Moving to Silicon Valley

We started developing software and created programs that marketed real estate and worked on other products. But Vermont was 20 years behind California. There was no market. We were struggling. Dr. Kim realized we needed to be in Silicon Valley, where the action was. After making a trip in 1985, we relocated with everything we had, including the 12 people on our team. I got a job with FMC - Central Engineering Laboratories - and Dr. Kim and everybody else got day jobs. As we got on our feet we started reorganizing the company that became Lighthouse. Everything was ten times more expensive than in Vermont. We could barely afford anything.

But Dr. Tae Yun Kim was always positive and high spirited and said, “we’ll make it happen.” “He can do, she can do, why not me!”  We found a studio to rent to teach martial arts. On the first day we opened the new Jung SuWon martial arts academy we had over 89 students. From that day it continued to grow. Then we opened our first Lighthouse office. At first, we contracted ourselves out to other companies like HP.

Then we started to developing engineering solutions for contamination monitoring used in what is known as “cleanrooms.” They are used in semiconductor, pharmaceutical, data storage, biotechnology, aerospace and defense industry plants.