After three great years, I finished my last official day at Multimap on Friday, having worked there part time for the past couple of months. Which means that this week marks the start of a new beginning for me. After months of preparation I’m immensely pleased to announce that Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith and I have joined forces to form Clearleft, our web design consultancy which officially launched on Monday.
It’s not every day the opportunity comes to go into business with two good friends, even rarer when those friends happen to be extremely talented and share the same passion for the Web as I do. Needless to say I’m really excited about what is to come. There will be downs as well ups, of that I’m sure, but we’re starting on a high with our eyes open. The idea of working for my own company with like-minded partners is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
Clearleft is a company with ambition, one of which is to work on great projects that don’t seem like work at all. We’ve already secured some really interesting clients that hopefully we’ll be able to talk about in the near future.
New media industry · Personal · Clearleft
Dave Cardwell wrote:
Hey Richard. Long time reader, don’t think I’ve commented before. Just wanted to wish you a quick good luck with Clearleft. I’m liking the company website.
Dustin Diaz wrote:
You’ll do very well as the three of you are all very talented. Looking forward to the innovation that three heads can put together. Good Luck all of you.
Mike Purvis wrote:
Awesome.
I just picked up Keith’s book, so I’ll be interested to see what you lot turn out.
theUg wrote:
Just a little note: the text boxes with orange-brownish background—that folded corner comes up right up to the text without any padding—does not look so good.
Phu wrote:
Like Dave Cardwell, I’m a long term reader but a first time commenter. Wish you all the best with the new company; with such auspicious talent, I’m sure you’ll all do well.
Edward Mac Gillavry wrote:
Congratulations with Clearleft. Sorry I missed you last time I was at Holborn. Didn’t realise you were leaving so soon! Next time I’ll have to leave Zone 1 and head down to Brighton to meet you. Scary thought!
Si wrote:
Good luck on the new venture!
Myself and a work colleague are in the process of launching our own web consultancy on the side and hope to launch the website in the next week or so. I have similar feelings as yourself towards the project. Working with someone who is likeminded and very skilled always has its benefits but could bring some testing times as well. I just hope him reading this won’t give him too much of an ego trip… (we’re both regulars on your site!)
Peter Goddard wrote:
Hi Richard
You can’t be in web development here in the uk without knowing about you and your ClearLeft partners. I wish youi every success and happiness in your new venture. ( Need any .net consultants?? lol).
All the best
Peter
Rich wrote:
Thanks for the kind words Peter.
Well you may laugh, but the answer could well be yes in the future. Clearleft specialises in creating great looking, easy to use interfaces and the includes creating front ends for other people’s applications. Normally a rudimentary knowledge of the back end is enough to design and implement an interface, but sometimes jobs require more in depth knowledge.
We’re not about to learn .Net (we prefere to stick to what we know best) so that’s where external consultants could come in.
Mark wrote:
Congratulations and Good Luck.
I notice your not using GMaps for your Clearleft mapping, what made you pick them over multimap? Are multimap looking into producing a more dynamic application? How big was your team / the company at multimap?
Sorry to throw so much at you, I’ve been interested in these answers for a while but figured you wouldn’t be able to answer them before. I’d love to see multimap try and compete with Google but is it more that they feel they’re offering related services more than mapping these days?