We have been building websites since 1994 and webshops since 2001. In the early days of the internet, websites either succeeded quickly or disappeared just as fast. The smaller scale of the web made outcomes immediate and often unpredictable.
Our first webshop was highly niche. It focused on books about art, specifically erotic art from earlier centuries. It took months to build a well-stocked catalogue. For a while, nothing happened. Then, one Sunday night, a single customer from Argentina bought the entire inventory. We ended up packing the whole webshop into boxes and shipping it to South America. It did not feel like a success. Restocking would take at least a year, so we closed the shop after two months.
Since then, we have created more than a hundred websites, with mixed results. One ritual, however, never changed. On the very first page, we placed a group photo of Kamikaze pilots before departure, hoping it would bring luck. That reflected the mindset of building websites around the turn of the millennium. You built ten and hoped one would survive. In a way, it was no different from those pilots. There was always one that made it.