We're digital geeks who love what we do

Tragic Media is a technology company based in San Diego, focused on building and supporting complex custom digital properties.

We are a talented and seasoned team, focused on expertly crafted digital experiences built on enterprise, open source technologies. Each member of the team brings a unique set of skills and years of experience. We work collaboratively out of our small office in the Gaslamp District, ensuring each project we tackle is built to the highest standards with attention to budget and timeline.

We don't cut corners by using poorly constructed 'pre-built' solutions, junior resources, or outsourcing overseas. We take pride in our work, and help our clients get the most value from their digital investments through our iterative project build approach and growth-driven maintenance. We work hard to feel like an "in-house team" for our clients, providing our years of expertise to everyone from startups to global brands alike.

 

 

A Tragic History

Tragic Media was founded in 2009 by Rich Rudzinski after leaving his job at a large national agency in San Diego. Rich saw the backwards infrastructure, high cost, and sub-par client services of traditional agencies. He knew costs were bloated because of high salaries for upper management, fueled only by the sales cycle, and supported by low level employees or offshore resources. These agencies were built as soulless sales machines aimed to make the most profits for their C-level members, with little regard for employees or clients.

Instead, Rich wanted to create a new kind of digital company: small, agile, and stacked with passionate, and experienced team members. He wanted his company to be focused on technology to support and grow his clients digital infrastructures. He wanted his company to build "large agency" quality products with "boutique agency" client services, and he wanted Tragic's rates to be reasonable, and scalable to help companies of all sizes transform their digital presence and grow online.

Over the last 8 years, Rich has built a team of expert developers, designers, and product/project managers- all of whom are excited about building beautiful and functional websites for any industry, any size, and any budget. We take pride in producing quality work, and treating our clients like family. 

 

Partnerships and Associations

  • Drupal Association
  • Hubspot Partner
  • Google Cloud Partner
  • Avalara Partner

Leadership Team

Teamwork makes the dream work.

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Rich Rudzinski

Digital Warlock

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Todd Budzinski

Web Wizard

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Danielle Lemons

Operations Unicorn

Todd Budzinski

Web Wizard

Todd is our back-end web wizard. He has more than 10+ years of experience in programming professional websites and applications, specializing in languages such as PHP and Python; frameworks like Drupal and Laravel; and has extensive server experience building lean cloud-based infrastructures. He spends time keeping up with the latest advances in digital technologies and back-end frameworks to ensure Tragic is always leveraging bleeding-edge tech to produce modern, high performance applications.

Todd's career started to take off while working at Digitaria (now the global agency Mirum), where he gained exposure working with large brands like Taylor Guitars, Qualcomm, SAIC, and Petco. His next career move was to Business.com where he became one of the most valued engineers on the team. Todd left Business.com to work as a consultant for several agencies in San Diego. He first started working with Tragic as a consultant way back in 2011, and helped continously over the years as we grew until coming on-board full-time as Tragic's lead engineer.

Todd is an avid video gamer and can be found playing games on Steam or Battle.net. He also likes to travel the world and has visited many countries including Thailand, Singapore, Laos and Malaysia.

Don't let your project turn into a tragedy.