Startup Ventures Find Success in Rural Communities
Published Jul 08, 2008
Improvement Direct, an online home-improvement store, is one of several startups launched in Chico.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and for Robert Strazzarino, that necessity was a class schedule that allowed him to sleep late and avoid Friday classes while a student at California State University, Chico.
During his sophomore year, Strazzarino devised software and a Web site to ease his scheduling angst. Three semesters later, more than 8,000 Chico State students were using the site, with its modest costs covered by advertising dollars.
“Trying it with pen and paper was next to impossible because there are thousands and thousands of different ways to put your schedule together,” says Strazzarino, 23, who today is chief executive officer of Chico-based College Scheduler LLC, which he founded in 2005.
His first sale was to the university where he earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science. “I wanted Chico State to be my first client, and they said ‘Yes,’ ” he recalls.
College Scheduler charges an annual fee to colleges and universities, which provide the handy service to their students. “The important thing is that it’s branded to look like it’s coming from the university,” Strazzarino says.
Jon Gregory points to College Scheduler as just the kind of gutsy startup – without the benefit of a Los Angeles or Bay area address – that continues to put more rural parts of California on the technology map.
“What’s exciting is usually these ventures are visionary, trying to solve or tackle some really big problem or really big opportunity. They have a level of ambition, commitment, determination and vision that’s uniquely different,” says Gregory, president and CEO of Golden Capital Network. In 1999, Gregory helped found GCN in Chico as a nonprofit network to coach and showcase promising young companies.
Based in Fresno, Decipher Inc. is another success story. Specializing in online marketing surveys and the processing of that information, Decipher boasts 70 employees and satellite offices in LA and New York.
Asked to give budding entrepreneurs advice, co-founder Jayme Plunkett says, “Don’t worry about the mistakes, because they’re going to happen. My best advice probably came from my dad and then just from my experience as a young entrepreneur – make sure you get a good CPA and banker.”
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
Photo by Jeff Adkins
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