My name is Mike and I’m the CEO and Founder of RecDesk. We’re delighted to welcome Timnath, CO to the RecDesk family as our official 1000th client as of December of 2023! It was back in the summer of 2006 that we brought on our very first client, Mahomet, IL, who is still with us today. Mahomet and Timnath are 989 miles apart. Apple Maps says you can make the trip in 13 1/2 hours by car, or, if you’re feeling especially adventurous – 4 days and 10 hours by bike. For RecDesk, the journey took almost 18 years – I guess you could say we took the scenic route!
The nice thing about the scenic route is you get to learn a lot along the way by listening to customers, figuring out what they want and need, steadily building out that platform – and then repeating that process over and over again. I’m incredibly proud of the team of people here at RecDesk, past and present, that have worked so hard to help us reach each milestone. I’m also grateful to all of the cities and towns – large and small, across the US and Canada that have placed their trust in RecDesk to provide this service to their departments and communities.
I want to share a little story about that first client – Mahomet, from late Spring 2006. It was just me at the time and the first version of RecDesk had been available for about 8-12 months and could do basic online registration. I thought it was pretty slick – the problem was, no one else really did. I’d gotten a few early inquiries, would answer all the standard questions and be thinking to myself. “Okay…this is going well”, then BOOM! – that dreaded question: “How many other recreation departments are using RecDesk?” I’d tell them the truth, we’d exchange parting pleasantries and that would pretty much be it – crickets.
On that one morning I had driven up to New Hampshire to hike Mount Washington and was lacing up my boots when my Razr flip phone rang. I picked it up, said, “Hello, this is Mike…”, and the voice on the other side said, “Hi, my name is Jenn and I have some questions about RecDesk”. We chatted for 10-15 minutes – all the while me waiting for her to ask that dreaded question. She never did and about three weeks later, Mahomet went live as RecDesk’s first client.
I eventually hired employees in 2012-2013 and we’ve been at it as a team ever since. We’ve grown from primarily serving smaller, robust communities like Mahomet and Timnath to being able to serve much larger ones as well including Mobile, Memphis, St. Louis, Jersey City and Tulsa to name a few. One thing hasn’t changed – we’re still listening to our customers, and figuring out what they want and need. Always building. Always moving the platform forward.
Thank you Tom from Timnath for choosing RecDesk and thank you Jenn from Mahomet (wherever you are today) for taking a leap of faith back in 2006!
Sincerely,
Mike Morris – CEO & Founder of RecDesk
