AFT Blog
Reflecting on AFT's 20 Years
I often say that all good American companies start in someone's garage or basement. AFT started in the basement of my country home in Louisville, Ohio (see photo below). We ran the company from my basement (with myself and three other employees) until the summer of 1996 - at which point we decided to move the company (and ourselves) to the Colorado Springs area of Colorado. We have been here ever since.
- AFT office in my Louisville, Ohio home in 1994
Working in my basement meant a lot of work as I was always at the office. Eighty hour weeks were the minimum for me for the first couple years. Holidays? What holidays? I worked on holidays. Vacation? No time (or money) for vacations.
Engineers liked what they saw and quickly discovered the advantages of graphical modeling methods. And sales grew. International channel partners contacted us about selling our software internationally. Our international customer base steadily grew.
More products came after the initial release of AFT Fathom. And engineers raved about our products.
In 1994 AFT was an innovative yet unproven company. Today, 20 years later, AFT is regarded by many of the world's leading engineering organizations as the premier provider of pipe flow modeling software products. We have a customer base in over seventy countries.
In 1994 I was the only employee. Today AFT has a staff of fifteen - of which ten are degreed engineers or computer programmers. We have eight qualified trainers and we teach training seminars all over the world.
Today AFT is proven and battle-tested on an amazingly wide range of fluid flow systems. It is with immense pride that we celebrate 20 years of service to the engineering analysis market. Thank you to all of our customers for helping is get here!
Comments