Think back to where you were and what you were doing 10 years ago. Maybe you were in graduate school, maybe even high school, or perhaps you had just started your first lab and were working out how to transition from being a postdoc to being a leader of a scientific team. It’s likely that a lot has changed for you in the intervening time. For us at Cell Stem Cell the same is also true. Ten years ago during May (the time of writing both this editorial and the very first one), we were working frantically to finalize the content for our launch issue. For editors, especially, but also for the entire team, launching a new journal is an exciting but very stressful experience. We are a little frantic again this year, too, putting together all of the materials and plans for this tenth anniversary issue, but this time against the backdrop of a wealth of material to look back on and digest.