Quit your day job, and go for the gold.

That's what he did back in 1996, and today the company that blossomed from his little "side project"--designing websites for the companies of family friends--is one of the largest and fastest-growing web design firms in the Silicon Valley, earning annual revenues in the millions.

With the exception of college, Nelson has lived in Los Gatos all his life, attending Blossom Hill and Louise Van Meter elementary schools, Raymond J. Fisher Middle School and Los Gatos High, where he graduated in 1990. He worked odd jobs at Rural Supply Hardware and as a bagger at Lunardi's grocery store.

He attended West Valley College for one year and then San Diego State, majoring in psychology and minoring in business. In college he met his future wife Brandy. After graduation the couple moved back to Los Gatos. After a short stint working in facilities and marketing at Symantec, Nelson took a job in the family business, the De La Cruz Deli in Santa Clara.

At the time, the deli was mainly serving lunch and catering to the employees of surrounding companies, but the owners wanted to streamline operations and increase marketing efforts, as well as expand the business to become Freedom Hall and Gardens on the weekends--an all-inclusive wedding and banquet facility. Nelson came on board to help with the computer system and design a website for the restaurant and wedding hall.

"I oversaw marketing and set them up with computers and networks; I brought them into the 20th century," Nelson says. "I was grabbing some experience doing graphic designing. I [taught myself] HTML and Photoshop and Dreamweaver for developing websites."

One day, Nelson found himself looking at the site for one of the business' insurance companies.

"I approached them to redesign their site. They thought it would be a great idea," Nelson says.

Nelson delivered a brand new website, and the business fell in love with what he created. Eventually its managers told another business about his work, which also asked Nelson to redesign its site.

"After a year or so, I had so many referrals, and I was getting better and better, improving my skills. I got so much better at designing," he says. "I was really enjoying it, so I decided to try and do it full-time."

Nelson remembers how his wife, six months pregnant with their first child, was a bit scared at the idea of him quitting his job with a baby on the way, but Nelson was confident.

"You get to the point when you have to follow your dreams," he says.

He started out working from home as a sole proprietor, and everything seemed to go so well that he incorporated the business as Online Design Inc. in 1998.

In time he moved into office space in the Campbell Community Center and began expanding. He hired his first employee in August 2000. That employee is still with him today, as his creative director. His workforce now consists of 12 full-time employees and five part-time workers who specialize in various areas of development.

Nelson is proud his company is one of the few that survived the burst of the Internet bubble in the late 1990s.

"After the dot-com crash, a lot of companies in our industry were no longer around because they grew too fast and expanded before the business was really there for them," he says.

There were other perks, such as not having investors looking over his shoulder trying to run the business.

"That's one reason why you go into business for yourself--you can make the decisions on your own," he says.

Apparently, he made the right ones--not only did Online Design survive when others died, The Business Journal declared it one of the fastest-growing private companies in Silicon Valley in 2002 and 2003. Online Design made the top four on the publication's list of the largest web design firms in the area, in terms of the number of sites created, fours years in a row.

"We knew if we survived, we would be one of the strongest companies around, and we are," Nelson says.

Nelson says Online Design is an enjoyable working environment and that translates into satisfied customers.

"We enjoy it, and everyone has fun," he says. "We don't have the drama of some of the larger corporations. Plus, it stays interesting because we have such a variety of clients--but we make sure each client feels like they're our only client. If we've done that, then we've succeeded on our customer service goals, and we continue to produce top-quality work."

Nelson says Online Design has expanded from creating only websites to filling an entire spectrum of marketing needs for its customers--print materials, logos, trade show booth designs, email marketing campaigns and more. It provides website and email hosting for 95 percent of its clients. It can also personalize email blasts and other full-scale marketing campaigns.

Online Design has now provided services for every kind of business, from the small shop to the Fortune 500 company. Local clients include the Fitness Clinic of Los Gatos, the Tandoori Oven restaurant, the Los Gatos Athletic Club, and a full branding campaign including logos and websites for the Forbes Mill Steakhouse. Larger clients include San José State University, LIFE magazine, the American Cancer Society and Adobe Systems.

"We'll continue to grow," Nelson says, referring to the next 10 years. "I'll have more people on staff that handle all the day-to-day business."

Nelson says his wife and his two children--his son Cole, 5, and his daughter Bailey, 2 1/2--are number one on his list of priorities. "I really try to balance everything--friends, family, fun--and be home by 6 o'clock for dinner every night," he says. "That's another benefit of owning your own company--when I ask the 'boss' for time off, he usually says yes."

Nelson says Brandy runs a home sales business and is a stay-at-home mom, and he's happy to see his children attending the same schools he went to as a child. "Los Gatos is a great town; it's a great place to raise a family," he says.

Nelson says his secret to success is "to follow your dreams and do what you love to do. That's what brought me here today."

For more information, Online Design is located at 16268 Los Gatos Blvd. Suite 102, Los Gatos or visit at www.odweb.com.