Jason Kulpa, 34, had a longer journey on his way to leading the hottest startup in San Diego than just the move he made from Scottsdale, Arizona, to Southern California.

Along the way to taking online marketing firm Underground Elephant to the top of the San Diego Business Journal’s list of fastest-growing private companies, Kulpa lived in his mother’s car, then moved up to a relative’s couch, and finally onto a cot at the office where he worked.

He helped build that business into a multimillion-dollar firm, started and sold a second company, and finally launched Underground Elephant. Through it all, he remembered: “There is no button on the computer that says I can’t. There’s just the button that says I haven’t figured it out yet.”

In 2001, he was out of college and making a decent living selling cell phones. But the attacks of September 11 brought home to him, even though he was far from Ground Zero, "not to take for granted any time on this earth.” So he left his job and headed to California with no plans but to search for “something deeper.”

He wound up living in the backseat of a Nissan Maxima and checking into hourly motels just to get a shower. At some points, he thought about tucking tail and running back to Scottsdale. He even scraped together a pile of quarters for a pay phone call to his father.

His dad found him that couch, and Kulpa tracked down a job at Visium Solutions involving email marketing. Within a few months, the company shifted to using the Internet for sales-lead generation, Kulpa got an olive-drab Army cot, and he eventually was promoted to president. He helped grow Visium from about $500,000 in revenue per year to $30 million to $40 million.

In February 2003, he left and took some time in Hawaii, coming back to San Diego about six months later to form Ad Authority Inc., a student-loan lead-generation company he would sell to Morlex, Inc., for $10 million in July 2008.

Kulpa didn’t stay still for long. He’d had this idea that he could found a company that could reverse-engineer Internet advertising from the end user to the production of advertising.

And Underground Elephant was born.

“The elephant part of it is that we remember exactly what’s been successful,” he said. “We have solved that in our way and we continue to take market share because of it.” Revenues have grown 3,000 percent since the company was launched, hitting $40 million over the time of its existence when you take into account the $24 million Kulpa expects to pull in this year.

In addition to placing first on the San Diego fastest-growing companies list, Kulpa's company has earned an A- rating from the Better Business Bureau. And an employee says on Glassdoor, the site where employees review their employers: "I would ask our management team to keep being innovative and to keep asking for our opinions. Your voice really does matter at Underground Elephant."

It’s a long way from sleeping in a car, but looking back, Kulpa says, “I’m glad I made that leap.”