Interview with Ben McKinley, CEO at Cascade Web Development

Ben McKinley founded Cascade Web Development in 2001, when broadband was still a luxury and content management systems didn't yet exist in any meaningful form. Rather than wait for the tools to catch up, he and his co-founder built their own. That decision, unconventional then, quietly vindicated now, set the tone for everything that followed: deliberate choices, long relationships, and a quiet insistence on building things that last.

We started at the beginning.

Cascade Web Development started in 2001 in the attic above your garage. 24 years later, the core team is still together - with Paul at 22 years, Stephen at 24, and Christi at 20. What do you think has kept that kind of longevity, and how has it shaped the way you work with clients?

"Our core team joined when they were all parents of young children. Each one wanted to work from home and take an active role in the raising of their children. We’ve embedded support for this priority within our company culture.

Additionally, our development platform, Evergreen has been a significant source of pride for our team. I believe that our collective commitment to that software has resulted in loyalty that is unusual in our industry."

2010 Team Race

You and Stephen built Evergreen - your own CMS, back in 2002, years before WordPress or Shopify existed. Today it still powers your multi-site ecosystems and enterprise builds. Looking back, where did that decision slow you down - and where did it give you an unfair advantage?

"As noted above, Evergreen has been a big source of team longevity and client satisfaction over the years. While it’s challenging to justify the investment with all the new development approaches that have come and gone, it’s really our clients’ belief in the software that has made it all possible. It’s a partnership that we are grateful for.

It was truly an unfair advantage when we incubated Brandlive. We were able to rapidly deploy early versions of Brandlive on our Evergreen platform by leveraging software capabilities that would have been much harder to build without the framework in place. Furthermore, we could seamlessly embed these tools within the existing web solutions our clients were using."

From 2008 to 2012, Cascade incubated Brandlive - a live-video SaaS platform - and eventually spun it out. That’s a bold move for a service studio. What did that experience teach you about the difference between building products and building for clients, and would you do it again?

"The Brandlive experiment was a fascinating and humbling experience. It created a lot of positive energy in our little web services company, but also proved to be quite a distraction from our core competencies. The hardest part was tracking the two efforts with one team and making sure one business did not consume the other. Cascade’s success largely underwrote Brandlive’s early days, while Brandlive received all our extra energy and attention.

After 10 yrs of helping to build web solutions for other companies, we got a chance to test our abilities on ourselves. Additionally, raising money for a SaaS tech startup takes a completely different business model. While I wouldn’t change anything, I would take a vastly different approach to incubating another product company within Cascade to better align interests of those involved."

Historic Railcar Office, 2018

Looking at your portfolio - Portland Streetcar, SeaPort Air, Helmet House’s multisite ecosystem, Sokol Blosser winery - your work covers a remarkable range of industries. How do you get up to speed quickly on a client's world, and is there a project where that deep dive into a new sector led to an unexpected creative breakthrough?

"While we have gone pretty deep within certain industries in our past (wine, ski, outdoor, legal), we really enjoy working with a wide range of industries. It provides a unique opportunity to take things that work in disparate industries and deliver unexpected results. It’s amazing to see how different industries face similar marketing, operational and ecommerce challenges.

All of the client sites listed are built on the Evergreen platform, so we can easily apply a copy, paste, modify development approach that allows us to identify creative approaches to company challenges in the strategy phase and roll them efficiently into the development process, leveraging existing code.

Reuse of purpose built, trail tested code has proven to reduce risk and cost over the years. Furthermore, updates on one site can easily be applied to existing sites."

When a client looks back at a Cascade project a year or two later, what kind of results are they typically seeing? Any numbers or milestones that stand out as particularly rewarding?

"The results vary widely depending on the industry and use case. E-commerce clients may see growth in sales and conversion rates, while a client with a new company portal might see impressive adoption of new automated business processes or company culture improvements. Across the board, our clients appreciate the purpose built administrative tools that allow them to efficiently maintain the website. When changes are needed, they are elegant and intuitive.

One state agency client in particular had massive anxiety leading up to launch, following a very public failure with a previous website build effort. I remember calling them on launch day and they were baffled at how seamless the launch went. Shortly after, they had one person managing a robust website with ease and many others on the staff unsure about how to spend their time. It was quite gratifying to empower this agency web team and serve so many Oregonians with powerful new web tools."

How does TechBehemoths compare to other similar platforms in the space - what stands out so far as genuinely useful, and what could be improved?

"TechBehemoths does a great job of not only listing tech companies, but organizing them in effective ways for search. The industry continues to grow with areas of expertise getting more refined each year. TB is doing a great job of staying on top of trends and providing useful search parameters to reflect industry trends. TB helps people find what they are looking for based upon subject and geographical location.

Further, TB offers more compelling content that serves both the listed company and TB with awards, top 10 lists and interviews like this. I have really been impressed as I get more familiar with listing sites around the web."

You’ve been doing this since 2001, you’ve seen the web go from static HTML to WordPress, to headless CMS, to AI-assisted authoring. What’s the biggest shift happening in the web and agency world right now that most people are still underestimating?

"I’d actually like to flip this question. I believe the AI hype is causing tremendous confusion in the marketplace about what is possible. While AI can absolutely accelerate the creation of basic websites and prototypes, it still has a ways to go when it comes to the audit, strategy, design and development of more complex solutions involving complex integrations and security requirements.

We find ourselves spending a lot of time educating clients to manage expectations around scope, timeline and budget. It's an exciting time and reinforces the need for trusting relationships and patience during these times of rapid change and uncertainty."

Cascade Team, 2023

Ben's perspective is a useful corrective in an industry that tends to mistake motion for progress. At Cascade, the work speaks through the clients who stay, the team that never left, and the software still running after two decades.

Thank you, Ben, for taking the time to share your experience and thinking with us. This kind of honest, long-view perspective is exactly what the industry needs more of.

Cascade Web Development is among the most established agencies on TechBehemoths. If this interview resonated with you and you think Ben and his team are the right fit for your next project, reach out directly via TechBehemoths or find them on LinkedIn.