Celebrating 25 Years in Great Company

August 14, 1999. I had packed everything I owned into my car and was driving from Texas back to Cambridge to begin a new job at a new company – a one year old company, to be precise – Akamai Technologies . Through those hours of driving alone, I felt excited but also a little nervous. I felt optimistic but also a bit unsure. The thing is, I really didn’t know much about what Akamai did.

But I knew who Akamai was. I knew that Tom Leighton was one of the founders, and I had known Tom for 10 years going back to when I first started as a graduate student in the Theory Group at the MIT Lab for Computer Science (now a part of the Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or what we call CSAIL) where Tom was a professor. I had taken his classes; I had TA’ed for him; and he had been a reader on my Ph.D. thesis. I also knew that my Ph.D. advisor, Charles Leiserson, was taking a sabbatical year at Akamai. I also knew that some of my academic brothers (people who also had Charles as their advisor) and former colleagues were working at Akamai. And that was all I needed to know.

In deciding to join Akamai, my thinking was simple: stay close to these people and something good will happen. It didn’t really matter what Akamai did. So long as these people were doing it, then it was sure to be great. And it would be fun to boot. This was (and Akamai still is) a group of people who are not only brilliant and passionate but also joyful, funny, and fun to be around. I like to say that the who matters more than the what. Stay close to great people and the what will take care of itself.

That’s the story of how I decided to join Akamai, and boy did I get that right. Now 24 years later as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the company, I can say that, second only to the decision that Cynthia Breazeal and I made to get married, joining Akamai was the best decision I have ever made. My time at Akamai has been, and continues to be, often challenging but always fulfilling. It’s also been and continues to be rich in friendships, joy, and laughter.

As we celebrate Akamai’s 25th anniversary, let me salute everyone who has been part of this journey, past and present; everyone who has made life better for billions of people, billions of times a day. And one of those people is me, so let me also extend a personal thank you to all of you for making my professional life so rewarding, exciting, and fun. On that long drive 24 years ago, I never could have imagined all of the great people who make Akamai what it is today.