Hello (again) world

Last week was a strange little work anniversary for me. I was doing some digital housekeeping and spotted that it was exactly 25 years ago that I registered my first domain name on behalf of a paying client. That domain registration marked the start of a journey for me that coincidentally is set to end / change next week as I step away from the company that I formed with my father a quarter of a century ago.

Starting a web business in the mid nineties wasn’t an obvious choice. The web was still in it’s infancy and most of the businesses that we wanted to sell services to had little idea what the internet was or why it would become important for business in the fast-approaching future. We built websites, we helped businesses with online strategy and we used the web to find them customers using techniques that would later get called “SEO”.  None the less, we made a success of it and got a reputation for being good at both what we did and the way we chose to do it.

25 years is a long time on the web, so it is no surprise that the business changed with those times. Over the years our focus shifted to SEO, web-application development, e-commerce, before we eventually settled in the monetisation niche. A strangely circular journey considering that first paying domain was for an advertising website.

“Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
Frank Herbert – Dune

I’ve never been afraid of change. The change the business went through over the years was always as much about curiosity as the need to adapt. It’s good to change when you have to, but better to be ahead of that moment. It’s time to embrace that change again.

Next week I step back from OKO, leaving it in the hands of others. There are things I will miss (Most particularly the amazing OKO team but also the Google team we worked closely with and some of our excellent long term customers), The change is exciting though. I have a blank slate before me at a time when the internet seems to be on the cusp of change again. I’m looking forward to being hands on again, earning from my own innovation and graft. Carving out something new. This blog is where I will explore what that might be.

It’s a new day. Hello again world.