Ten Years Of The Fool

The Fool is 10! We take a look at some Foolish highlights of recent years.

Yesterday was our birthday! Fool.co.uk was first launched on September 23, 1997 so we've survived and prospered for ten whole years....Back in 2002, Bruce Jackson, our co-founder, wrote about the first five years of the site. I'm now going to take the story forward from there. 2003By January 2003 we had fully recovered from the dot-com crash. We were profitable and on the up again.The stock market, however, still had further to fall, reaching its low for the century on March 12, when the FTSE 100 closed at 3287. Maynard Paton advised Fools: "Scrape together your savings, summon up the courage and pile into the market. FTSE 3,287 is a fantastic long-term buying opportunity."The FTSE 100 has almost doubled since then, so well done Maynard!In the same month, our newly-arrived personal finance writer, Cliff D'Arcy, highlighted the scandal of grossly over-priced PPI (payment protection insurance.) This was one of the first articles in any publication to look at this issue.One month later, Stephen Bland launched his second High Yield Portfolio (HYP), following the launch of HYP1 in October 2000. You can read a review of Stephen's three completed HYPs here.Our discussion boards continued to flourish. So many talented and knowledgeable Fools write excellent posts on our boards for no financial reward and we're very grateful. Here are three examples of great posts in 2003: Clariman's 10 ideas for bringing up LBYM kids. (For those, who don't know LBYM stands for Living Below Your Means.) Emptyend's analysis of Dana Petroleum, a share that has risen by more than four times since then. Hallucigenia's guide to buying a new computer.Inevitably, we made mistakes too. In an attempt to generate revenue from the boards we introduced "green links" in discussion board posts. Put simply, certain words in posts would automatically link through to advertisers. Many Fools disliked this innovation, to put it mildly. We eventually admitted defeat and gave up on the idea in 2005.2004Fool UK carried on growing and several new staff joined the company. In editorial, we recruited a third personal finance writer, Alison Hunt, to join Cliff D'Arcy and Jane Mack. Maynard, Stephen and David Kuo continued to write investment articles.To house the bigger team, we moved to a new office in Kingly Street in London's trendy Soho. The new office's sole plus point was its location next to a pub. On the downside, the air conditioning didn't work, the lifts broke down every other day, and the loos were too small and used to flood. I could go on....Stuart Watson's April Fool article for this year was a cracker. Three years on, the idea of a share portfolio service which includes property prices no longer seems so unlikely! On the boards, I particularly liked this post about lessons from `Frasier' and the secrets of happiness.2005We now had 2 million members!Maynard Paton closed his Qualiport and launched the Champion Shares subscription service instead.The site was redesigned for the first time since 2001. On the boards, there was a very positive reaction to Squiffs' participation in the London Marathon. Squiffs is a multiple sclerosis sufferer and got round the course on crutches; many Fools sponsored him. 2006The appearance of mice in the Kingly Street office was the final straw and we moved to a spacious new home round the corner in Great Pulteney Street. We launched our new Mortgage Service which got off to a great start and was quickly voted the "2006 Best Mortgage Site of the Year" at the Online Finance Awards. The Mortgage Service was followed by our Share Dealing Service in December.December also saw the departure of Bruce Jackson. Looking for slightly better weather, more BBQs and generally a more outdoors environment, Bruce decided to return home to Australia. Here's his farewell message. We were sad to see Bruce go. Still, his leaving party was excellent....Saul Devine replaced Bruce as Managing Director. Saul has worked here since 1999 and has lots of great plans to take The Fool forward.Stuart Watson also left TMF in December having edited the site since 2001. Stuart only managed to stay away for six months though; he now writes occasional freelance articles for us. Perhaps the biggest innovation in 2006 was our move into podcasting. Our first steps were tentative. The shows were normally recorded in the lunch hour and the equipment was basic. But things have moved on since then. We now have a dedicated podcast studio, a full-time producer and download figures are rising. We plan to start producing video content soon.As we began to put more resources into podcasting, David Kuo gave up investment writing so he could concentrate on presenting the podcasts, and his new role as media spokesperson.2007Growth has picked up speed this year. For example, we now have our own tech department whereas we used to rely solely on the help of our friends at Fool.com in the US.We've also recruited 2 new writers and we hope to have 3 more writers working here by mid-November. On top of that we launched our new Insurance Service in the summer. There have been some departures too. George Row, our community producer, left after working here for nine years. Jane Mack also decided to leave the Fool payroll. Jane wrote about many subjects here, but perhaps her biggest passion was her work in helping Fools to get out of debt. Debt remains a key focus here and our Dealing with Debt discussion board continues to be an excellent resource for Fools who are in financial trouble. The futureFool.co.uk has changed in many ways since 1997 but the basic mission remains the same. We want to help as many people as possible improve their finances. We're planning several new initiatives and there's real buzz at Fool HQ right now. Our aim is to be the UK's leading financial community. With your help and support we think we can achieve that, and ensure that 2008 will be our best year yet.