About Us

Fountain City is a technology studio that builds autonomous AI agents that do real work. Founded in 1998 in the Netherlands and now based in Portland, Oregon, Fountain City has spent 27 years helping businesses transform through technology. From the dot-com boom to the rise of mobile, from cloud computing to the AI revolution, the tools have changed but the approach hasn’t.

We exist to help ambitious companies navigate technology transitions without losing their soul or their stability.

Our Story

Fountain City started in Amsterdam in 1998. Sebastian Chedal built his first web agency during the earliest days of commercial internet, when most businesses still viewed websites as optional experiments. That company grew through the dot-com boom and its aftermath, building the operational discipline that comes from surviving a market correction while keeping clients running.

In 2008, the company relocated to Portland, Oregon. We’d been a web agency; now we became a boutique digital agency, technically deep and creatively driven. Manufacturing and industrial clients anchored about sixty percent of the work: ERP integrations, operational dashboards, workflow automation, data pipelines connecting shop floors to front offices. The other forty percent was traditional agency work. We were a Drupal shop through versions 5 to 8, until the platform went enterprise and priced out the clients we served. We shifted to WordPress and WooCommerce, built Shopify storefronts, designed and shipped ecommerce platforms, handled art direction and UI/UX, ran digital marketing, and rebuilt aging Angular applications in React. We lived in different camps simultaneously. Deep systems architecture alongside brand, design, and go-to-market execution. A full digital agency, just a small one that punched above its weight.

That range is what made the AI pivot possible. By 2024, we had spent years not just building systems designed to run with minimal human intervention, but doing the jobs ourselves: the research, the content strategy, the design direction, the platform builds, the marketing execution. When autonomous AI agents became viable, we weren’t approaching them theoretically. We started building them for our own operations, then for clients across professional services, technology, media, and e-commerce.

Each chapter built on the last. The web agency years taught client relationships and delivery discipline. The Portland years taught us how businesses actually run, across industries and platforms, from the database layer to the brand layer. Both made it possible to build agents that work in production, because we had already done the jobs the agents now do.

Our Core Principles

Partnership-Driven Delivery

We work as an extension of your team, not just a vendor. Our average client relationship spans six years. They stay because we consistently deliver value as their businesses evolve. We embed with your team, take ownership of outcomes, and transfer knowledge continuously rather than handing off a black box at the end.

27 Years of Transformation

We’ve guided businesses through every major technology shift since 1998. The dot-com boom, the shift to mobile, the rise of cloud computing, and now the AI revolution. That experience means we focus on business outcomes, not technology for technology’s sake.

Nationwide Reach, Portland Roots

Based in Portland, Oregon, with team members and partners across the Americas. We serve ambitious companies nationwide while maintaining the hands-on, personal approach that comes from being a tight-knit team that actually knows each other.

We are

Adaptive

We learn new technology at a practitioner level and evolve our approach as the landscape shifts. Every major technology era has required a different set of tools. We adopt what works, move past what doesn’t, and bring our clients with us.

Authentic

We tell you what AI can and cannot do right now. When a project isn’t the right fit, we say so. When timelines need to change, we communicate it directly. Honest guidance builds the kind of trust that sustains six-year client relationships.

Methodical

Every system we build is designed to run autonomously with minimal intervention. We test rigorously, document thoroughly, and validate that solutions work before deploying them. Structure applied to complex problems is how you get reliable outcomes.

Innovative

We build real systems, not slide decks about systems. We run autonomous agents in our own operations and build them for clients across multiple industries. Practitioner-level depth in emerging technology keeps us useful.

Leadership

Sebastian Chedal, Founder & CEO

Sebastian has spent 27 years leading technology companies, from early web and e-commerce through mobile and cloud to autonomous AI. He’s founded four companies along the way, all grounded in the same principle: technology works when it serves clear business outcomes.

Along the way, he has done every role in a digital agency: strategy, creative direction, information architecture, database design, front-end development, project management, client relations. That breadth is why Fountain City’s agents actually work. When you’ve done the job yourself, you know what “done well” looks like, and you can design a system that reliably gets there.

At Fountain City, he builds autonomous AI agent systems for businesses and works directly with leadership teams on AI strategy and implementation.

Sebastian shares his thinking across several channels:

YouTube — AI strategy, change management, and the bigger questions about where this technology is heading
LinkedIn — Business AI insights and observations from the field
chedal.org — Speaking engagements, podcast appearances, advisory practice, and writing on the intersection of mathematics, science, philosophy, and AI

Meet the team

We’re a lean team of strategists, designers, and engineers, amplified by the same autonomous AI agents we build for our clients. Our human experts lead strategy, design, and client relationships. Our agents handle research, content production, analytics, and operational execution at scale.