Dear friends,
After almost 12 years, I have decided to move on and finish my time at WildApricot at the end of this year. It’s a bittersweet moment for me. While I am excited about my new adventures (see www.buterin.com), I also feel sad. WildApricot has been such a huge part of my life for such a long time! Although I have pondered moving on from WildApricot for a while, I only wanted to do so if I felt WildApricot was in good hands.
As many of you know, WildApricot was acquired by Personify in September. I have spent a lot of time with their leadership and as I got to know them better I gained confidence in them. As well, my colleague Dmitry Ivanov, who started WildApricot with me 12 years ago, has now taken over as the General Manager of WildApricot within the overall Personify organization. I am grateful to Dmitry for everything he has done for WildApricot, and for taking the reins.
So, now I feel comfortable moving on.
As you can imagine, this choice has made me reflect a lot. I still remember all the brainstorming we did when we were making our decision to start in March 2006. I remember coming up with the name (some other names we considered: Membrana, Meliora, SpunkyDuck, BlueMoon). I remember how we gave birth to our logo. I remember the first tacky version of WildApricot we released in July 2006, with a handful of tabs and buttons.
I remember how excited we were to get our first trials (somebody wants it!!). At the time, we didn’t even have the ability to charge for it anyway :-)
I remember how happy we were to get our first customer in November 2006, and how after about a year of running this business and investing more than a million dollars, we had about 60 clients and ~$3000 in monthly revenue. I remember all the emails I have exchanged with our clients, watching them build out their initiatives and grow, and I am very grateful for the trust they have put into WildApricot over many years.
WildApricot has come a long way since then.
Over 10,000 organizations now subscribe to our paid plans, with another 10,000 using our free plan. We have launched over 60 releases, developed our own mobile apps, added dozens of tabs and hundreds of buttons in the app, and created an API. Over the years, I have personally answered and processed thousands of support emails and client surveys. And throughout, I have created so many great memories with our clients and partners and all of the people I have worked with.
As my last day at WildApricot approaches, I find solace in the fact that out of many possible ways my WildApricot tenure could have ended, I really like what has actually happened:
- We are now part of an awesome company, Personify, and we have quickly built deep direct connections with our new colleagues and are working with them on a common mission.
- We are staying true to our original vision of serving a broad market of membership organizations with great software and education.
- I feel very proud of the team we have built over the years (plenty of people are still with us from back in 2006!) and of how quickly my colleagues have been able to reorient themselves and drive business forward as part of Personify, without my involvement.
- I feel grateful for and confident in my colleague Dmitry Ivanov, who has now taken over as the General Manager of WildApricot.
I am looking forward to watching from the side as WildApricot software keeps flourishing further in the coming years. I’m also looking forward to seeing all of you make a huge impact on this world. And hopefully our paths will cross again. It’s a small world after all.
If you’d like to see a very short timeline of WildApricot with some images we dug up from the archives, see below my name. Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Dmitry
A Brief History of WildApricot
April 2006
WildApricot is born
- The first version of WildApricot took an entire year of development and was created as an internal release so we could do usability tests and bug tracking. Here are some early logo designs:
June 2006
Version 2.0 is released
- WildApricot is Live! After months of discussions, development and testing, WildApricot became available for use by membership organizations everywhere.
May 2009
Version 3.0 is released
- 2009 was a landmark year for WildApricot with the introduction of the new “contact database.” It created one central, cloud-based directory. Also, over 150 header backgrounds were added to the product.
September 2010
Version 4.0 is released
- Version 4.0 introduced the “finances module.” For the first time, users could automatically generate invoices, record offline payments and generate financial reports.
April 2014
Version 5.0 is released
- Version 5.0 was our biggest release ever. We included a new content management system with drag and drop functionality, which allowed users with zero coding experience to create fully fledged web pages.
March 2015
iOS and Android mobile apps are released
- The mobile apps allowed WildApricot administrators to register event attendees at the door, add new contacts to the database, and keep track of offline payments.
June 2015
Version 5.4 brings WordPress integration
- With the help of a plugin, WildApricot and WordPress now spoke to each other like never before. WordPress users could integrate their WildApricot account functionality into a WordPress site.
June 2016
WildApricot turns 10
- A full ten years passed since WildApricot first became live. To celebrate, our Toronto office went on a relaxing dinner cruise around Toronto’s waterfront.
July 2017
WildApricot migrates to Amazon Web Services
- WildApricot switched its cloud platforms to Amazon Web Services to improve site speed and uptime. Immediately after the switch, customers noticed site speeds increased by three times.
September 2017
WildApricot acquired by Personify
- Austin-based Personify, a constituent management software company with a mission of serving and empowering membership and constituent-focused organizations, commits to investing in the WildApricot product, customers and employees.
December 2017
Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot and founder of WildApricot, says goodbye.
