Three California Firms Blazing Growth Paths Other Than Tech

Silicon Valley’s Black Sheep: For Valin Corp., Growth Required Real Solutions, Not Tech Bubbles

Chances are that if you started talking shop with Joseph Nettemeyer, CEO of Valin Corp., you probably wouldn’t guess that his company is counted among Silicon Valley’s fastest growing privately held firms.

In fact, it’s a safe bet that it’s one of the few industrial process and supply companies to make the Silicon Valley annual list.

“To enjoy this growth while serving some very mature industries with a very mature product portfolio says that we’re doing something right — and what we’re doing is taking the complexity out of it and making things simple,” says Nettemeyer, while hitting upon the strategy that is credited with diversifying Valin’s offerings and doubling its size. More.

At Venice Bakery, Gluten-Free Became the Ticket to Generational Growth

El Segundo, CA — The kitchen is closed at Venice Bakery these days. Or at least it is to outsiders. Nine years after Jimmy DeSisto set out to make a gluten-free pizza crust, all eyes are on his kitchen, as the bakery’s gluten-free offerings fill menus across the country and shipping containers on their way to the UK and Australia.

“Trying to patent things in the bakery business is kind of silly because there are so many ways that recipes can be manipulated. How we protect ourselves is that we just do not allow any outsiders in our facility,” explains DeSisto, who 18 years ago took charge of the bakery business built by his father and grandfather before him.

“For any business to survive generations, it must reinvent itself, and there always has to be that something that leads to reinvention,” explains DeSisto, whose grandfather foresaw the age of the frozen pizza and how freezing techniques would create a national market for Venice’s pizza crust. More.

Senior Care Provider Advances Less-Captures-More Franchise Formula

Palo Alto, CA — It wasn’t too long ago that the market for senior care services was composed almost entirely of independent mom-and-pop shops owned and run by someone who typically had a medical background — a retired nurse, perhaps, or someone with connections in the medical field.

Then came the franchisors, with offerings tailored to pique the interests of medical and entrepreneurial professionals alike. Today franchisors are estimated to make up roughly 60 percent of the senior care market, and it’s here inside this growing swath of varied franchise formulas that a Silicon Valley franchisor has recently put its own disruptive twist on franchising.

Or maybe not. In the case of Home Care Assistance, of Palo Alto, it seems that the twist is more about what it hasn’t franchised than what it has. Right now, the middle-market firm owns and operates 15 of its 70-plus locations across the United States. More.