Has it really been 10 years?

[food4thought]

Sitting in a restaurant off the Mendocino Coast and being ignored by the wait staff for what felt like an eternity is how We8there.com was conceived. The year was 1999 somewhere around breakfast time; Carmen Jones and I were sitting in the Sandpiper Restaurant in Gualala, California. We became angry because we could see the server and she could see us, but for somewhere around 10 to 15 minutes, she just walked right past us and never bothered to ask if we wanted a glass of spit or anything.

Believe it or not We8there.com has been online without interruption since September 1999, for the past ten years we have watched websites come and go. Of course as soon as we come up with an idea to put on the web, the dot.com bubble bursts, go figure!

Most of the companies we were partnered up with were closing their doors faster than you can say IPO. Everyone was saying, “wow, we8there.com is incredible,” “you’re going to make millions,” “I wish I had thought of that”, the funny thing was that almost everyone except we8there.com was making millions! Every person with something to sell was calling our home office phone trying to sell us something …”Get better rankings”, “build up your trust score”, “Let us host your account for only a bazillion dollars a month”, at first I bought into some of those pitches until I discovered nothing changed, I still had the same ranking and was losing money.

Some of the best talent in the web business came on board to help move we8there.com forward including, Jean-Louis Brunet, who designed our incredible infrastructure; the man is quite simply, a genius! You see, I don’t now squat about designing or creating a website, I simply like to create ideas and try to see them to fruition. I am delighted to see them become something more than just an idea. Jean-Louis used his creative genius to make the site safe and fun for the whole family. Jean-Louis introduced me to Connie Seidel, of Seidel and Associates, Connie created the user interface that you see today and he is as well, another extremely talented web designer. Carmen Jones, who co-founded we8there, is a gifted Vice President, who is a virtual wellspring employment and human resource law. Lionel Mosley, our very brilliant CFO, is a 30-year IBM professional who tries to keep me from tossing any money we make down the drain. We have invested a lot of time and energy in an effort to make We8there.com a household name and after 10 years you would think its time to give up. But we will not!!!

We8there.com has a unique niche and a following, when I see we8there.com family members like Ryan Johnson, who has posted more than 530 reviews or Loris F., who is getting close to 100 reviews and all the other new and faithful reviewers, I have to continue to try to make this site as successful as it can be…To all those venture capital firms who log on to we8there.com, (I know that you do, because I read them in our referral logs), take a second or third look. We are happy to forward a business plan, if you are interested. We8there.com is not a flash in the pan website, we here to stay. It’s because of our faithful users, that we have remained a strong presence. We8there is here for the people and I hope in 10 more years that I can write another Stanley’s Corner and have tons, upon tons of good news… In my bedroom, there is a news article hanging on my wall that says. “Turner Broadcasting acquires We8there Communications for 50 million dollars”, I created that article, so I could have some motivation, something to dream about..Little old “me”, Stanley Roberts, from Camden New Jersey wanting a dream to come true …

[MaxH]

Congratulations on the anniversary; thanks for posting the mention of your site.

History of food and restaurant discussion online has taken surprising (and sometimes little-reported) turns. For example, founder of the first major US restaurant-discussion site that I know of (three years before Chowhound) is less known for it today, but reportedly did better than anyone in the food-site business, after shifting focus to other appetites. The original public Internet food forum is much older still, and also has operated without interruption (and for a while, it was a de-facto recipe archive, an early version of what Fat guy mentions in another post today, and I still use some of those recipes, supporting FG's point). In the 27 years since that forum started, many online food ideas and sites have come and gone.