Global telecommunications company chooses to stay local

The co-founder of a telecom and VoIP company that provides services internationally says he keeps his company in D.C. for a large number of reasons, and not just because the federal government is based here.

Guy Jazynka of GlobalPhone Corporation has been based in the Greater Washington region for more than 20 years.

“There’s a lot of opportunity here. Not just with the government space … we do very little government business actually, so there’s just a lot going on here, culturally, diversity[-wise],” he told What’s Working in Washington.

Jazynka has also worked to include immigrants in his company. “We’ve sponsored a total of five different immigrant families from all different regions of the world,” he said.

“They have been extremely important to where we are today. It’s been a great process,” he said. He added they’re “very talented people that we bring in, not that there aren’t talented people here, but for small businesses it can be very difficult and cost prohibitive to reach out to the locals,” he said.

Jazynka said D.C. is great at promoting an international culture, but one of the main issues is that Americans generally “don’t go after a lot of these different markets in these different countries.” He said that while other countries are likely to expand business in what they may see as unstable markets; Americans are more hesitant.

For small businesses, Jazynka said that much of the area’s opportunity can be found in focusing on user experience. “The opportunity for small businesses is really on the customer side,” he said.

Small businesses also have the benefit of not having to follow rigid procedure, allowing them to be more flexible with their customers, he said. “People like that. Not only do we have personal relationships with a lot of our clients, but our customer service people have personal relationships with our clients, which is invaluable,” Jazynka said.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.