Twenty-Five Years

On December 27, 1999, concerns about the Y2K bug loomed, economists predicted the dot-com boom would continue well into the new millennium, and Andy Rankin incorporated Viget Labs, LLC. His timing was a bit of an inside joke which is why IYKYK that Viget celebrates our anniversary in the spring every year.

In 1999, I was 24 years old, which means I’ve spent more of my life as Viget’s CEO than not. We set out to bring together designers and developers to help build the internet, one product and web site at a time. Like many young entrepreneurs, I was naive about the challenges ahead but determined to create a lasting business, ready to adapt to an ever-evolving industry and work as hard as necessary to succeed.

Our first year overlapped with the end of the dot-com boom (contrary to those rosy predictions). Six months in, the tech economy began to collapse. Over our first three years, the NASDAQ lost nearly 75% of its value. New clients were nonexistent. Existing clients went bust overnight, often leaving invoices unpaid. On one particularly tense client call, I remember explaining “without your payment, we can’t make payroll this month.” It was the first time I heard the phrase “you can’t get blood from a rock.” 

To get through, I cut my salary to zero and doubled my already long work hours, doing everything I could think of to find a path forward.

I’m not big on hustle glorification, but let’s be real: hard work matters. Working weekends, sacrificing sleep and overall health, and foregoing social and relaxation time over the long-term aren’t things to be celebrated. One of the lessons I’ve learned over all these years is that in bursts, when needed, this kind of work can be the difference between surviving and failing. It’s one of the reasons starting companies when you’re young makes sense. Early on, you can make up for a lack of experience, skills, connections, and capital with time, energy, and grit.

In those early years of Viget I was unmarried and without kids. I sacrificed social time, exercise, and entertainment (barely watched TV), often working six long days a week without pay—and mostly loving it. I was living out my entrepreneurial dream in a childlike haze. Had I been savvy enough to have mentors back then, they would have told me to quit wasting time on a fake business that wasn’t generating enough money to pay me even minimum wage and was unlikely to survive months much less years.

Lucky for me, I had no such mentors at the time. Viget did survive and even thrive by some measures. As the company matured, my approach to work had to mature as well.

My goal was never minimal hours—I love the work. But I knew those early days were incompatible with my dream of a happy family and balanced life. As my 30s grew closer and my family began, I set a new goal to find balance in my time while building a real business I could be proud of with sustainable financials and a predictable future. That path, it turns out, was not a straight line.

When I wrote about our first decade in business, I lamented that 2009 was “the most challenging year we’ve had so far” and I wish that remained true. 2010 was a bounceback year that ushered in a “peacetime” era without excessive time demands for me. This mostly lasted through our epic 2015 celebration, but then 2016 was a bad year again, so I cranked up my hours again to get through. 

We chipped away at what seemed like another strong five year run, and even started 2020 with an optimistic post about our 20 year celebration coming up. Instead, we all got COVID (eventually) which was initially another incredibly time-intensive period to lead a company.

Like most of the tech world, the COVID era brought us an unexpected boom, followed by a sharp downturn in 2023. That, it turns out, was our new “most challenging year so far” by far. It was our first real experience with layoffs, and my work hours spiked again. I spent the days desperately trying to find enough work to prevent layoffs, and the nights working on gut-wrenching scenario plans to prevent permanent business failure. With a lot of hard work from our team and some painful-but-necessary reductions, we got back on track.

So when 2024 began, our goals were modest – we hoped for a stable, predictable year, and while it had some bumps along the way, we’ve achieved another solid recovery.

If you zoom out and view the various mythical metrics that you might use to measure true Viget success, it would look like the S&P 500. Lots of ups and downs with many setbacks and even a few times when you worry it might all come crashing down, but then a team-wide rally and recovery period, and – most importantly – a very clear overall upward trend of progress. Thanks to the work ethic of everyone at Viget, that progress continues.

Through all these years, I found balance. “Family first” is easy to say, and I’m far from perfect, but I’m a happy husband and proud dad of four awesome kids (two already in college) with whom I’ve been able to spend a lot of time as they're growing up to be wonderful adults. I value my friendships, near and far. I’m engaged in my community, from volunteer boards to coaching youth sports. I’m healthy and plan to stay active for another 50 years. I love my life (including my work) and I am so grateful for each part of it.

The hustle-culture grindsetters will say the key is to out-work everyone with long hours. The efficiency chasers might brag about working very little, delegating everything to an underappreciated staff. I’ve always tried to optimize for a logical in-between, grounded in a sustainable level of day-to-day work backed up by a willingness to work more when the company – and team – needs that extra effort. Every entrepreneurial journey is different, and everyone should find what works best for them.

A personal long-term goal has always been to love my job. I’ve achieved this by working with great people (our Viget team and our clients) in a positive culture on meaningful projects that teach me new things daily. More broadly, a long-term goal has always been to build Viget into a durable, successful business that we (staff, alumni, clients, and friends) can all be proud of. We’ve achieved this to an extent, and there’s always more to do.

Today marks the start of our second quarter century. Per tradition, we’ll celebrate all the people who continue to make us successful at our all-hands retreat in the spring, including some fresh faces that I hope will join us between now and then. I love reflecting on the progress we’ve made, and I still get even more excited about the progress yet to come.