April 19, 2021
My first draft of this post started with “Trabian will soon be old enough to vote”, but that’s only true of the “, Inc.” added in 2003. Trabian actually passed that threshold years ago. I registered trabian.com in February of 2000 just days after I turned twenty, which means that Trabian is older than I was when I created it and has been part of more than half my life. I hadn’t fully processed that until I wrote it just now.
The truth is, I had to look all of this up. Because Trabian didn’t really start until “I” became “we”. It started when Brent called and asked how to build a website for a credit union — “let’s figure it out together”. It started when Trey drove over to help for just a weekend and instead signed a lease for the apartment next door. It started when we convinced Hallie that working for a startup would be less boring than working for an ad agency. And it started many times since then as we welcomed new friends to the team. Trabian’s never stepped in the same river twice.
Today we’re announcing that we have a new friend. Many new friends, with more to come. On Friday we closed on a deal for a majority of Trabian to be acquired by MVB Bank, a West Virginia-based community bank with a significant and expanding focus on using technology to positively impact financial lives.
Trabian’s mission to accelerate community finance will remain the same and our growing team will continue to serve our clients without any interruption. I’ve been appointed as the Executive Chairman of our new board of directors and will remain CEO, while Trey will assume the role of President of Trabian. We’ll also play a role in MVB’s developing venture space, an area on which I’ll be particularly (but not exclusively) focused.
We spent quite a bit of time getting to know the team at MVB before making this decision and truly like them as people. I’m excited to work more closely with them and get to know them better.
My personal mission is to build meaningful things with friends, and I have no doubt that this will continue. There’s just more of us now.
The full press release is available here. Let’s go!