The city of Glendale, Calif.
seems like an unlikely place to grow one of the next billion-dollar startups in the booming Los Angeles tech ecosystem.Located at the southeastern tip of the San Fernando Valley, the Los Angeles suburb counts its biggest employers as the adhesive manufacturer Avery Dennison; the Los Angeles industrial team for the real estate developer CBRE; the International House of Pancakes; Disney Consumer Products; DreamWorks Studios; Walt Disney Animation and Univision.
Silicon Beach this aint.But its here in the (other) Valleys southernmost edge that investors have found a startup they consider to be the next potential billion-dollar unicorn that will come out of Los Angeles.
The company isServiceTitan,and its market is air conditioners.More specifically, its the contractors that service equipment like the heating, ventilation and cooling systems at commercial and residential properties across the U.S.Founded by Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan in 2012, ServiceTitan is very much an up-and-coming billion-dollar business thats a family (minded) affair.Mahdessian and Kuzoyan met on a ski trip organized by the Armenian student associations at Stanford and the University of Southern California back when both men were in college.Both programmers, the two reconnected after doing stints as custom developers during and after college, and then when they were developing tools for their families businesses as residential contractors in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale.The two men built a suite of services to help contractors like their fathers manage their businesses.
Now following a $62 million round of funding led by Battery Ventures last month, the company is worth roughly $800 million, according to people with knowledge of the investment, and is on its way to becoming Los Angeles next billion-dollar business.