Ten Years Down the Road at btrax

It was an average summer day in 2004. You woke up to the sound of your alarm clock and went about your business as any other day. At breakfast, you received a text message from a friend asking if you’d like to meet up for lunch that day; you quickly replied yes using T9.

Fast forward to present–and it’s been ten years since that average summer day in 2004 when btrax was born, and our lives have been significantly transformed by technology since then.

The History of btrax

btrax began in August 2004 as a boutique web design studio in San Francisco headed by the current CEO Brandon Hill plus two interns. Our team quickly expanded and landed Expedia as our first big brand project–to help them successfully launch in Japan.

Like many startups, btrax had humble beginnings in our CEO’s San Francisco loft, cramming six people into a 200 square foot space. A flood of new projects allowed us to move into our current office in SOMA, shortly before it became home to the world’s hottest startups. Some our neighbors included Twitter, Instagram, and Wikipedia.

We work with the world’s most innovative startups every day, but having realized that Japan is a challenging place to create a startup, we decided to organize an event that would connect Japanese entrepreneurs with our Silicon Valley Network. On October 13, 2010, JapanNight was born. More than 70 startups have since presented at our event series, securing funding as well as coverage from international media such as TechCrunch and Forbes.

As a business that has been around a while and survived, we evolved btrax gradually as technologies waned (anyone remember Flash?) and identified deeper areas of need among our clients. At the core, we kept our unique niche of helping companies scale globally and thoughtfully.

For the last 3,652 days, every single moment has been a new challenge. It wasn’t easy, but we truly had a blast. It’s been quite a journey for all of us, but today is just the beginning. We truly appreciate all the people who helped us grow, including our clients, partners and staff. Without you, we would not exist! Check out more highlights from the last ten years of btrax on https://history.btrax.com!

10th Anniversary Celebration

Last Friday, we celebrated our tenth anniversary in San Francisco at the Meridian Gallery. Check out all the photos here.

Our charity raffle raised $170 in just an hour. The proceeds went to the Society for Art Publications of the Americas to help youth in the arts. One of their programs is the Meridian Interns Program (MIP), a paid internship for low-income teens from all over San Francisco. Artist instructors integrate art-making workshops with training in job-related skills.

The Society of Art Publications of the Americas applies for support to sustain the MIP which uses the Meridian Gallery, our event venue, as a base for experiential work in the arts. The society thanks all the guests who participated in the raffle and contributed in furthering arts education among low-income youth.

btrax would also like to thank all the guests for taking time out of your busy schedules to spend time with us. We are honored that more than 110 guests–including many of our clients–came to celebrate with us.

Our program included a speech from Tim Besse, co-founder of Glassdoor and a good friend of btrax.

Of course, we topped off the night with a speech from our CEO, Brandon K. Hill, who recounted why he decided to start his own company this time ten years ago.

When I graduated in 2004, there weren’t many jobs for designers, so I decided to create my own–by starting my own company.

It wasn’t an easy journey. But ten years down the road, btrax is still here, and for that, there is every reason to celebrate.

Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate with us at the Meridian Gallery. Here’s to ten more years!