Spring Quarter marks crunch time for many Northwestern seniors, who spend the last 10 weeks of their college lives getting resumes together and applying for full-time jobs.

But for Weinberg senior Dustin Gellman, the search for a job was over before it ever began.

Gellman soon will take over Goldfish Design (www.goldfishinc.com), an Internet company that he and two other NU students—Weinberg senior Campbell Rankin and Weinberg sophomore Sara Urist—started about a year and a half ago.

The company, which was founded in December 1998 and formally incorporated in June 1999, is one of Evanston’s youngest Internet companies. Each founding student contributed $500 for start-up costs, while Rankin’s uncle did the legal work for free, Urist said.

The company’s headquarters are in Gellman’s three-bedroom Evanston apartment, although many employees work elsewhere on their own time. The students usually gather at local restaurants for company meetings, Gellman said.

Since its incorporation, Goldfish Design has grown to include 19 employees. Fifteen of them are current Northwestern students, but the company also has associates in Atlanta and Ann Arbor, Mich.

“Basically, we’re doing this with the genius of some of the very talented people here at NU,” Gellman said.

The company, which has earned about $30,000 during the past year, serves more than a dozen clients and is looking to expand.

“The goal of our company is to do Web development and design better because there has been a huge flood of crap on the Internet—a flood of shoddy work,” Gellman said.

The company focuses on Web site design but also functions as an Internet service provider. It recently expanded to include Web site hosting, Gellman said. While the subject of many of Goldfish’s sites is real estate, others focus on topics like bars and scuba diving.

Gellman said he began designing Web sites while in high school in Ann Arbor and worked in real estate during the summers. His experience as a licensed real estate agent made him realize that the business is always changing. The connection between real estate and the Internet seemed natural, he said.

Goldfish plans to offer real estate agents a medium where they can make their information easily accessible and updated, Gellman said. The company also plans to develop a real estate network.

The company’s first client was Gellman’s mentor, Gary Lillie. Lillie hired Goldfish Design to make a web site for his Ann Arbor real estate company, Gary Lillie & Associates (www.garylillie.com).

“The Web site has made all the difference in the world for my business,” Lillie said.

Lillie said he found the student-run company to be very professional and personal, and he has referred it to many of his associates.

Gellman said he plans to make Goldfish Design his full-time job next year. He has already turned down a couple of job offers for $60,000 a year and hopes to do at least $100,000 in business with Goldfish in the next year.

“I’m getting an article a week from my mom or from my grandmother saying, ‘Did you see the kid who made $8 million doing Web design?'” Gellman said. “I told them to stop sending me articles and I would do (Web design) myself.”

One of the biggest challenges faced by Goldfish employees has been juggling the duties of being a full-time student with working for their own company.

“It’s king of interesting because you’re half in academia and half in the real world,” said David Laskowski, a McCormick junior and the technical services director for Goldfish Design.

For many Goldfish staffers, being self-employed has meant schoolwork has not always been a top priority.

“My grades have suffered a little,” Urist said, “but I think that a couple of GPA points will be made up by having helped form my own company.”

Goldfish employees often work 20 to 30 hours a week in order to meet deadlines for projects, she said.

“I have two majors and a minor, and it’s been very difficult to balance an average of 30 hours a week at Goldfish with going to school,” Gellman said. “My grades have gone down a bit.”

Working long hours together, the company’s employees have developed a very tight-knit relationship, Urist said.

“It’s pretty exciting,” said Hunter Morris, a McCormick freshman and the systems administrator for Goldfish. “Who knows where we can go (from here).”