It all started around a campfire with Matt and his two sisters, Amy and Becky. Becky’s degree was in broadcasting and she had worked in Los Angeles at a sound studio for a couple of years before most recently running a missionary school in Bulgaria. Amy had started her career as a court reporter and had just transitioned to live closed captioning.

At the campfire, Amy was telling her siblings that the captioning business was rapidly growing in response to new laws enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Matt brought his engineering and business skills to the table, Becky brought her background in broadcast media, and they put their heads together. As the first tech bubble was beginning to burst, they all decided that a business in an industry that was growing as a result of new laws was probably a smart move.

Aberdeen Captioning was started in a 50 square-foot office. Becky and Matt sat back-to-back – so close that their chairs were touching and it took careful coordination to maneuver around. There was a half-rack of Beta decks and caption encoders in Becky and Amy’s apartment so Amy could work from home after she finished her day job. After six months of outbound calls and a successful tradeshow, Aberdeen landed a few clients that sparked a forward momentum which has allowed the company to grow to where it is today.

How did we come up with the Aberdeen name? It’s really a Divine story. We made a list that included Cook Captioning, Tri-Cook Captioning, Biblical names, etc. Becky and Amy both said, “We can’t use ‘Cook’ because we are going to get married someday!” The other names just didn’t feel right and we knew that customers would find us in online directories that are usually in alphabetical order, so we knew we wanted a name that would appear at the top of an alphabetical list. A couple weeks go by and Amy calls me at 10:30 on a Sunday night and she says “I got it – Aberdeen-- Aberdeen Captioning!” I repeated it to myself and it had a super nice feel and it started with “A” then “b”. Amy said, “I was in Aberdeen, TX when I decided to make some serious changes in my life.”

I’m thinking that now the name has a story and a great meaning. I’m sold. I called Becky and told her and she was sold too. Done! A couple of months go by and Amy realizes that she was in Abilene, TX not Aberdeen. Divine part... Our grandfather was from Scotland and the main port city in Scotland is Aberdeen , the "Granite City" ...Translate to: Company built on the Rock. It was meant to be all along!