walnut-creek
(10)
Central Garden & Pet
It started as one man's distribution route in 1980. Four decades later, Central Garden & Pet quietly stocks the grass seed, dog chews and bird feed on shelves across America - roughly $3.1 billion worth a year.
Computers and Structures, Inc.
Computers and Structures, Inc. (CSI) is a Walnut Creek, California software company founded in 1975 that builds the analysis and design tools structural and earthquake engineers use to model buildings, bridges, dams, stadiums and towers. Its finite-element products - SAP2000, ETABS, CSiBridge, SAFE, PERFORM-3D and CSiCOL - are used by engineers in more than 160 countries and have helped shape landmark structures including the Burj Khalifa, Taipei 101 and One World Trade Center. Founded and still led by structural engineer Ashraf Habibullah, CSI grew out of the SAP and ETABS research programs developed at UC Berkeley.
BetterComp
BetterComp is a Walnut Creek, California based compensation management software company that helps large enterprises replace spreadsheet-driven market pricing with an automated, AI-assisted platform for benchmarking, range modeling, and pay decision-making, serving a customer base in which roughly 38% are Fortune 500 companies.
AAA Mountain West Group
AAA Mountain West Group is the not-for-profit auto club formerly known as AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah. Headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, it serves AAA members across seven western states - Northern California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska - with roadside assistance, insurance, travel planning, financial services and discounts. Rooted in a 1900 gathering of motoring enthusiasts in San Francisco, it is one of the largest clubs in the national AAA federation.
Jim Collins
Jim Collins is the Chief Executive Officer of Basic American Foods, a 90-plus-year-old, family-owned food manufacturer headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. He stepped into the CEO seat in 2023 after serving as the company's CFO. Before BAF, his career wound through PwC, Foster's Group in Australia, Robert Mondavi, Beringer, and a stint at telecom-era start-ups Yipes and Spinway. A Chico State business graduate, he runs a roughly $625M revenue, 1,300-employee enterprise best known for instant mashed potatoes, dehydrated onion and garlic, beans and foodservice ingredients sold under brands like Idaho Spuds, Potato Pearls, Santiago, and Golden Grill.
Matthew Rosenthal
Matthew Rosenthal is CEO and Co-Founder of SewerAI, the AI-powered platform transforming how cities inspect and manage underground sewer infrastructure. A Carnegie Mellon-trained engineer who worked at Fitbit and founded Centosette (acquired 2010), Rosenthal pivoted into sewer tech after recognizing that one million miles of U.S. pipes were being assessed with 20-year-old software. SewerAI's Pioneer platform and AutoCode AI have now processed over 135 million feet of sewer inspection footage, slashing inspection costs by 40-70% and saving municipalities tens of millions of dollars. In June 2024, Rosenthal closed a $15M Series B led by Innovius Capital, bringing total funding to $18.5M.
Marty Sprinzen
Marty Sprinzen is the co-founder and CEO of VANTIQ, a Walnut Creek, California-based platform company building real-time AI orchestration and agentic AI systems for mission-critical environments. A serial entrepreneur with a BSEE from Cooper Union (class of 1970), he previously co-founded Forte Software, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems for over $1 billion in 2000. After a 15-year hiatus spent flying planes, skiing, and sailing a Russian nuclear icebreaker to the North Pole, he returned to found VANTIQ in 2015 with a mission to apply software to the world's toughest challenges - from disaster response and healthcare to smart cities and defense.
Rambabu Yarlagadda
Rambabu (Bobby) Yarlagadda is the founder and CEO of BPO Systems Inc., a boutique IT services firm headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, specializing in Oracle ERP/CRM implementation, 24x7 support, and business process reengineering. With an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and engineering degrees from Illinois Institute of Technology and NIT Rourkela, he brings over 20 years of senior executive experience spanning Fortune 500 companies including Sara Lee, Pepsi-Cola, Taco Bell, and RJR Nabisco. Since founding BPO Systems around 2000-2001, he has grown the company to nearly 100 employees across Walnut Creek, CA and Vijayawada, India, serving marquee clients like Dell, Starbucks, and Kaiser Permanente with a 90%+ repeat business rate.
Steve Reardon
Steve Reardon is the CEO of Alpine Software Group (ASG), a Walnut Creek, California-based acquirer and operator of vertical SaaS businesses. Born in Durban, South Africa, he is an alumnus of the University of Cape Town and Stanford GSB's MSx Sloan Fellows program. Before leading ASG, Reardon founded multiple businesses including Peldon Technologies, ran South Africa's largest cycling retail chain, then pivoted to software M&A — overseeing 60+ acquisitions across legal tech, marketing tech, and other vertical software niches. Under his leadership, ASG has grown to ~160 employees and ~$25M in annual revenue, with a 65%+ growth rate and notable exits including Innovative Systems sold to GTCR for $400M enterprise value in 2025.
Ryan Buckley
Ryan Buckley is the Co-Founder and CEO of Shovels, a Lafayette, California-based startup that turns fragmented government building permit records into a searchable intelligence layer for the construction and climate tech industries. Armed with degrees from UC Berkeley, MIT Sloan, and Harvard Kennedy School, Buckley spent years building parallel B2B ventures before co-founding Shovels in 2022 with Luka Kacil. The company now processes 180+ million building permits, covers 30 million US addresses, and raised a $5M seed round in June 2025 led by Base10 Partners. A prolific blogger, part-time college professor, and author of 'The Parallel Entrepreneur,' Buckley is building what he calls the 'Pitchbook for the construction industry.'