Five years of OnMilwaukee.com. Wow.

Writing this now annual column, the rumble of thousands of motorcycles are actually shaking my computer monitor, and I'm struck with a funny thought: we're only 20 times younger than Harley-Davidson.

It's funny because I can barely remember what life was like before my business partners Jeff Sherman, Jon Krouse and I "flipped the switch," turning on OnMilwaukee.com on September 1, 1998. I think we were sitting in my East Side apartment at the time. Just about everyone we talked to said it could never work. And we never believed them for a second.

Milwaukee is too conservative, they told us. The Internet is a passing fad, we heard. People won't buy stuff or read news content online, they actually argued.

But I was 23. Jon was 24, and Jeff was 29. We were three single guys, without mortgages, investors, employees, and after a leap of faith, without jobs. There was no "Dot-Com Implosion," or even a recession back then. It happened because Jon had been bugging me for months to start some sort of Internet company. Jeff was sold simply because he loved Milwaukee and saw a unique opportunity. I figured it was worth a try to flesh out this idea that had been gnawing at me for a couple of years.

I thought about making a Web site that would eventually become OnMilwaukee.com back in college in Washington, D.C. I knew Milwaukee was a great town, and despite my friends' confusion when I chose to move back here in 1996, I was sure I would find a way to spotlight it.

Not in the way we saw in the newspaper or in Milwaukee Magazine, mind you. In a way that reflects guys like us -- people who have closed Wolski's. People who stop at Mars Cheese Castle to make the drive to Chicago more palatable. People who cried when they tore down County Stadium. People who enjoy a brat and a Miller Lite, but also appreciate the nouveau Milwaukee arts scene. People who wrote OMC's most popular article of all time, "100 things to do in Milwaukee" in about 10 minutes. Because it was that easy for us to talk, usually ad nauseam, about the city we love and call home.

So that was five years ago. Six months before that, we sat in the Emperor of China on Brady, hatching our plan on a napkin. That spring and summer we did our research, tried our hand at Web design, crunched numbers and began our PR campaign. The product we launched on September 1, 1998, was not the polished daily magazine you read now. But it was a start, and really, we haven't looked back.

The following September, we packed the three of us, plus Pablo the intern, in a tiny East Side office inside the Webworks building (we're still here, though now we occupy about half the building). We sat on folding chairs and used old desks and even older computers. Come to think of it, we only bought our first "real" office furniture when trying to impress our future investors the next spring.

Meanwhile, the site -- and the company -- kept growing. In Spring of 2000, we secured our first round of venture capital. We rebuilt the site and hired a bunch of people -- including Managing Editor Bobby Tanzilo and Head Programmer Zach Karpisnki, who are still here, thankfully, after three years.

Sure, we've had our growing pains as we learned how to run a real business. Ask Bobby sometime about his job interview in a bar (what the heck did I know about hiring a writer?) When the dot com bubble burst, we hunkered down and remembered our mantra -- we are not a dot com company; we're a business with a product that happens to exist on the Web. When the bigger recession after September 11, 2001, caused media companies in Milwaukee and nationally to lay off staff in droves, we tightened our belts and kept everyone working. Let's just say we ate a lot of Ramen noodles for a couple of months, but we made it.

And now, the future looks really bright. Nearly 400,000 Milwaukeeans visited OnMilwaukee.com in July, generating more than 3.5 million page views. Month after month, we're setting record revenues. Advertisers who would never give us the time of day in the early years are actually calling us for proposals. And it's safe to say that no one's told me lately that the Internet is just a passing fad, in fact it's a part of our daily lives.

In the next year, we plan on beginning several exciting new endeavors. The most interesting, I think, will be our foray into local news. Our focus will remain covering the entertainment scene, but we plan on writing about Milwaukee news with the same unique perspective you've come to trust and enjoy. Stay tuned.

Of course, our most valuable asset in changing the way the media reports on Milwaukee is our talented staff. Talented, loyal, dependable and passionate, they're the ones in the trenches, spreading the word.

Our two writers, Bobby Tanzilo and Molly Snyder Edler (with help from Jeff and myself) crank out the stories you see every day on OMC. Those two, plus a cadre of freelancers, columnists and occasionally interns, regularly scoop everyone else in reporting Milwaukee's entertainment scene. When we say "you read it here first," you really do. No one has their fingers on the pulse of Milwaukee like OMC does. Molly and Bobby keep me sane around here. I can't imagine this place without them.

Down the hall from the editorial staff sits "Apache Chief" Zach Karpinski and our newest addition, the brilliant young designer Craig McKinney. Zach is the man who made our summer redesign happen, and I can say without doubt, that he is the most talented programmer I have ever worked with. Craig is learning fast, and it's a tremendous asset to have such a skilled illustrator on staff.

In our main office, we have two superb sales people, Erin Smith and Paul Blaha. Neither of them know the word "quit," and are responsible for landing bigger and bigger ad contracts. They're the people on the street, and I'm proud to say they represent the company well.

Michelle Cowan is technically the Traffic and Office Manager here, but I just call her the Event Calendar Queen. Chelle holds everything together, usually with a smile. And when she's not smiling, watch out, because she can respond in a crisis with the greatest of ease.

Finally, Jeff, Jon and I do a couple of things around here, too, when we're not lighting cigars with $100 bills and toasting our status as Milwaukee's Dot Com Millionaires (um, yeah, right). Jon oversees the Web design sales and heads up our strategic alliance, RummageWorks - our new joint venture with the guys from Lightburn, Inc., to develop classifieds and personals software. He also handles the stuff that I would never try to touch: payroll, HR, fixing broken light bulbs, etc. His cool and steady demeanor is a nice buttress to my swearing rants that break out from time to time.

Jeff heads up the sales department, and moonlights as our PR guy. When he's not shaking hands or kissing babies, he's getting the word out about OnMilwaukee.com. A PR and marketing pro, he keeps us in the spotlight, while bringing money in the door. And those are two very important things in a small company like ours. He's also a pretty good singer and a snappy dresser. We spend a lot of the day cracking jokes and coming up with creative ideas that people still tell us won't work in Milwaukee. We know they are wrong.

And in case you're wondering what I do, I head up the editorial and creative side around here. I wear many hats, among them are Editor in Chief and the guy who makes OMC look the way it does. I write, edit, fix broken HTML, fake it in Photoshop, and find myself interviewing some of my own Milwaukee heroes. Not bad work if you can get it. My D.C. friends are still wondering how this applies to my major in International Communications. Me, too.

But the nice thing about Jeff, Jon and me is that we all float between each other's jobs and responsibilities, picking up any slack when one of us gets overloaded. I'm not sure if this company deserves to be called a "well-oiled machine," but it's getting there, and we're learning and improving every day.

Of course, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the support of our investors, our advertisers, our families, friends, spouses/significant others and most of all, our readers. You are the ones who visit the site, hopefully daily, to drive our circulation and increase our visibility. Please come back early and often.

Thank you for five loyal years, Milwaukee. We plan on throwing a big party this fall to celebrate; details coming soon. The best is yet to come -- here's to many more exciting years of OnMilwaukee.com!