Gerris Corp was founded as a boutique virtual company

Neither my first agency, Abraham Harrison, nor my current shop, Gerris Corp, aspired to officing, be it the entrepreneurial ladder that only ever works from home as part of the origin story, the goal being a desk at a WeWork and then then a shared office, maybe lost deep in a office park, with the ultimate goal of prime real estate in a tower or a chic refurbished campus playground. Not Gerris, never AH.

The funny thing is that while my first partner, Mark Harrison, took full advantage of the fact that, in a virtual company, location doesn't matter at all, both my current partner, Dan Kruger, and I are complete homebodies. What a completely distributed company offers, innately--and I'll be honest--is the baseline savings of the time associated with commuting as well as the duplicate expenses, as the business owner, of maintaining an office space I would never use anyway as well as maintaining a home office as well.

So, it's practical. And it's also a very powerful equalizer. And since 80% of all our interactions outside of our partnership are transacted as services instead of employments or as employees. Most services are transactional and we maintain quite a bit of an referral network so around 20% of all our revenue happens as a result of just making good references and passing on requests to the best person for the job. At least in DC, or the East Coast, referral fees are pretty commonplace.

Abraham Harrison started as a consulting company but transitioned into a digital agency as the company grew and the company became much more than just the talents and services offered by the founding partners, Mark Harrison and me. As we evolved, we transitioned more and more into being an influencer marketing company instead of being an amalgam of services including technology, strategy, search, application development, reputation management, and even training, blogging, and social media marketing.

But, for better or for worse, at Gerris, we have done so many diverse things, including giant SEO projects, launching an entire online community cum publication focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain. Now, we tend to stick with our core: Dan directs the influencer marketing campaigns and I drive the ORM, search, and social business.