Before startups were a thing and tech companies actually had to make money, I cut my teeth doing development for the original Medium . Medium was a client-focused dev and design shop in Chattanooga, TN. While there, I worked on a range of interesting and challenging client projects, from an early skype competitor's web app to a municipal fiber company's online enrollment and web-based TV channel guide.
Eventually, that client work paved the way for internal product development, and I helped launch multiple consumer-facing products, including Markup and Showoff .
Most of the original Medium crew took different paths, but a few of used started a new shop — 50 East . We did client work for some big names like HP and Google Ventures and again used that to fund the development of our own products