Well, I didn’t think I was going to get to any point when this started. I was working for a chap I met at an advertising agency, called Paul Langford. He took me on as an artworker. Back in the day an artworker was someone who copied and pasted type and slapped it on a board and marked it up for print. All I wanted to do was progress in that field back then. But I always wanted to go into technology. Doing something I loved was the most important thing to me and I love the technical aspect of artwork.
I wanted to be a fighter pilot. But I didn’t have 20/20 vision. And I think I was too short. Back then I was 5ft 9 and ¾. Now I think I’m just 5 ft 9. I didn’t become a fighter pilot.
I came across Kaweb 5 years after it started, after meeting two men at a BNI breakfast morning called Keith Jones and Alan Web, hence; K A Web. They wanted to sell the business. Back then there were 60 clients on board, so we bought Kaweb as a goodwill purchase. We saw that print and the need for artwork was rapidly disappearing, print was pretty much on its knees. We (Paul and I) only had a few clients so we thought buying 60 clients was a good idea to spread our risk. So, we bought Kaweb back in 2005.
More recently, our ventures into digital marketing has been exciting. Our foray into more agile development/system processes was really exciting because that took us to a small-time business up to 18 developers now and a really professional process. The third highlight has to be getting to 20 years and still being in business. There has been a lot of people in our space who have been and gone over the years and we’re still here. So, I’m pretty proud of that really.
I would’ve got into digital marketing more quickly. Also, I wish I had surrounded myself with bright people earlier than I did, by that I mean a managing team. Before them I was doing it all on my own and it was exhausting and not as productive or efficient as it is now.
More tech more and the stuff I love, adapting to new technologies. I'm looking forward to seeing the team come on in all their respective areas. I’m happy the size we are but want to run things more efficiently so as to maximise profits. Mainly the tech excites me, and what we can do with it to augment client profiles and digital footprints to help them succeed and continue the journey with us!
We all remember this, right? The end-of-the-world computer bug that was going to cause all systems to fail, causing planes to fall out of the sky and banks to descend into chaos.
So, what happened when the fated day came around?
The world continued to turn despite entering a new millennium.
Originally called Google AdWords, Google Ads started with only 350 advertisers back when it launched in October of 2000. When it launched, Google Ads was on a pay-per-impression basis and ads would only appear on the right-hand side of search results.
Despite only having 20 million searches per day (compared to over 3 billion now), Google returned a profit of over $70 million in their first year, making it an instant success.
Before the year 2000, the quickest way to communicate with one another was on email providers like Yahoo! And Hotmail. Since the year 2000, social media platforms and users have grown exponentially, so much so that it’s hard to imagine life without them.
