One of the biggest hurdles any start-up business has to jump is finding space to house a new company. When he went looking for office space, Gregg Steiner realized that what was available just wasn’t going to work for his young company. So Steiner who, with his cousin Alan Finkel, owns WildMind Public Relations, decided to use technology to create his own solution for their Sherman Oaks enterprise. He created a virtual company with all employees and partners working from their homes and linked technologically. “I was working for Lowermybills.com (for almost a year), then I told the founder of the company I wanted to start my own P.R. firm. That was in July of this year. He was very supportive and said he would sign on and be a client of ours. “We started looking for office space and realized it was extremely expensive, something like $3,000 a month for a very small space. And we thought it was just too much risk, especially since we had to sign a one-year lease. That was a minimum of $36,000 a year plus you had to furnish it, pay for parking, insurance, a cleaning service and a lot of other expenses. It could cost from $50,000 to $100,000 a year for office space for a small company. “So I got DSL and a new and better computer, plus an all-in-one fax/copier/printer and used one of the extra bedrooms in my house [as an office]. I spent about $300 for the printer and $1,400 for the computer. “The company started in August (with Lowermybills.com as the first customer) and right away we got another client: NetCatalyst. We got them the same month we started the company. The next month we got another account. We’re about to sign on our fourth client and have meetings on the horizon for possibly the fifth and sixth clients. “We hired our first employee in October. He does general P.R. work such as pitching stores, doing research on competitors, database management and answering and making calls. “And we’re all virtual. We all have Microsoft’s MSN Message service, which is a free chat service you can download and use to communicate. You send a message and it pops up on the screen [of the recipient] immediately. We can send files, then open them and work on a press release at the same time. “We also all have cameras above our computer screens so we can see each other. The camera enables us to have human interaction, so we’re not stuck in an office all day not seeing anyone. “Probably the biggest challenge is getting things you might need from each other. We have to drive all over to get something like a press kit or folder, the things you can’t send through e-mail. That makes it challenging. But it’s a small (challenge).”