Hi. I'm Kieran Morrissey.

Two and a half years ago, I started this business with Mark Stevens. As well as being a 50% shareholder and director, I built our network, wrote the software we build our websites with, and have handled our more technically challenging projects.

Last week, I bought the other half of the company.

Since the beginning of 2009, Jack Marlow has built hundreds of websites, grown from three to six (sometimes seven) people in the office here, and we now haul a pretty serious volume of data, traffic, and business for our clients each month.

Since the beginning of 2009, Twitter has grown from 75 million users to 200 million, the ASX 200 has bottomed out, gained nearly 50% then lost 10%, Justin Bieber was unleashed on an unsuspecting public, and Australia has gone from a 100-year drought to 100-year floods ... but that wheel in Docklands still hasn't reopened. :)

Times change. Things change. Business changes.

So anyway - effective last week, Mark has left the company to pursue other endeavours, and I've bought out his shareholding.

As dramatic as that sounds, it's not a drastic change. For those two and a half years, my work has been in the background - building our network, writing software, building our trickier projects and planning for the future. The main thing that changes is that for the next two years and beyond I'll be front and centre instead.

What does this mean?

For our clients? Nothing changes - not immediately, anyway. My first order of business is hiring more staff - at least three, in fact. We've got a new project manager coming on board in a couple of weeks, and we're hunting around for more production and support staff. We're busier than we've ever been at the moment, and if even half our plans come together, we'll stay on that trajectory for the rest of the year!

Within the next two months, we'll start moving across to a model where each of you will have an account manager, who's your go-to-contact for anything you need. Of course you're not stuck with having to speak to them - anyone can help, but your account manager will keep in touch with you every two or three months to make sure you're getting what you need from your website.

Over the next six months, I'll be running a project to roll out a whole heap of additions and further improvements to our platform and CMS - updates on that project will come through on our blog as we progress. The laundry list of additions we've got in mind is too long to dump in here (not to mention we're still workshopping it!).

One thing this business has never been into is penny-pinching for upgrades. If you've bought in by having us build you a website - you're in. We want you to be happy with what you've got, and we want your business to succeed; so for the most part, changes and improvements come through gratis for all our clients.

But - those are all medium-term and long-term goals. In the short term...

It's our birthday!

Exactly two years ago last week, this website went live. We'd been trading for a while before then, getting ourselves up and running and me busily working away behind the scenes building the CMS - but it wasn't until we poked our heads up in the form of this site that we really started to push out into the market properly.

With our (minor) changes to direction, new strategy, and changes to our branding, we'll be ready to grow to the next phase - and that means a new website. A blank canvas. A fresh start.

On the 21st of July, we're going to have a birthday party. Which will also be a launch party - for our new website.

We've already started work on it.

We can't wait to show you. We think you'll like it.

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