...seriously, we can’t believe it either. It seems like just yesterday we were working on top of the boxes our computers shipped in and sharing a chair across different shifts.
From our humble beginnings to our current lofty perch from the 6th floor in downtown Winnipeg’s bustling exchange district, one thing has remained constant, out commitment to our clients and partners.
Founded in 1996 by Julian Moffatt and Doug Ross, we started right out of school. Too dumb to know any better we took an office space and figured "now all we need is some clients, how hard could that be". Well, at 22 no one listens to you. It was about 2 months before we managed to rustle up our first tiny bit of paying work.
Three years after we started, we were both able to retire from our "other" jobs and concentrate full time on Visual Lizard. If you are thinking about starting your own business, make sure you can afford to work 12-16 hours a day or that your bank roll prior to starting is big enough to float you for as long as possible. Editorial aside, once we started full time on Visual Lizard we made quick progress in our skill level and acquired several clients that kept us busy for long stretches of time (and that we still work with today).
In-fact, those clients we started to pick up in our 3rd year, allowed us to add our first full time staff member. Mr. Ross "Mighty" McDowall joined the team in September of 1999, having been liberated from his self-imposed exile to Northern Ontario. Ross brought with him skills that complimented our growing list of talents, and he allowed us to grow steadily over the next 4 years. Whenever we ran out of time, we turned to Rob Craig (of beavisinformatics.com) who became our go to guy whenever we ran out of time. In fact, we liked Rob so much he works out of our office to this very day.
During 1999-2004, we rolled along steadily, picking up several more long term clients and increasing our skills. We got involved with The Web Standards Project and adopted current web standards for all of our projects. The move to current web standards has allowed us to produce accessible, clean, light code for our projects. The side effect of this move is fantastic search engine placement and reduction in bandwidth for most of our projects.
Also during this period, we started development on our own Content Management System (CMS) - Catalyst. Prior to Catalyst, we had spent many a budget just updating site content for our clients. Since we deployed Catalyst in early 2000, we have been able to apply those web update budgets to new additions and projects for our clients. By being able to work with our clients to expand their sites, rather than just maintain them, our clients are seeing forward progress on their investments. 95% of our clients are now in control of their own content, which we all think is fantastic.
Coming through to the end of 2004, we had more work than we could actually handle, again, so the search was on for someone to hire. We managed to pick up one of the best developers in the city in Wil Alambre. Wil’s addition to Visual Lizard has allowed us to further develop Catalyst, increase our client base and learn more about comics than we need to know in our 30s.
2007 brought the addition of Nathan Bertram. Fresh out of school and hungry for experience, Nathan has been a welcomed addition who helps everybody out when deadlines are looming.
Entering 2008, we are working on several of our own web applications as well as working with our clients to keep their projects moving forward. Look for more from us in the future and we hope to include you in our timeline before long.