In 1996, four years into his first job working at a water utility company, Jason fielded a phone call from his post-college roommate, Jerry McGee, who was working at a Newport Beach ad agency.
Jerry asked Jason,
"Hey – do you know any of our bros that can do a website?"
After a bit of a pause, Jason responded,
"Yes. I can do it."
"No… seriously," says Jerry, "this is for a real client of mine, and I'm in a new job. I need to find someone that can really do this right."
"I can do it," Jason said.
After some back and forth on the phone and without any real backup plan, Jerry agreed to give Jason the business.
"I will charge you $5,000.00 to do the site," Jason says. "And I need $2,500.00 down to get started."
Jerry and the ad agency he worked for agreed to the price and a $2,500.00 check came in the mail (to his parents home). With optimism and a "can do" attitude (that's still around today), Jason used that money to buy his first computer.
As you might suspect, Jason fought through and developed his first website. Then he did another one. Then another one… and another one. Working nights and weekends became the norm for several years as Jason held his "real job" at the water company and did websites at night. Finally, in 1999, Jason rented a 300 square foot office above Diedrich Coffee House on 17th Street in Costa Mesa, CA and put a sign on the door, "Golden State Communications" – the picture below is from an open house in 1999 after the company had 3 employees and a dozen clients.
As the company grew and added employees, it kept taking more office space in the retail business strip center. As a matter of fact, from 1999 until 2014 we saw 6 different coffee shops come and go as the anchor tenant in the complex since Diedrich Coffee closed its retail stores (sold to Starbucks). Some of you that have been around Orange County, CA for a while will remember Diedrich Coffee. Today, that location is held by the very successful Nekter Juice Bar (nice people and good clients of ours, too) but we have moved to a larger location.
Today, GoldenComm's headquarters is walking distance from John Wayne Airport in sunny Newport Beach. We're in our own stand-alone building, equipped with fiber optics from street to desktop. The building also has a state-of-the-art computer lab (for employees and customers), a library, a video studio, a large sized conference room and is home to 40+ local wildly talented employees that live in the Orange County area.
We also have development offices just outside Wroclaw, Poland and in Pune, India. Being on three continents gives us a 24/7 work cadence that makes us very competitive – we would love to talk to you about what we can do for you – give us a call, anytime.