facilities-services
(13)
Managed by Q made everybody clean - even the CEO
An iPad could order the cleaner. Managed by Q’s harder idea was to make cleaning a good job - and turn the office’s daily annoyances into a business.
The Parking Lot Changed the Robot
A college project meant to tend every yard found its real job in a parking lot. Viabot now sells the unglamorous pleasure of a clean commercial property, night after night.
Jonathan Kite and the Quiet Art of Turning Chaos Into a System
A dry-erase board showed Jonathan Kite a business hiding in plain sight. A decade later, his most revealing management tool may still be the spreadsheet he built to make a better pizza.
FLR Spectron makes the office work, one connection at a time
From dropped restaurant calls to meetings that need an IT chaperone, FLR Spectron tackles the everyday friction of business technology. Its expanding brief now includes the data and people behind AI adoption.
Denielle Finkelstein Put the Product Where the Problem Happens
After 22 years in fashion retail, Denielle Finkelstein walked away from the shelf - then made a second, sharper exit from retail itself. Her company found its future inside the bathroom stall, where a basic product had been hiding in plain sight.
The Cousins Who Decided Tampons Should Work Like Toilet Paper
Thyme Sullivan and Denielle Finkelstein left corporate careers, got rejected by 50 VCs, then talked their way into Jamie Dimon's cocktail party. Now their in-stall period dispensers are bolted inside Fortune 500 bathrooms.
The 1972 Oakland Two-Man Shop That Became Silicon Valley's Fire Whisperer
A special-hazards fire company from 1972 spent 45 years learning how to protect the rooms where a single sprinkler head would be a disaster. Then private equity came knocking.
Cary Bainbridge Built a Revenue Engine Inside a 116-Year-Old Company
At ABM Industries, Cary Bainbridge turned marketing from a support function into part of the operating system - aligning sales, culture, technology, and 100,000-plus employees around a story the business could prove.
Jim Carlton and the Work Behind Selling a Place to Work
At Regus, Jim Carlton's brief sits where real estate, hospitality and software meet. The product is not simply an office - it is the ability to choose how much workplace you need, where you need it and for how long.
Regus
Mark Dixon turned a plain observation - real business happening at cafe tables - into Regus, the flexible-office network that now spans thousands of locations and quietly outlasted the startup that was supposed to bury it.
Sciens Building Solutions
Sciens Building Solutions is a national fire-life safety and security systems integrator headquartered in Pleasanton, California. Built since 2016 through a rapid roll-up of regional specialists, Sciens designs, installs, inspects, services and monitors fire detection, suppression, sprinkler, security and communications systems for commercial, institutional and government buildings across more than a dozen U.S. states. Backed by Carlyle, it aims to become the largest independent fire-life safety and security integrator in the United States.
Bob Kearn
Bob Kearn is the President and CEO of COIT Cleaning and Restoration Services, a family-owned franchise business founded in 1950 by Lou Kearn near San Francisco's COIT Tower. Bob has led the company since 1982, growing it into one of the nation's largest specialty cleaning and restoration companies with operations across the United States, Canada, and Thailand. Under his leadership, COIT operates a multi-service franchise model covering carpet cleaning, drapery, upholstery, tile and grout, wood floors, air duct cleaning, water damage restoration, and mold remediation. He holds a BS in Marketing from the University of Colorado Boulder and has championed environmentally friendly cleaning practices including GreenEarth dry cleaning technology.
Terry Heath
Terry Heath is the founder and CEO of Sciens Building Solutions, a Pleasanton, California-based fire and life safety integrator he built from a whiteboard plan in 2016 into one of the largest independent platforms of its kind in the United States. A former Royal Navy electrical engineer who came to America via Siemens, Heath has stitched together more than sixteen acquisitions and now runs a roughly 1,800-person company headquartered in the East Bay.