AFTER 20 years of working together as founders of web-hosting company GoHosting, Alan Dawe and Steve Hampson say it still feels like the business is in its infancy.

“We just have so much more that we still want to achieve,” says Alan, 41.

“It’s sort of interesting to get here because it all happened so fast, it doesn’t feel like 20 years have passed by.

“But, I guess if you do something you love, you never work a day in your life, and we enjoy coming to work.”

Steve, 48, says when they first started the business, there was a big dream about being their own boss.

“We achieved that pretty quickly,” he says.

“After that, and working from home for quite a number of years, our desire changed, we could see a potential to be something bigger.

“We got an office, and started taking on staff, and that feels like yesterday even though it was nine years ago.”

They say GoHosting initially serviced small businesses, through domain name registrations and website hosting.

“We have started a new division called GoHosting Enterprise Services and we now service a number of larger customers and government departments,” says Steve.

“We’re well on our way to completing our ISO 27001 security clearance,” says Alan.

“We’re expanding into more consumer service as well, more domain name sales and more shared hosting.

“In 2017 we started an IT managed services company, AUIT, which we have always delivered, but it got too big to keep under the GoHosting name.

“AUIT is obviously expanding and delivering new services around cybersecurity.

“We are excited to see a few other pieces come to fruition.”

Steve and Alan met at a previous workplace, Web One Internet, which was running from the business owner’s home at the time, in the very early days of the internet.

“It did grow, and it actually became Canberra’s largest internet service provider before the owner sold it,” says Steve.

“That is how we knew we could start a business together and run a business together, because we had already worked together.”

Both men say anybody who works with technology knows that nobody knows everything about technology.

“Every day is a learning opportunity, and it’s been interesting trying to keep up with the technology over 20 years of growth,” says Alan.

“It’s been a very big learning curve, but I like to keep my finger on the pulse a little bit and keep up a little bit on the current stuff.

Steve says he agrees with the philosophy that as human beings, “we have to expand on the light of consciousness”.

“There’s billions of people in the world and we’re only individuals, so there’s a limited impact we can have, but if we can help other businesses to be productive, which is what our business does, it allows other businesses to leverage technology,” says Steve.

“I find that really satisfying to think about and that drives me every day.”

Steve and Alan both say they haven’t really had a chance to sit down and think about celebrating 20 years.

“Our staff are so thoughtful and gave us a surprise party and barbecue,” they say.

“I have two small children, so there are a lot of kids’ sports and activities that keep me busy in my spare time, but I try to be very hands-on,” says Alan.

“Obviously there is a lot of out-of-hours work that goes into running a company like ours, so it’s very hard to keep that work-life balance, but I give the kids as much time as I can.”

Steve says in some ways, because he loves technology, work is his hobby.

“But outside of that, my biggest passion would be cars and driving in general,” he says.

“I’ve always been a rev-head, and I now have an electric car which is great fun, too.

“I’m also into motorbikes, motorsport in general.”

But, they both say they’d love to have another 20 years of GoHosting in them, and they’ll give it their absolute best.