The HILTECH Data Solutions Story
Originally established in late February of 2002 as HILTECH Computer Solutions and founded by Phillips Hildner, III when Phil was just 20 years old. Phil formed HILTECH Computer Solutions because, at the time in his young age, he was turned down for jobs in both the corporate and computer repair realm. Phil had already established four and a half years in the business of working experience it was not enough for the corporate world.
In early February 2002, without the job that he had skills for, Phil began to plan out what would be known as HILTECH Computer Solutions. At the time Phil was going to college at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan, and also working to start a computer business that would exceed the customer's expectations. With much time invested and working many different hours, sometimes into the late evenings, HILTECH Computer Solutions was born in the basement of Phil’s father’s house, with a small loan of $900 dollars. Phil purchased three Dell PowerEdge 110 Servers and built two desktop computers.
After setting up the equipment, and dealing with other business technicalities, Phil began to make cold calls to Fenton Area and Surrounding Businesses. Some calls were very welcomed, and some calls were met with a hang-up. But that didn’t stop Phil from moving forward and building a business.
It came in late May 2002 when Phil gained his very first customer, from a reference of a friend that had been occasionally helping Phil out with some interworking of HILTECH. The customer really wanted a new PC, but the catch was it had to be on a strict budget. Phil went to work and quoted out a new custom built desktop computer for only $500.00 dollars. At the time that was a very low price. This included a new case, Motherboard, 128 MB of RAM, CD-burner, 32 MB AGP Video card and an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor. The hard drive was transplanted from the old machine to the new one. The customer was very happy with it and used it up until 2013.
Throughout the years of cold calls, and references Phil established a clientele of over 100 clients by the year 2005. Investing sometimes in excess of 65 to 70 hours per week the job’s always got done, and the customers were always happy. Owning a business was a huge learning experience for Phil, even when it wasn't as profitable as he would have liked. The fact that Phil enjoyed being a business owner and making sure the customer’s best interest was at hand.
In 2008, tragedy struck the US economy with many small and large businesses including HILTECH Computer Solutions, was not immune. After so many of the Clients/Customers that HILTECH maintained, were adversely affected and the demand for services fell to the bottom. Phil decided it was time to close HILTECH Computer Solutions down and hopefully find some other type of job that he could utilize his skill sets.
From 2008 to 2017, Phil worked as an independent consultant for several medium-sized corporations, and IT managed service companies to pay the bills, all the while maintaining a few customers from the old HILTECH Computer Solution’s days.
From 2016 to 2017, Phil worked as an independent consultant for a small IT Managed Services Company which was a great experience, and enjoyable. However, in September 2017 the owner of the company decided to sell out to another small IT Managed Services Company. Phil aspired to move on and have the ability to make the decisions, and grow an IT Managed Services company that was strongly focused on customer-oriented service, hence HILTECH DATA SOLUTIONS, LLC was born.