I’d like to say from the very beginning that I knew I’d like to say from the very beginning that I knew flyte was going to be going strong two decades later.

But that would be a lie.

When I started flyte new media—then “b1 communications”—out of my bedroom in my apartment in Jamaica Plain, I gave myself maybe two years before either programmers learned how to design or designers learned how to program and I would be forced to get a real job.

But here I am, twenty years later, still running that business.

So much has changed in that time, while other things remain the same. I wrote about search engine optimization back in 1997 in one of my first print newsletters.

Maybe I’ll just leave that there. If that doesn’t sum up “the more things change, the more things stay the same,” I don’t know what does.

My chosen career is in an ever-changing, fast-paced industry. Over the years flyte and our crew has had to adapt. Learn new skills while dropping others. We’ve added email marketing, blogging, content creation, podcasting, and of course, social media to what we offer our clients.

We’ve built sites using certain technologies that years or even months later seem obsolete. (R.I.P., Flash, Cold Fusion, and DreamWeaver.) We’ve needed to adapt to a “mobile first” approach to websites, as more people spend time on their phones than their computers.

Our desktop computers have had hard drives and floppy drives, zip drives and thumb drives, CD players and DVD players. They’ve been able to write to discs and they’ve come without even a disc player.

Yes, a lot has happened in 20 years. And there’s no way I would have made it to this anniversary if not for the work of a lot of amazing co-workers and clients over the years. Businesses don’t succeed because of the efforts of just one person.

I’d like to personally thank my current crew—Ryan, Lindsay, Andy, Amanda, John, Chris, and Preston—as well as everyone else who ever contributed to our success and the success of our clients…too many to name here.

I’d like to also thank my good friend Braden Buehler, who wrote the press release down below. I did make her tone it way down, but it still makes me blush (cringe?) to read it. Our 20 year story isn’t about me, it’s about the whole crew. I’ve never been a press release kind of guy, but I guess 20 years in business calls for it.

I’d like to thank my creative director, Ryan Goan, (the Ryan mentioned above), who designed our kick-ass 20th anniversary logo. I’d like to thank my creative director, Ryan Goan, (the Ryan mentioned above), who designed our kick-ass 20th anniversary logo.

It’s been an exhilarating ride over the last two decades, and I’m looking forward to what the next two decades are going to look like.

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading press releases—I’ll withhold judgment—please, read on. If not, thanks for taking the time to read this far, and here’s hoping your business takes flyte, too.