Jason Kiefer works in the office of the business he started with skills and contacts he made while participating in the Dan Black Program.

Long Road to Success

After 10 Years, Dan Black Student Graduates With Degree and Successful Business

May 13, 2008

By Russ L. Hudson

Jason Kiefer works hard.

Until January, the Dan Black Program in Physics and Business student took five classes at a time, worked part time as a bartender and put up to 80 hours a week into his new business, GimmeGrub.com, which has nothing to do with physics but a lot to do with business.

But all the effort has paid off. Kiefer is graduating this month with a degree in physics with an emphasis in business and a successful business already off the ground.

Entering the Program

"Physics disciplines your way of thinking," said Kiefer, explaining how he went from being a computer programmer to astronomy major to Dan Black student and now, business entrepreneur.

"It is about logic, and about having a good (knowledge) foundation and about solving problems. After graduating from Corona High School with nearly all A's, I went to a computer programming school.

"I was a computer programmer for a few years, wanted to take some interesting classes, so, in 1998, I started school again, at Cal State Fullerton," Kiefer said. "At first, I took astronomy because it interested me.

"In fact, I didn't really care if I got a degree, I just wanted to take classes that were interesting. I love to keep learning. I've been a student here for 20 straight semesters.

"But it was the physics in astronomy that caught my attention. Things like how the chemical makeup of a distant planet could be determined, and how much the planet weighed.

"So I switched my major to physics and got into the Dan Black Program, one of the first to get in. That was the best thing I could have done," the longtime student said.

How the Program Helped

"The Dan Black Program at Cal State Fullerton allowed me to explore business and entrepreneurship. My favorite part of the program was the Southern California Entrepreneurship Academy meetings that I attended on Saturdays," Kiefer said.

"In these meetings, we were able to meet the founders and CEOs of local companies. These important people that I met turned out for the most part to be regular people. This showed me that I could do it, too, and so I decided to get my idea of GimmeGrub.com going. In one of these meetings, I met the owner of Lazy Dog Café, who is now one of my clients."

"Jason Kiefer is a very personable guy. Cheery disposition. Very entrepreneurial thinker," said Roger Nanes of Fullerton, emeritus professor of physics. "I have been overseeing the Dan Black Program in Physics and Business since its inception in 1999. At that time, I wondered if we would ever actually see a successful business launch from the program. Now, GimmeGrub is making that a reality and I am pretty excited about it."

The Business Launch

GimmeGrub fits perfectly into Black's philosophy, Nanes said. "Dan set up the program to be primarily aimed at students who are interested in combining an education in a high-tech field, while at the same time pursuing a career in the business world and perhaps starting their own company, rather than pursuing advanced further education in physics. Jason and his partner are certainly high tech. They wrote the computer code and software themselves."

A hands-on opportunity to start businesses using venture capital provided by the Dan Black donation is offered for students in the program. In addition, a certain amount of financial aid is available to qualifying students.

It is that help with financial aid that helped Kiefer graduate, and the help with venture capital, he said, that gave him an edge in starting GimmeGrub.com.

Kiefer said the genesis of GimmeGrub.com was at Subs Galore in Corona, where he worked part time while also working as a computer programmer at Raytheon.

Subs Galore offered takeout, and Kiefer noticed how much time it took to take the orders and that, at times, orders could be lost when customers on the phone — put on hold while another order was being taken — hung up. His solution was to write a program that took the orders online from the Subs Galore Web site, then automatically sent the orders to a printer where staff picked them up.

"We opened it up and it was immediately popular," Kiefer recalled. "Customers loved being able to order online without interruptions, then just come over and pick it up. The staff loved the orders coming in without having to stop to answer the phone. The owner said he'd give me money for it," Kiefer recalled, grinning at his early triumph.

"Then a restaurant heard about it and they wanted it, too. That started it," he said.

Business Growth

Kiefer and Emad Farraj, a fellow Raytheon programmer, each put their money into the business. Kiefer said he named the new enterprise GimmeGrub after a "namestorming" session, and each partner started putting in endless hours per week until they started hiring staff in January. Now they have an office just off the campus at the corner of Commonwealth and Chapman avenues.

"This guy has boundless energy and initiative, and he makes good business decisions," said Black, who was so impressed, he agreed to serve on the company's board.

"He's solid. In fact, I believe if for some reason GimmeGrub doesn't just take off, he'll do something else and that will be a success. He has what it takes."

"This is now our sole income." Kiefer said, "We've been adding new clients every month for the last year, we have assistants and sales staff (and will have a summer intern from Cal State Fullerton) and we keep refining the software."

And, he said, "We're only working about 50 to 55 hours a week now. Plus classes for me, but now I'm going to graduate — after 10 years! — and even that will be easier."