From Endurance Athlete to Enduring Founder — CEO Interview with Luis Arcangel of Montgomery Fitch + Associates
*The following CEO feature comes from the Type-A Brief, the newsletter for our CEO/Founder Retreats. To learn more or signup for the newsletter, please click here.
Luis Arcangel is the hilarious, sharp, down to earth CEO of Montgomery Fitch + Associates. Having exited a previous venture, Arcangel has since built MF+A from its base in the Philippines into a rapidly expanding creative agency with a presence around the region — but not without hardship.
A savvy and forward thinking businessman, I sat down with Luis this week to learn more from him about what it takes to be a successful founder in today’s business climate.
TW: Hey Luis, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed for the Type-A Brief. To start, how long have you been an entrepreneur?
LA: I have been running my own companies since 2004, across four countries.
TW: So in that time, how many businesses have you lead or found?
LA: While Montgomery Fitch has been my bread and butter for a while now, I sold my first company in New York back in 2006. At MF+A we ran a pretty successful seed round several years ago, and are currently gearing up for our Series A.
TW: What is the most important lesson you have learned in life to date?
LA: One of the biggest things that I have learned during my tenure running Fitch from a four person startup to a worldwide operation is that you have to be positively, insanely obsessive to be able to buck the odds and enjoy a certain modicum of success.
Our runway reached the end of its rope at around the 18th month, and everyone was jumping ship. We no longer had the ability to pay our people (social suicide, among other things), founding partners bailed on me (that hurt) , we were accruing debt left and right (sucks) ,we had zero clients (sucked even more) and they padlocked our office for a day because we couldn’t pay rent (should I go on?).
If I were to take account of our outlook in a sane and objective manner, there was no way we should have continued. And yet, for some inexplicable and totally illogical reason, I did. I was even planning for our expansion at this time and people thought I had lost it.
I had put my blood and guts into this company, and I refused to take failure as an option. Like, I wouldn’t even consider it. I was extremely lucky to still have valuable members of our core team who were willing to lay it out on the line with me, and who still believed in my vision. We hunkered down to business, got ourselves out of the trenches, and the rest as they say, is history.
TW: I love that. It really inspires me and shows how deep the journey can get. Also, not everyone eventually rises the way you have.
LA: No doubt.
TW: So tell us about Montgomery Fitch. What inspired you to found it? Where are you headed!?
LA: As an creative agency, MF+A developed a centralized service business model that was both disruptive and annoying to the big players. We also figured out that this model was applicable across multiple geographies.
And so, because everyone, including my next door neighbor’s uncle, told me that services are not scaleable, we went and did just that. Ha!
Utilizing Manila as our regional HQ, we established front-end operations in Melbourne and Brisbane last year, and are looking at the Sydney space very soon. We are currently in advanced talks to open in Yangon, and have had very promising preliminary meetings in Ho Chi Minh. The vision is to establish a true blue Filipino-owned multinational agency, and we are looking to establish a firm imprint within the Asia-Oceania region over the next few years.
TW: Amazing man. Is there any additional information you’d like to share?
LA: In another life, I was an endurance athlete. I am apparently the first individual of Filipino descent to complete both a 100 mile ultramarathon race and a full distance Ironman triathlon within the same calendar competition year. Nowadays, the only remotely athletic thing I do is get hand cramps from playing mobile games.
I am also a frustrated linguist. Aside from English and the Philippines’ native Tagalog, I am working on rudimentary forms of Russian, French, Portuguese and Arabic just for kicks. Not very good at the moment though…
TW: Now how do people contact you? Any deals for the Type-A Community?
LA: I’m very discoverable. Ha!
My Social Media Links
Facebook.com/FitchBossMan
Instagram.com/HelloMrA
https://ph.linkedin.com/in/luisarcangel
Montgomery Fitch Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/MontgomeryFitch/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/montgomery-fitch-and-associates
And if you have any current business interests in Manila or Australia that would entail the need for creative, market research, publicity, production or digital services do let me know, I would be more than happy to give members of the Type-A Community a preferential “friends and family” rate.
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