IZZE, Pepsi, and Websites
September 28th, 2006
About three years ago I met Lance through our wives who had recently become friends. Lance was working at IZZE, at the time a 5 or so person beverage startup working out of a cool old house in downtown Boulder. Lance said they were about to revamp their web site. Being a passionate developer ready to take on any project (I was all about mobile and client/server apps not a web dev or designer by any stretch I should add), I said I could help. I met Lance and Todd the CEO (who was actually doing the site himself in FrontPage - impressive undertaking for a CEO) and shortly after that started building their site. I was learning ASP.NET and Web programming all at the same time and after many weekends, all-nighters, and late nights, I had a pretty cool CMS and web site built. I wasn’t over the top amazing, but it was good and allowed them to update & maintain their site without any html or web knowledge.
After starting to work at NewsGator, 7 or so months ago, I really slacked at supporting IZZE’s site, and they rightfully started shopping around for a “real” web design firm. They hooked up with Zing Studios - a company started by a really good dude and smart guy, Jeff shroeder. Jeff and I had worked on some projects in the past, and he is solid. It was a good match, as I had no extra cycles for IZZE.
The IZZE site as it exists today looks pretty much exactly the same as the one I had built (with a ton of help from my buddy Matthias Eder I need to mention). So, maybe I’d like to think I played a small part in the IZZE/Pepsi deal… imagine if Pepsi was doing diligence and stumbled across a FrontPage site built by the CEO. They probably would have been impressed with the CEO’s passion but maybe turned off by a rough looking site. Now, if I only had gotten some stock out of the deal, I may be planning a trip or something cool like that 
I did get some t-shirts and lots of drinks so at least I have that going for me ;(
Entry Filed under: Mobile