Among the nine North Bay companies newly making the cut for national recognition as one of the nation's fastest-growing companies are three with deep local ties but innovative approaches to home lending, snacking in a more healthful way and help local companies take their messages to the silver screen in an engaging way.
Inc. magazine on Aug. 20 published its annual list of 5,000 independent U.S. companies with the fastest-growth in revenues over a three-year period. This year, 20 North Bay companies made the list, and nine appeared there for the first time. Among the newcomers were First California Mortgage in Petaluma, Krave Pure Foods in Sonoma and BeforeTheMovie in Fairfield.
First California Mortgage
PETALUMA — Though restarted a dozen years ago, First California Mortgage Company (FirstCal.net) has been growing rapidly of late. The lender for first-time and investment home buyers debuted on the Inc. 5000 list at No. 4,958 with 44 percent revenue growth to $52.1 million last year from $36.2 million three years before.
The company now employs 403, up 235 percent in the past three years. In the past 24 months, the company has grown by 47 employees in the North Bay, mostly in Petaluma, and 27 of those have come on board since 2013.
"We have recently been approved and are up and running as a Ginnie Mae I and ll issuer, which puts us in the big leagues as far as mortgage lending is concerned," said founder and CEO Christopher Hart.
Other growth areas are delegated jumbo loan authority up to $2 million, and nonqualifying mortgage loans will be available soon. First Cal also recently expanded the geography it serves, becoming a large player in Texas home lending.
First Cal is a direct seller and servicer of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages. The company originally started in 1977 and grew to have 2,800 employees in 42 states, including multiple North Bay offices. In 1995 the Headlands Mortgage wholesale lending division was sold to GMAC, taken public in 1998 and a year later was sold to GreenPoint Mortgage. Though the GreenPoint lending operations locally closed during the housing contraction in the middle of the opening decade of the 21st century, First Cal came back as a Bay Area lender with Christopher Hart at the helm in 2003.
Krave Pure Foods
SONOMA — From a graduate school business-plan project by a former proprietor of vino, protein-on-the-go snack maker Krave Pure Foods (kravejerky.com) in Sonoma has in just four years in business been gnawing on the well-cured competition that command an estimated 80 percent of the $4 billion-a-year jerky meat market in the U.S.
From $358,002 in 2010, sales last year had soared 4,632 percent to $16.9 million last year, earning the company the No. 72 spot in its debut on the Inc. 5000 list. Sales are on track this year to be triple those of 2013, according to Mr. Sebastiani.
"A large part of our success was we were the first to do it," CEO and founder Jon Sebastiani, 44. Working at the Sebastiani family's former winery, Viansa, taught him the need to be different in a sea of similar competitors.
Mr. Sebastiani, 44, was president of Viansa Winery & Italian Marketplace in the early 1990s and helped pioneer its mainly direct-to-consumer ventures such as a wine club. He developed Krave during training for the New York Marathon while pursuing an MBA at Columbia University in the mid-2000s.
Remembering the premium jerky sold only at Angleo's Meats in Sonoma, he surveyed the national jerky market and saw few bold flavors with packaging appealing to men. With medical, health and fitness advice trending toward high-protein, low-carbohydrate snacks, Mr. Sebastiani saw the opportunity to take Wine Country approach to cuisine together with high-quality, natural ingredients and marketing that appeals to women as well.
On earning his MBA in 2010 he had two Columbia entrepreneurship professors as investors. Another early investor-partner was San Diegoan runner Meb Keflezighi, who won the 2014 Boston Marathon. A meteoric launch came in 2012, when Pleasanton-based grocery company Safeway started carrying the product, and it became one of the chain's top-selling products in just three months. Sales in the Target chain of department stores are up 29 percent from a year ago.
The company now has 70 employees, including 25 at headquarters and another 45 working from satellite sales and marketing offices in Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Denver and Miami as well as production-management personnel at co-packing plants in Fairfield and Virginia. That's up from 40 employees last year, and the company has a handful of headquarters positions open now.
BeforeTheMovie
FAIRFIELD — Corey Tocchini's life was the movies before starting BeforeTheMovie (beforethemovie.com). The third-generation Sonoma County cinemas scion, grandson to Don Tocchini Sr. who brought talking pictures to Santa Rosa in 1924, was vice president in charge of operations for SR Entertainment Group, which now operates five theater complexes in Santa Rosa and Healdsburg plus six other California locations.
He drew from his software industry background to transform the previously photo slide-based advertisements before movies. For a few years there was a combination of DVD players and good digital projectors, then the quality of file-based movies improved to the point of using that.
In May 2008 after the family business slowed its expansion, Corey Tocchini left it to develop a preshow advertising agency with SR Entertainment Group as the first customer. Surviving the economic recession, BeforeTheMovie went beyond California in 2010 and now works with 22 cinema groups, or circuits, with 585 screens in 18 states.
In an environment where movie studios have upped their cut from ticket sales for a title to 61 percent to 62 percent from 56 percent, theater operators were needing extra revenue without jacking up box office prices.
Where BeforeTheShow differentiates itself is a focus on local advertising in the markets it serves in addition to national placements.
"We try to keep it at a level where each community can identify with the faces they see on the screen," Mr. Tocchini said.
His wife, Keyo, also a software industry executive, joined the company in spring 2009 and runs operations. The staff now numbers 14 and includes Creative Director Adam James, who had been a top video motion artist for sports television in San Francisco before the recession.
