It begins..

Okay, so here I am, the founder of a fabulous internet technologies company (well, at least it's fabulous to me <grin>). My "husband" and I created this company in January of 1992 and have enjoyed great success together, both professionally and personally.

So one day in 1999 I'm at the gay pride festival in West Hollywood, California wondering why I don't see more "mainstream" type businesses with booths at the festival. I mean, there MUST be lots of gay-owned/operated businesses out there that we're just not seeing (isn't privacy the nature of our culture?).

I turn to my lover of 10 years and say, "Hay, what if I wanted to get my phone system revamped, and wanted to find a gay owned business to sell a new phone system to me. How do I find them?".

The answers are limited. I could always crack open the "Gay Yellow Pages", but that covers only Southern California, and I do business with companies all over the world on a daily basis. I could grab a Frontiers Magazine, but there always seem to be more "Models" ads than business ads.

Seems to me that there should be a place where "we" can register our businesses and services FOR FREE so that we can "network" ourselves together and form tight group of peers that helps each others' businesses thrive. We could also have a simple and fair feedback system so that we could see all the great feedback about other businesses.

Okay. It's a lofty goal. But anything worth doing is worth doing right..

Hence, gaynetworking.com. Here's what we've got for you to START with, and we intend to listen to your feedback and add things as you need them.

• Chat rooms to chat with other gay business folk
• Message areas to discuss great ways to network together
• Homepage space to advertise your business on the web (or a link to your existing website)
• Member profiles so you can tell others what you're all about
• A search engine that you can enter your products and services into
• Your very own user@gaynetworking.com email address
• More!

We're using our very own Ecobuilder Software to build up the system. I hope that you will enjoy it and benefit from it...

Gregory & Randy
annex.com, Inc.