I’m Jake Goldman, Founder & President of 10up. Ask me anything!

Hey there – I’m Jake Goldman, and I like to say I’ve been “making with the web since their was a web to make.”

I started making websites in the 90’s when I was still in high school, taking on my first paid gig in 1997. Over the next 14 years, I worked in the technical and creative services industry as a developer, designer, manager, and salesperson… usually wearing several of those hats at once. I’ve worked for huge organizations (the U.S. Navy) and tiny organizations (employee #2 at my last job). I went through the first browser wars, built interactive applications in Flash when that was a thing, spent too much time working with a proprietary ColdFusion CMS, and even “designed” a few web ads (yikes).

In February of 2011, I started a consultancy focused on WordPress engineering and UX called 10up. While I had ambitions to grow (I didn’t call it “Jake, Inc.”), having spent the last 5 years in senior management, I thought it would be nice to take a year off from managing teams and focus on projects I could handle as a freelancer, maybe collaborating with a few contractors. I’m bad at saying “no” when opportunity knocks, and before 10up’s first year was over, I’d grown the team to 8 employees, with some noteworthy showcase clients, like TechCrunch and Trulia, already under our belt.

Since that first year, 10up has organically grown in size and scope. Today, we are ~130 full time staff strong and as financially healthy as ever, with expertise spanning virtually every aspect of making and supporting even the most complex and high scale web projects. Our expertise goes much deeper than WordPress (still our preferred CMS), and includes user experience and creative design, monetization and advertising strategy, front and back end engineering, and of course, project strategy and management. Last year, we had a client project featured on Google’s home page (it uses the WordPress REST API, and yes, it stayed up), and saw 4 client projects nominated for Webby Awards (AMC.com won). Since mid-2015, we’ve helped Adobe relaunch 99u, helped Microsoft launch Windows 10 with an official media and consumer launch microsite, collaborated with ESPN to release another flagship property (The Undefeated), helped both the New York Times Co. and Washington Post with some publishing tool projects… and the list goes on. An analysis of the impact of iOS 9 Content Blockers that I co-authored was featured and quoted in publications like Time, AdAge, and Daring Fireball.

I’m also very proud of 10up’s continued tradition of investing heavily back into in the open source platforms we depend on. We’re the only agency that employs a Lead WordPress (Core) Developer, likely the largest contributor to WordPress behind Automattic, our company plugins are listed as “active” on ~1 million WordPress installs, and projects like VVV and Flexibility have become standbys. Our team has spoken at events around the world: phpWorld, NTC, ZendCon, CSSCONF, Gilbane, and of course, anchor WordCamps like U.S. and Europe – to name a few.

The journey has been inspiring… and exhausting, exhilarating, emotionally draining, and unbelievably educational and maturing. Even in our toughest moments, or when I’m agonizing over a mistake I’ve made (in classic type-A fashion), I’ve always tried to keep perspective, and remember just how fortunate I am, both professionally and personally.

These days, when I’m not working with team 10up, I’m usually chasing around one very curious 10 month old daughter. In the event I get a bit of independent free time, I’ve been cultivating an interesting in cooking, and indulging a home-automation interest. My podcasts playlist consists mostly of political and issue commentary, with a sprinkling of Apple enthusiast news. I do enjoy a good Netflix original, but with my new daughter in the picture, a “binge” looks like finishing one episode without interruption. I’m eager to travel more, again, when I can.

Ask away!
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/13663/i-m-jake-goldman-founder-president-of-10up-ask-me-anything

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/im-jake-goldman-founder-president-of-10up-ask-me-anything/