On a mid-August morning, Geocaching HQ co-founders Jeremy Irish, Elias Alvord, and Bryan Roth met at Seattle’s Gas Works Park, just a short distance from HQ. They carried paddleboards into the waters of Lake Union, enjoying sunny skies and views of the Seattle skyline and the famous Space Needle. In some ways, the setting was reminiscent of the trio’s lake-based meetings during the very early days of their now 25-year partnership. Except this time, a crew was shooting video from shore while a drone filmed them from above!

The occasion was production work for the #WeArePlay campaign, which highlights people and companies around the world building apps on Google Play. Besides visiting Lake Union, the camera crew accompanied HQ’s founders to the Mission 9: Tunnel of Light Project A.P.E. Cache, to a geocaching event in Seattle, and to find caches in Seattle’s Carkeek Park. They also interviewed Jeremy, Elias, and Bryan and captured footage of HQ Lackeys at the office in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. This all resulted in a video that you can watch here.

While the HQ founders meet throughout the year, #WeArePlay gave them a chance to spend time outside together and reflect on a quarter-century of geocaching.

Jeremy discovered geocaching in July 2000, just two months after the first cache was hidden. He quickly purchased a GPS device and went searching for a geocache in Washington’s mountains. Soon after, he shared his excitement about the new hobby with Elias and Bryan, his co-workers at Savi Shopper, a Seattle-area dot-com.

Bryan says, “I remember when Jeremy came back to the office and told several of us about this GPS outdoor adventure. He said that he believed he could build a website to make it easier for people to play, and that it was a fun way to use technology to get people outside.”

Jeremy got to work building Geocaching.com, which launched on September 2, 2000, with 75 known caches. He then partnered with Elias and Bryan to start what is now known as Geocaching HQ (legal name: Groundspeak, Inc.).

“A few things happened that made the partnership work,” Jeremy says. “The first is that we had worked together for a while, so we knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and we had complementary skills. Bryan has a legal background, and a lot of operations experience. I’m a programmer and developer, but I couldn’t do the infrastructure work. And that’s where Elias came in. Also, we just really worked well together.”

In the early years, following the dotcom-style bust of Savi Shopper, they all went to work at Sunrise Identity while supporting the new Geocaching company and website in their off-hours. It was at Sunrise where they printed the original 144 Geocaching T-shirts that provided the company’s first revenue. In 2005, Bryan was the last of the three to move on from Sunrise and become a full-time Geocaching HQ employee.

“We’re so fortunate to have this set of circumstances come together in the right way with the right people,” Bryan says. “Geocaching really is the product of a global community, supported by HQ. It is a community-based game, creating positive impacts for people around the world, and we are proud and honored to play a role.”

Geocaching.com now hosts more than 3.4 million geocaches, which this year included a record number of large events around the world. What began in 2000 as a game that required a dedicated GPS device (like the one Jeremy purchased at a marine store) is now easily accessible with a smartphone, and is celebrated by global campaigns like #WeArePlay.

If you’d like to hear more about Geocaching HQ’s history, listen to Bryan and Jeremy discuss 25 years of geocaching in an episode of the Inside Geocaching HQ podcast.