<h1>Lucky13</h1> <p>Josh and Justin Gauerke just wanted to serve their clients when they opened Meta 13. Today they have a new location, a new partner, and a national footprint.</p> <h3>By Whitney Ditlevson</h3> <h3>Photos by Joel Butkowski, BDI photography</h3>
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n 2004, brothers Josh and Justin Gauerke learned that the company they worked for was downsizing. Digital Green planned to shift its focus, eliminating their web development division. Motivated by what the brothers saw as potential, and determined to continue providing services for their clients, they purchased a book of business from Digital Green and started a new company they called Meta 13. <h5>PHASE I</h5> “We both worked at Digital Green, and as the company divested our division, we
still thought it was a viable business,” Josh said. They approached Digital Green with the idea of continuing to provide service to existing web development clients. Digital Green agreed to sell the division to the brothers. “The process was fairly quick,” Josh said. “We met a lawyer, filed some papers to incorporate, and came to an agreement with Digital Green. Justin got about a month head start while I finished up some projects.” “We received a small line of credit from Wells Fargo,” Justin said. “Since we had a book of business and we didn’t need large amounts
of machinery to run our company, operating costs were covered with the work at hand.” “The nice thing about our business -- there is not a terrible amount of overhead other than payroll. Justin and I had saved enough to strike a deal with Digital Green to buy a few computers and have them forward department inquiries for a period of time,” Josh said. “We did get company credit cards right off the bat to pay for some services, but we didn’t have a crazy amount invested.”
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