One person. Thirty years. No committee.
I am Nat Thompson. I have been building websites since 1996 and I still do every bit of the work myself. When you hire me, you get me — not an account manager, not a project coordinator, not a junior developer learning on your dime.
Know whose hands are on it.
I started when the web was made of tables and animated GIFs, and I have watched the technologies come and go — Flash, Silverlight, jQuery, fifty JavaScript frameworks. One thing has not changed: businesses need websites that work, and most people building them are overcomplicating it.
Before Obsidian River I built systems at IBM, at Mercedes-Benz, and at Regions Bank. Large systems, real consequences, people watching. I am AWS certified, which in practice means your site runs on the same class of infrastructure those companies run on — not on a $6 shared host in someone’s spare bedroom.
Obsidian River is not an agency. I have worked at agencies, I have managed teams, and I have sat through enough meetings to know that most of them exist to justify somebody’s salary. So I stripped all of that out. One person means no miscommunication. Thirty years means I have already made every mistake you can make, so I will not make them on your project.
I am based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I keep the client list small on purpose. I would rather do great work for a few people than mediocre work for a lot of them. Right now I keep sites online for Griffin Law, Cornell Behavioral Services, MCHNY and Bethel, plus the bars and restaurants on the work list.
There are no testimonials on this site. Nobody has given me written permission to publish their words yet, so there is nothing to show — and I would rather hand you six live sites you can open and measure than three quotes you have to take on faith.
Take the short version.
If you only read one part of this page, read this one.
- 30 years of professional web development
- Based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
- One-person operation — you always talk to the person doing the work
- No contracts, no minimums, no BS
- Clients stay because the work is good, not because they are locked in
- AWS certified — your site runs on real infrastructure, not shared hosting
Want to work together?
Tell me what you need and I will tell you what it will take. If what you already have works, I will tell you that instead.