Jul 18, 2014, 2:55pm PDT Updated: Jul 18, 2014, 4:59pm PDT
Richmond incubator near future UC research site targets growing companies

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At full capacity, TopLine incubator in Richmond could hold 10 to 15 companies with 25 to 40 employees each.

Adam Weintraub
Contributor- San Francisco Business Times
Allan Young's incubator in San Francisco, Runway, aims to help companies take off; now he has leased 40,000 square feet in Richmond for a new business accelerator to help them climb to cruising altitude.
The new venture, called TopLine, began operations quietly on June 1, but Young says three companies have already moved in and he expects to have a full complement of young firms in the invitation-only accelerator within three to six months. Candidates for TopLine are “companies that have hit or are about to hit that inflection point to really accelerate revenue growth,” said Young, who calls the space the biggest incubator co-working space in the East Bay.
The accelerator could be well-positioned in a couple of ways. For one thing, it provides a resource for growing businesses that’s welcome in the East Bay generally and Richmond in particular, economic development officials in the area say. In addition, the site in Richmond’s Marina Bay area is just minutes from the planned location of a new research campus for UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, which is expected to create an anchor point for technology-oriented development for decades to come.
“What we’re doing at TopLine has a very different flavor” than the collaborative work space at Runway in San Francisco, Young said. “Runway is about 30,000 square feet and it has 80 companies, and TopLine is about 40,000 square feet for 10 or 15 companies. They can stay longer and scale here,” he said.
Young is an entrepreneur who has founded companies, including call-center play CallSocket with co-founder Tom Henderson, and has worked at Sorenson Capital and with University Venture Fund of Salt Lake City on investments in startups that went public. He developed one of his own startup plays through the collaborative Y Combinator program before launching Runway and now TopLine.
“We learned a lot of lessons at Runway,” Young said, and among them was that the open collaborative work area at the San Francisco incubator didn’t work as well once a company shipped a product and began looking to expand its customer base.
“The space just wasn’t set up for anyone to grow and build a marketing team and an inside sales team,” Young said. TopLine, at 1402 Marina Way South, will have about half its space devoted to collaboration and half that’s divided more like a traditional office that would be focused on customer service and sales work.
At full capacity, he said, TopLine could hold 10 to 15 companies with 25 to 40 employees each. He’s looking for companies born in the East Bay and North Bay, as well as international ventures looking for a U.S. beachhead.
Three have moved in so far, Young said: Mayvenn, a product of the “500 Startups” program, which links stylists and salons catering to African-American clients with an online source of specialty hair products; a company that connects senior citizens with reliable sources of legal help and health care planning; and a software company developing artificial intelligence products.
Representatives of the companies could not be immediately reached.
Young said he has pumped more than $1 million into the property to upgrade its data network, buy furniture and otherwise make TopLine ready for business, and has signed a startling 20-year lease.
“I have a strong commitment and a strong conviction that this area will be the next fastest-growing hub for technology in, at minimum, the East Bay, and maybe even the greater Bay Area,” because of the new research campus, Young said. “We’re literally a four minute drive from the planned campus. The opportunities for tech transfer and commercialization will be immense.”
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory announced in September that it had selected a UC-owned site on the Richmond shore for a new UC research campus, to open in 2016, in part because of abundant open space and its proximity to the existing lab site in the Berkeley hills.
“There’s a lot of anticipation around Richmond about the lab,” said Darien Louis, executive director of the East Bay Economic Development Alliance. “The Marina Bay area is a good strategy because its close” to the area now known as the Richmond Field Station where the campus will go, she said, and it’s in line with a wave of speculative real estate activity around the Richmond shore.