 50,000 regular readers with hundreds of thousands of pages views each month. Additionally, as his blog is part of the the SpringStage network it can reach more than 500,000 regular readers with potentially millions of page views each month. Alexander’s articles can regularly be read on our sister community Social Media Today: The Web’s Best Thinkers on Social Media and Web 2.0. Guy Kawasaki’s news aggregation site, All Top, syndicates Alexander’s posts on entrepreneurship and startups.

Alexander says his mentor, role model and hero is his dad, Ralph Buckley Muse,  who in the course of an extraordinary career has served as the CEO, COO, or GM of three high tech venture backed startup companies and two high tech manufacturing public companies and raised a total of over $1.1 billion in equity financing.

"My dad's career took our family around the country (I went to three elementary schools, two junior high schools, and three high schools)," Alex says.   "The experience allowed me to understand that anything is possible."

Alex's hot project of the moment is a blog called High Def, which he created to share his experience producing a reality television series called MotorSport Ranch. The blog details the 24-month process that turned a newbie producer into a bonafide success when he sold his MotorSport Ranch reality show to INHD in mid-2005 and subsequently the series to Dish Network in 2007.  His adventures are also soon to appear in a book called Adventures in High Definition: How a First-time Producer Crossed the Finish Line and Scored a Reality Show - Without Losing His Shirt.  

Muse have been married for 11 years to Michele Muse, whom he met in college and they have two children, Ethan Alexander (six) and Erin Elizabeth (5months).  They live in Dallas.

Alexander is  is actively involved with the BarCamp movement having attended events on three continents and six cities. BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

"I am interested in phase two of the social media craze," he says.  "Now that everyone is doing it, what value can be achieved beyond the obvious.  The data being created, stored and shared is amazing.  How can we use that data in non-obvious ways?  Data mining + Social media is a new frontier.  It will change the way we look at the world.  Are there going to be business opportunities?  Social Media will beget social intelligence - I am very interested in trying to understand how we can use this power for good."