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Celebrating 40 Years
1986 to 2026. Four Decades of Keeping Southern California Businesses Running
GenCare was built by people who learned early that technology only matters when it helps real work get done. Forty years on, that is still the whole idea. We are marking four decades the way it was earned: one client, one late night, one solved problem at a time.
How It Started
Our story begins before the company had a name. In the early 1980s, co-founder Randy worked a full-time night job and spent his days learning to code wherever he could. He slept on the floor of a friend’s place and wrote software late into the night, chasing one question: how could computers actually support a business, not just run programs?
In 1984 that question turned practical. Randy helped a small Northern California business build an application their staff genuinely liked. The software was never the problem. Access was. With a single computer in the office, people were competing for time on it. So Randy started experimenting with early networking tools. Most of them failed. One finally worked, and it taught him the lesson the company still runs on: shared systems only work when they are reliable, understandable, and built around real people.
From Foundation to Resilience
1985
Word traveled. Novell began referring Randy into larger organizations that were standing up their first networks and needed steady, practical help, not just an installer. By 1985 he had earned his network certification, signed personally by Novell’s CEO. Around the same time, Nancy joined as co-founder. Together they answered nonstop service calls from a modest office, day and night, taking on whatever work clients needed.
1986
In 1986, GenCare officially began. The company incorporated that May and sold its first services that summer. Randy and Nancy set up the books, defined the departments, and ran operations from a dining room table while they waited for office space. From day one the business ran on responsiveness, follow-through, and doing the work correctly rather than chasing trends.
1991
Tested Early, and It Held
The foundation was tested in 1991, when an industry downturn forced hard choices. Instead of pulling back on their commitments, Randy and Nancy protected payroll, rent, and vendors first.
They took personal lean years so the business, and the people who depended on it, could keep going. That was the stretch when they decided GenCare should become something that could outlast its founders, laying the groundwork for the employee-owned future that would define the company for decades ahead.
Owned by the People Who Do the Work
They looked hard at selling the company. Then, as the story goes, Nancy woke up from a nap with a clearer answer: the strongest future was not an outside buyer, it was the people already doing the work. Neither of them had planned to build an employee-owned company. They had not even heard of an ESOP. But it fit what they believed in: continuity, accountability, and shared responsibility.
So Randy and Nancy sold the company to its employees and set out the values that still guide decisions today. Ever since, GenCare has been owned by its team. New staff receive shares without paying for them, and are paid out for that value when they move on. It is a simple structure with a lasting effect. When everyone is an owner, the best people tend to stay: in engineering, accounting, sales, and purchasing.
Four Decades of Change, One Approach
Technology has not sat still for forty years, and neither have we. Through the 1990s, as Novell gave way to Microsoft, GenCare managed the shift for clients: swapping servers, migrating files and email, and training staff through it. In the 2010s and 2020s the same thing happened with the move to the cloud. In recent years the work has turned to formalizing security for clients of every size, down to the smallest offices around Los Angeles.
The platforms kept changing. The method did not: prepare carefully, plan the work, test before committing, and steer clients clear of the pitfalls so change feels manageable instead of risky. Somewhere in the 2000s that discipline became a service in its own right, when GenCare moved from the old break-fix model into managed IT, preventing problems instead of waiting for the call.
“One of the things that has kept us with General Networks is that they have grown with us. Technology has changed, and changed fast. Our key to negotiating those changes is General Networks, because they were always a step ahead.”
40 Years, and Still Picking Up the Phone
More than four decades after those late-night coding sessions, GenCare is still focused on the same goal it started with: helping organizations work with fewer interruptions, clearer communication, and a long-term partner they can trust. Thank you to every client and every employee-owner who built these forty years with us. Here is to what comes next.
Timeline: 1986 to 2026
1984
A first business application in Northern California, and the networking experiments that pointed to the future.
1985
Randy earns his Novell network certification, signed by Novell’s CEO. Nancy joins as co-founder.
1986
GenCare incorporates in May and sells its first services that summer.
1991
An industry downturn tests the company. The founders protect payroll, rent, and vendors first.
1990s
Guiding clients through the shift from Novell to Microsoft.
2005
Randy and Nancy retire and sell to the employees.
2018
Growth through acquisition creates new opportunities for the next generation of leaders, mentored by predecessors.
2026 year
Celebrating 40 years in business.
