Celebrating 25 Years of LaunchSquad

Twenty-five years ago this week, LaunchSquad officially opened its doors. Our idea was simple: help the most innovative new companies tell their stories to the world with the highest level of quality and service we could.

After leaving our agency jobs in late 1999, we leased a one-room office on California St. in downtown SF and officially opened our doors in January, with our first two clients signing up that month. We were in the midst of a massive revolution that would touch all aspects of our lives, and we wanted to team together, do amazing work and help tell stories connected to the coming wave of innovation and progress. 

It’s difficult to summarize what the following 25 years have brought: adventure, challenge, lots of change and immense joy. We’ve grown up together, supported more than 900 client partners, watched employees build deep friendships and grow their careers, and endured periods of intense struggle together. 

In 2000, we were not yet exposed to social media, smartphones, cloud computing, streamed entertainment, driverless cars, humanoid robots, quantum computers, drones, digital money, and of course, machine learning and now artificial intelligence—all technologies we’ve since helped introduce to the world. Through it all, we navigated a communications landscape that has evolved from faxed press releases and print media's reign to a vast ecosystem of digital content, social influencers, and online media.

Today, LaunchSquad looks far different than it did in 2000. We are now 100+ team members, 70+ clients, and a community of thousands of former colleagues, clients, partners and supporters who have all contributed to our ongoing evolution. But one thing has remained steady: we’re still focused on helping the most innovative companies (now, of all shapes and sizes) share their stories and build their brands. 

We’d like to think LaunchSquad has had a positive impact on the world, both by providing life and career growth for our incredible team members, as well as by helping hundreds of companies chart their unique and unpredictable paths to greatness. 

We could spend this milestone year reminiscing. Instead, we’re going to celebrate what’s to come. A business leader was recently quoted as saying, “If 2024 was the year of change, 2025 will be the year of navigation…how [do we] navigate the new world that we find ourselves in?” The fact is we could apply this to virtually any year from the last couple of centuries. Every year is a year of change, and all of us, willing or not, are forced to navigate it, both as individuals and as organizations. The winners are those who accept the constancy of change and navigate it the most adeptly. 

As we acknowledge this 25-year milestone, we’ll be publishing a series of thought pieces to help guide us through the next 25. Nobody knows what the future brings, but we can still use our collective expertise from being at the center of innovation to conjure our best guesses. The only thing we can know for sure is the future will bring endless 'unknown,' and to us, that's incredibly exciting.

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of the Squad through our first quarter century. As we enter this new era of massive transformation, we feel privileged to get to do this work every day and are extremely grateful to those who have put their trust in us to help shepherd their companies and careers. We don’t take the responsibility lightly. 

Cheers! 

Jason, Brett and Jesse