Rich Rudzinski
Founder | Fractional CPO / CTO
We live, breath, and build technology
Since 2009 Tragic has worked with founders, small businesses, and enterprise orgs to strategize, build, and scale technology solutions of all shapes and sizes.
Brothers From Another Mother
40+ years of combined technology leadership.
A Tragic History
Supporting businesses and founders since 2009
Rich Rudzinski left his position as a javascript developer at a prominent San Diego agency to start Tragic in 2009. Rich saw a growing gap in the digital service landscape for a development agency focused on providing technical strategy backed by reliable, experienced resources.
Over the years the company's solutions and approach have evolved, but our focus in partnering with startups and growing businesses to manage their technology roadmap has not.
Experienced, Reliable, Knowledgeable
- +Design, development, and cloud resources
- +Remote, senior stacked team
- +Diverse platform and framework expertise
Partnerships and Associations
Fun Facts
Tragic's first big ongoing project was building TaylorMade Golf's marketing emails and managing their Yahoo web store.
Epic Accomplishments
Our CEO was nominated for the San Diego 2020 Top Tech Awards
Fun Facts
Our first "office" was 3 rented desks in the corner of a San Diego Drupal agency. Then for many years we occupied the historic San Diego Mayor's office. Now we are fully remote spread across the US.
Epic Accomplishments
In 2013 Tragic had the opportunity to rebuild Pixar.com after a San Diego agency outsourced the project abroad and it came back... less than Pixar ready.
Fun Facts
Though Rich and Todd both worked at Digitaria at the same time, they didn't actually get acquainted until Todd started working as a contractor for Tragic in 2012. Now you might mistake them for brothers given their nearly identical last names.
Epic Accomplishments
Tragic has been able to scale their leadership and engagement approach to partner with a wide range of companies from sole founders to enterprise organizations alike.
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Rich Rudzinski
Founder | Fractional CPO / CTO
Rich has been infatuated with computers from the time he first locked eyes on the sweet 486 Windows machine his uncle got his family in the early 90s. He broke, fixed, and gamed on that computer until he saved enough to build his own machine from scratch. The top of his class in high school, Rich followed his passion for computers while studying at UCSD where he graduated early with an innovative art/technology major (ICAM), which focused on building interactive experiences with new technologies.
After college, Rich worked as a web consultant before becoming a front-end developer at Digitaria (now the global digital agency Mirum). It was at Digitaria that Rich cut his teeth in the web industry, quickly rising to become a master of the front-end, focusing on Drupal and custom Javascript development. After a couple years, Rich began feeling constrained by the growth ceiling of his role, and decided to strike out on his own. He quickly identified a need in the industry for a trusted, scalable engineering firm to help agencies and businesses with technical website projects.
Rich created Tragic in 2009, first focusing as a white-label development consultants for agencies across the US. After several years, the company pivoted to helping growing businesses and startups solve their biggest technology challenges from websites to applications to the cloud to IoT and beyond.
Rich brings over 15+ years of enterprise software development and consulting, a focus on solving problems and streamlining processes with software, and the unique ability to translate very technical concepts to non-technical leads. Clients Rich has worked with include Under Armor, Pixar, WD-40, FIS, Benihana, Iron Man, Intel, The Baltimore Ravens, The Atlanta Falcons, Lego, Burger King, and Qualcomm.
