BRAND STORY · · 2 min read
The First Website We Sold Cost $100
The first website we sold cost $100. The buyer stays anonymous, and the number stays at the top of the story.
The first website we sold cost $100.
The studio started in 1999, in Dallas, with HTML. The $100 sale came early, from a buyer who paid a studio with no sales behind it yet. That was a real risk on their side, and we have not forgotten it.
Their name stays with us. So does the site. It was theirs before it was ours to talk about, and the studio getting older does not change that.
The studio counts its history from 1999, and the $100 sale is the first line in it.
Why we keep the number
A hundred dollars is a small figure to put at the top of a company’s story. We put it there because it is exact. Anyone reading this has met plenty of agencies that describe themselves in adjectives.
A number can be held up against the work.
It also says something plain about how a studio starts.
- Someone pays before there is a portfolio.
- The job gets done.
- That job is the first thing the next buyer looks at.
- The list grows from there.
We print one price on this site. It is that one, because it is history now.
What came after
- 1999: the studio starts in Dallas, with HTML.
- 2000: Turbo Gold.
- 2006: Artasce.
- Still shipping.
The new name was art plus ascend, with the ending dropped. Almost nothing from that first toolbox is still in use. The habit of finishing the job came through every change of tools.
The portfolio now runs from a lawn care app to a video game site. One studio runs Mademoiselle, Modolla and Voya side by side, and Hashlands, Mesa and Stone, and Stillform sit on the same list.
If you came here after one of our demos to check there are real people behind it, this is the short version: a studio that sold its first site for $100 and kept going.
Here is the work. Most of it is still live.