A rising tide raises all boats.
When Gene Crusie founded his company almost three decades ago, he did so with his personal mantra in mind: leave the world better than you found it. Twenty-six years later, Gene’s company has grown from a staff of 17 to the team of roughly 400 that makes up Surf Internet today. Many companies are built around profit, but it’s obvious to anyone who has even a short conversation with Gene that Surf Internet’s efforts to expand fiber internet access to underserved, rural regions are rooted in something deeper.
If you take a peek inside Surf Internet’s boardroom, meetings don’t start the way you may expect. They don’t lead with profit summaries or high-level strategies. Instead, Gene begins each meeting by grounding the discussion in Surf Internet’s four values:
- Reliability
- Integrity
- Innovation
- Illumination
And it’s clear these aren’t just bullet points recited in the boardroom.
Gene describes broadband internet as a “great equalizer.” To explain what he means, he references the ripple effects of rural electrification in the 1930s. When people in rural and underserved areas gained access to electricity, the country saw a boom in innovation – from toasters to washing machines – that helped shape everyday life as we know it today.
Access created opportunity. Opportunity sparked innovation.
Gene envisions what’s possible when internet speed is no longer a barrier. The technologies and discoveries that can come from greater access, he believes, have the potential to “unlock innovations that will make a positive, lasting impact on the world.”
Until that full vision comes to fruition, Gene points to the everyday impacts he and his team see as Surf Internet becomes established across three Great Lakes states. He shares the personal example of a family member who, because of illness, could no longer go out into public. Access to fiber-optic internet helped keep that person connected to family, community, and the broader world, improving their quality of life in ways that might otherwise have been out of reach.
Then there’s LACASA, an organization dedicated to affordable housing. Surf Internet partnered with LACASA to provide fiber-optic broadband to families living in its properties. Multiply the number of residents by the years of internet access Surf Internet has provided, and it becomes difficult to quantify the ripple effects in the lives of those individuals and the communities they’re part of.
With values so firmly grounded in community – and so many events and organizations throughout their service area that could help put those values into action – you may ask the same question we did: Why did Surf Internet choose to support the Swim for Grand Traverse Bay?
The connection began years ago, when Gene and his team came to northwest Michigan to bid on a contract. They fell in love with the region, and it soon became a vacation destination for many of them. As their own connections to northern Michigan grew stronger, they recognized that the entire ecosystem that makes this region so special – our economy, our community, and our way of life – depends on the health of the waters that flow around and throughout it.
And now, Gene’s team is more than just visitors who share our love of northern Michigan’s waters.
While visiting northern Michigan for the Mackinaw Island Swim and the Swim for Grand Traverse Bay, Gene, an avid open-water swimmer, noticed that many rural communities throughout the region still lacked access to high-speed internet.
In 2026, Surf Internet opened an office in Petoskey. Gene promises that as the company continues to put down roots in northern Michigan, we’ll see more of his team in our local communities.
It’s a promise fueled by a vision for equal access and innovation – and carried out with genuine care for the people and places that make our region so wonderful. For Surf Internet, that means investing in the communities they serve and helping protect the waters that connect all of us.
“We try to think of others before ourselves… in this case, thinking about clean water and maintaining this beautiful natural resource that is so impactful in our community… there’s a whole ecosystem that depends on the Great Lakes, and somebody’s got to be the ambassador and advocate.”