Tagged: california
30 results
UMe Tea
UMe Tea is a California-based bubble tea chain founded in 2019 by former Silicon Valley engineer Jiachun 'Summer' Li. Built around fruit-forward, less-sugary recipes tuned to American palates, the brand pairs handcrafted drinks and snacks with viral marketing - most notably a surprise bunny plushie hidden in the bottom of its cups. Bootstrapped and profitable for its first four years, UMe grew to roughly 30 Bay Area stores before raising a $10M Series A led by Conductive Ventures in 2025 to fund team-building and regional expansion.
Outreach Grid
Outreach Grid is an Irvine, California software company building a unified platform that helps cities, counties, service agencies, outreach workers, and law enforcement collaborate to understand and end homelessness. Founded in 2016 by Tiffany Pang-Cadengo and John Cadengo under parent company Appledore, its coordinated-entry system spans street outreach, case management, shelter and bed matching, housing navigation, and Point-in-Time counts - turning fragmented field notes into shared, actionable data used by more than 23 municipalities across the United States.
wildwonder
wildwonder is a San Francisco-based functional beverage company making sparkling prebiotic and probiotic drinks inspired by the Chinese herbal healing tonics founder Rosa Li grew up drinking. Each organic, vegan, low-sugar can pairs 5g of prebiotic plant fiber and live probiotics with herbs, botanicals, and fruit flavors like Guava Rose and Mango Gold. Positioned as a better-for-you soda alternative, the brand has sold millions of cans across thousands of retailers, landed a Shark Tank deal with DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, and directs 5% of profits toward empowering women and marginalized communities.
Jing Zhu
Jing Zhu is the Founder and CEO of Duet (Dashboard Story, Inc.), a B2B SaaS platform built for non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) providers across the United States. A Cornell PhD-turned-Berkeley MBA, she spent a decade in corporate healthcare before founding Duet — first as a neighborhood carpooling app, then pivoting to a full-stack dispatching and billing platform that helps wheelchair, stretcher, and ambulatory transport operators run leaner and get paid faster. Based in San Francisco, Zhu leads a 12-person team and has raised $120K in seed funding.
Jon O'Bryan
Jon O'Bryan is the CEO and Co-founder of Atlas (YC W22), an AI-first customer support platform built to replace legacy tools like Zendesk and Intercom. A PhD physicist turned serial entrepreneur, Jon previously co-founded PadSplit - a co-living marketplace that housed 23,000 people across 18 U.S. cities - and Blanket Homes. At Atlas, he is on a mission to transform customer support from a cost center into a revenue driver, bringing together session recording, omnichannel ticketing, AI copilot, and customer timeline tools in a single ergonomic platform backed by Y Combinator and angel investors including Parker Conrad (Rippling), Jack Altman (Lattice), and Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox).
Jon Sibley
Jon Sibley is the Founder and CEO of TrueBuilt Software, an AI-native preconstruction platform headquartered in Huntington Beach, California. A former NCAA Division I water polo player at UC Berkeley and Team USA competitor, Sibley translated elite-sport discipline into enterprise software sales at Quid and Visa before founding TrueBuilt in July 2022. The company raised a $4 million seed round in 2023 led by Bienville Capital with participation from Fifth Wall, and in late 2025 acquired Capabuild — a mobile field documentation platform — driving a 124% revenue increase in three months post-close. TrueBuilt consolidates what was once a fragmented 6-8 tool preconstruction workflow into a single AI-powered platform serving general contractors and subcontractors.
LEVEL
LEVEL is a science-driven cannabis company that engineers precision cannabinoid tablets - Protab, Hashtab, Rosintab and Tablingual - designed to deliver effects-specific experiences without sugar, calories or guesswork. Founded in 2015 by organic chemist Chris Emerson, PhD, LEVEL manufactures in California and has become the state's leading cannabis tablet brand.
Nitricity
Nitricity is a Fremont, California climate-tech company turning air, water, renewable electricity and discarded almond shells into organic nitrogen fertilizer. Its flagship product, Ash Tea, replaces fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers with a regionally produced, OMRI- and CDFA-certified alternative that cuts emissions by more than 90%. Founded in 2018 by three Stanford PhDs, the company closed a $50M Series B in September 2025 and is building its first commercial plant in Delhi, California.
Dan Cook
Dan Cook is the CEO, Co-founder, and Investor at Lyten Inc, a San Jose-based deep-tech company pioneering 3D Graphene supermaterial and next-generation lithium-sulfur batteries. With over three decades spanning General Motors, NeXT Computer (under Steve Jobs), Bay Networks/Nortel, and private equity at Cerberus Capital, Cook pivoted to found Lyten in 2015 around a serendipitous discovery: trying to turn methane into clean hydrogen, the team accidentally created a revolutionary 3D graphene material. Under his leadership, Lyten has raised over $1.2 billion, shipped lithium-sulfur A-samples to automotive and military customers, announced the world's first lithium-sulfur gigafactory in Reno, Nevada, and in 2025-2026 acquired significant Northvolt assets across Europe to become one of the largest battery manufacturers on the continent.
Sundia Corporation
Sundia Corporation is an Orinda, California-based plant-based snacking company best known for its True Fruit ready-to-eat refrigerated fruit cups and True Chia coconut-milk chia pots. Founded in 2004 around the unsexy genius of better watermelons, Sundia has spent two decades turning produce-aisle staples into branded, shelf-stable convenience without the syrupy compromises of the canned-fruit era.
Gretchen Salyer
Gretchen Salyer is the founder and CEO of The June Care Company, a community-based childcare platform she launched in June 2021 after 15 years in technology, ending as a general manager at Intuit. Born out of pandemic childcare swaps she organized among neighbors, June Care connects parents who need care with vetted, background-checked stay-at-home parents who can earn income watching other children nearby. The company - whose name stands for Joining Up Neighbors Everywhere - has raised about $3.6M in seed funding led by Craft Ventures, and operates on Salyer's belief that the childcare crisis is solved by helping every family build its village.
OnStak
OnStak is a Milpitas, California enterprise AI consulting and hybrid-cloud services firm that helps large organizations move from AI experimentation to AI in production. With a delivery team that is roughly three-quarters AI architects and engineers, OnStak modernizes data platforms, applications and infrastructure across Cisco, NVIDIA, AWS, Oracle and on-premises environments, and ships AI products like AI Correlation Fabric, AI Assurance and AI Video Analytics. Its pitch is plain: 'Fluent in strategy, native in engineering' - straight talk about what is broken and what to fix first.
Sonic
Sonic is the largest independently owned internet service provider in California, founded in 1994 in Santa Rosa. It builds and runs its own fiber-optic network, selling fast, flat-priced gigabit and 10-gigabit home and business internet with no contracts, no data caps, and a privacy stance that has earned it a perfect score from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. After more than 30 years serving the San Francisco Bay Area, Sonic began its first out-of-region expansion in 2026, lighting up fiber in Los Angeles and Dallas.
Touchpoints
Touchpoints (legally Global Touchpoints, Inc.) is a Northern California digital consulting and software services firm founded in 2004 by Naren Kini and Udayan (UC) Chanda. It helps organizations stay digitally relevant through turnkey software design and development, public-sector solution accelerators, data and cloud consulting, and technical recruitment. With deep expertise in Salesforce, AWS, and workflow automation, the company serves both private clients like Topps, Meta, Intuit, and Fiserv and a broad roster of California state agencies.
Mote
Mote is a Los Angeles-based climate-tech company that turns woody waste biomass into clean biohydrogen while permanently sequestering the carbon. Using a biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) process spun out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Mote pairs energy production with carbon removal: each utility-scale plant is designed to produce roughly 60 tons of carbon-negative hydrogen per day while removing on the order of 450,000 tons of CO2 a year. The company is developing its first commercial facility near Bakersfield in California's Kern County and a second project in Northern California with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
Naren Kini
Naren Kini is the CEO and co-founder of Global Touchpoints Inc., a California-based IT services and consulting firm he built organically over 20+ years to 150+ employees and $15M+ in annual revenue — entirely without outside capital. Starting from a background in industrial engineering and early stints at Hinditron and Syntel, Kini built Touchpoints into a trusted partner for Fortune 500 companies like Meta, Intuit, and Fiserv, as well as California state government agencies, specializing in Salesforce, AWS, data analytics, AI consulting, and managed services.
Rui Jing
Rui Jing Jiang is the Founder and CEO of Avisi Technologies, a Redwood City-based clinical-stage medical device company developing VisiPlate, the world's thinnest freestanding ophthalmic implant for treating glaucoma. Built on University of Pennsylvania nanotechnology, VisiPlate is a multichannel aqueous shunt composed of alumina and Parylene-C that is 20 times thinner than a human hair. Rui Jing co-founded the company in 2017 as a junior at Penn's Wharton School, won the $100,000 President's Innovation Prize in 2018, secured FDA Investigational Device Exemption approval in October 2025 for the US SAPPHIRE trial, and closed a $10.7M Series A in February 2026 to advance pivotal clinical development.
Dewey Pest & Termite Control
Dewey Pest & Termite Control is a California family-owned pest and termite management company founded in 1929 by Ray M. Dewey. Operating as Dewey Services, Inc. and headquartered in Pasadena, it runs more than 30 branches across the state with roughly 750 employees. Dewey provides residential and commercial pest control, termite treatment and whole-house fumigation, and an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program that balances effective control with public health and environmental safety. Its long-running tagline: Environmental Security Since 1929.
Hathaway Dinwiddie
Hathaway Dinwiddie is a 100% employee-owned general contractor headquartered in San Francisco that has spent more than a century building the landmarks California works, lives, and heals in - from the Salesforce Tower to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and more than 10 million square feet of life-science space on the Peninsula. Built on planning, adaptation, and proactive partnership, the firm pairs century-old craft with advanced BIM workflows, LEED-driven sustainability, and an industry-leading safety record.
Radiate Hospitality
Radiate Hospitality is a Palo Alto-based hotel and real-estate management company that develops, renovates, and operates a portfolio of boutique and branded hotels across the West Coast. Formerly known as BPR Properties, the firm runs 11 hotels with roughly 988 rooms - from the Autograph Collection Hi-Lo Hotel in Portland to the Crowne Plaza Cabana in Palo Alto - guided by a mission of 'passionately creating a sense of belonging.'
Rudolph and Sletten
Rudolph and Sletten is a California-based general contractor that has built much of Silicon Valley's physical fabric - from Apple Park and Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch to hospitals, research labs and university campuses. Founded in 1959 in a Los Altos garage, the firm pioneered guaranteed-maximum-price, fast-track delivery and grew into one of the West Coast's largest builders of technically complex healthcare, life-sciences and education projects. Now a subsidiary of Tutor Perini, it employs roughly 740 people and reports about $307 million in annual revenue.
The John Stewart Company
The John Stewart Company (JSCo) is a San Francisco-based, full-service affordable and mixed-income housing organization. Founded in 1978 by John Stewart, it has grown into one of California's largest affordable housing managers, handling roughly 31,000 units across the state through integrated property management, development, construction, and financial services - with a parallel mission of delivering resident services and supportive housing for vulnerable populations.
Webcor
Webcor is a San Francisco-based commercial general contractor and one of California's largest builders, known for self-performed concrete, finish carpentry and millwork, deep preconstruction and BIM expertise, and a portfolio of landmark projects from the California Academy of Sciences to the Salesforce Transit Center. Founded in 1971 and owned by Japan's Obayashi Corporation since 2007, Webcor pairs craft-trade self-performance with virtual-building technology to deliver complex, sustainable buildings across the state.
Avital Cohen
Avital Cohen is Vice President of Marketing at Microsoft, based in Beverly Hills, California. With a legal education from Cardozo School of Law and prior experience as a Marketing Manager at Facebook, she has built a career at the intersection of technology and strategic brand communication. At Microsoft - a company generating over $281 billion in annual revenue and employing 228,000 people globally - she drives marketing strategy across one of the world's most influential technology portfolios, spanning cloud computing, AI, productivity software, and enterprise solutions.
Allison Blais
Allison Blais is Vice President of Business & Strategic Operations and Chief of Staff to Adobe President David Wadhwani, running day-to-day operations of Digital Media - Adobe's largest business unit. A lawyer-turned-operator, she transitioned from 15+ years in financial services and corporate law into driving strategy for Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Adobe Firefly, the company's generative AI platform. Her path from FINRA regulatory analyst to VP at one of the world's most influential software companies is a masterclass in reinvention.
Darrin Chen
Darrin Chen is the VP of Global Partners (NPN) GTM & Operations at NVIDIA, where he leads go-to-market strategy and operations for the NVIDIA Partner Network - the company's global partner ecosystem spanning solution providers, systems integrators, and channel partners. With 30+ years in technology from storage to networking to AI infrastructure, Chen joined NVIDIA through the 2020 acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, where he had spent over a decade building worldwide channel programs. In mid-2023, NVIDIA expanded his mandate as it split its global channel chief role in two, tapping Chen to oversee its entire NPN program as the company transformed into a full-stack AI computing company.
David Tokheim
David Tokheim is a senior executive at Adobe where he has served since 2013, most recently elevated to SVP, CXO Americas Industry and Canadian Sales (April 2026). Previously VP of Experience Cloud leading the Media & Entertainment, Communications, and Travel/Hospitality verticals, he has spent his career at the intersection of digital media, advertising technology, and enterprise software. Before Adobe, he was EVP & GM at Six Apart Media (growing its blog audience to 220 million monthly uniques), SVP at Fox Interactive Media overseeing monetization across MySpace and IGN, and VP of Marketing at IGN Entertainment where he built strategic programs for brands like Pepsi, EA, and Walmart. A UCLA English grad turned ad-tech veteran, he champions AI-driven personalization and content velocity as the defining imperatives of modern customer experience.
Lisa Lahde
Lisa Lahde is Vice President of Marketing at NVIDIA, where she leads campaign marketing for priority industries and the Omniverse platform. A veteran tech marketer with roots in social media and community management, she joined NVIDIA around 2016 and has helped shape the company's storytelling around AI, autonomous systems, and the industrial metaverse. She produced NVIDIA's 'I Am AI' docuseries, contributed to Forbes BrandVoice as an AI innovator profiler, and moderated the OpenUSD session at GTC 2024 in San Jose. Outside the GPU giant's orbit, she runs the persona of @JewelryHunter - a longtime indie fashion enthusiast who blogged about emerging jewelry designers.
Marissa Dacay
Marissa Dacay is the Global Vice President of Enterprise Marketing at Adobe, where she leads demand generation, account-based marketing, and AI-driven marketing innovation across Adobe's enterprise portfolio. With 17+ years of experience spanning digital marketing, events, content, operations, and analytics - plus a distinctive three-year detour into HR leadership - she brings an unusually broad perspective to building high-performing marketing organizations. Based in San Francisco, she is known for bold decision-making, trust-first leadership, and a data-meets-creativity approach that has delivered double-digit annual growth.
Patrick Brown
Patrick Brown is SVP of Global Marketing at Adobe, leading growth, analytics, media, and marketing engineering across the company's global B2B and B2C operations. He oversees Adobe's Digital Economy Index — a research engine that tracks a trillion e-commerce transactions across 100 million SKUs — and has emerged as one of the most data-forward voices in enterprise marketing. Based in San Jose, California, Brown combines an MBA from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business with deep experience in technology, finance, and consumer goods sectors.