Old Hall

I actually started my business in February 1997, although it would be another seven years before I started working with Steve and it became my day job. During all that time I was still freelancing and Meantime was just a hobby company.

I started the company with my friend, Richard, and then, maybe a year later, my brother became my business partner, a situation that persisted until he decided to move to New York. At the outset, Wol and I had one fairly serious client - The Roof Box Company - but we were pretty limited in what we could do back then. It was primarily HTML, a smidgen of CSS, and some PERL scripts. We didn't even have a viable database technology available to us.

I didn't go looking for new clients, to be honest, not least because I didn't know how. That wasn't really a problem then (although it would become more acute once Meantime was a full time proposition) as word got around gradually that I was someone who knew what a website was and could get one built. 

One of our early clients - acquired through word of mouth - was Sillfield Farm (don't worry, the current site isn't one of ours) and I remember going down this lane in the photo for an early meeting with someone who worked for the company. (I was stopped here today in a queue for some temporary traffic lights.)

It was through this grapevine method of marketing that I obtained the client that enabled me to make Meantime my proper job. I was approached in the school playground by one of the mums who asked if I knew anything about the art of search engine optimisation. There's a great story (for another day) about what happened after that but it resulted in one of my best friends and a client that enabled Meantime to take off. 

Twelve years later, I'm still grateful for that chance encounter in the playground.