A sincere Thank You for your support
What started out as a hobby and passion for a 24-year-old recent college graduate turned into a career, and a thriving business in the Twin Cities, Minnesota area.
How It All Began
Jessi Gurr, owner and lead website developer of Minneapolis-based website development company, Iceberg Web Design, started learning to hand-code websites at the age of 12 (in 1993). In the days of AOL, GeoCities, and dial-up internet connection, Jessi spent hours in front of a text editor online creating personal web pages – just for fun. Think: black backgrounds, lime green text, tables with red borders, and animated gifs everywhere.
Remember the <font> tag? <marquee>? (Yeah, those were the days…)
A few years later, Jessi began publishing her own freelance website projects. In college, she gained real experience with PHP and content management systems while working as the webmaster for student-run college radio, KUMM. During her five years at the University of Minnesota, Morris, Jessi gained life and work skills that allowed her to turn her hobby into a career.
Shortly after turning in an impromptu resignation notice at her full-time job, Jessi took out a small business loan, drafted a business plan, and consulted with a business attorney. On May 20th, 2005, Iceberg Hosting, LLC was officially born.
The business focused on selling website hosting service, and a customer base was built one client at a time. Advertising consisted of direct mail postcards, newspaper advertisements, and long hours at 6 area County Fairs the first two years. Iceberg gained 6 clients in the first 7 months, and by the end of 2006 the client list had grown to 24.
Jessi had been working part-time managing the local Food Co-op during Iceberg’s first three years. By mid-2008, it became apparent that the business deserved full-time attention, and Jessi left her part-time job to focus entirely on growing Iceberg’s client base and services provided. Word of mouth and referrals accounted for nearly all of the business growth in the first three years – and in fact, that is still Iceberg’s main source of new business today. By the end of 2008, Iceberg had more than 50 website hosting and design clients, 90% of which were located in the Morris, Minnesota area.
In 2009, Iceberg relocated to Anoka, Minnesota. Iceberg was also re-branded as Iceberg Web Design, and a new logo and website were launched shortly after the move. The company quickly started to grow – again primarily by word of mouth, referrals, and networking, and become well known in Anoka and the northern Twin Cities suburbs. We still hold close relationships with our clients in Morris, and communicate with many of them daily.
Steady Business Growth
In 2010, Jessi started hiring contractors to help with overflow. Iceberg took on its first additional employee at the end of 2013. Since then, the company has continued to grow. In 2015, we opened up a second location at the IDS Center in Minneapolis, and rebranded once more with an updated, more modern logo:
Today, Iceberg has a small, dedicated staff, and we have plans to add two additional full-time positions this year. Our mission is to be a leader in modern website development, and to provide excellent support to our existing and new customers.
Thank you!
Without support from the community and our customers, we would not be where we are today. We truly appreciate each and every one of our customers, and strive to be among the top website service providers for quality and customer support.
