Orange County’s Fastest-Growing Companies: ARCO, Great Work Perks, The Partner Masters and Klear.ai

The fastest growing companies headquartered in Orange County span a wide range of industries including tech, finance, retail, real estate and others. The top company is Mission Craft Cocktails . Business by LA Times Studios interviewed leading companies about their growth, challenges and future plans – here they are in their own words.

No. 2 ARCO National Construction | Pacific Coast

Brian Westre, Operating Partner

What does your company do and why is it growing?

ARCO National Construction | Pacific Coast is a full-service design-build general contractor providing turnkey solutions for projects across industry types, regardless of complexity or scale. ARCO’s proven design-build approach combines quality of design and construction, management of expense, and adherence to schedule into a single point of responsibility. Getting involved early lets us help clients evaluate opportunities, understand cost and schedule and make informed decisions about facilities that meet their needs today and support their plans for the future.

Why did you start this business?

We opened our Southern California office in 2020 to better serve clients locally, offering the personalized attention of a local firm with the resources and capabilities of a national builder.

What has been your biggest challenge as your company has expanded?

Growth means changing and improving how we work, while holding on to what made ARCO successful. We’ve focused on developing our people and processes so we can serve more clients without losing the personal service, strong relationships and consistent execution they expect from us.

What are your expectations heading into 2027?

We see continued opportunity throughout the region in cold storage, food and beverage and other specialized industrial markets. As clients evaluate sites, plan facilities and make investment decisions, ARCO’s ability to provide practical guidance, especially around cost and schedule certainty, will remain especially important in 2027. Our focus is to create value before construction starts, deliver high-quality projects and keep investing in our people and partners. We’re confident in the opportunities ahead and will grow in a way that continues to serve our clients and partners well.

No. 3 Great Work Perks

Danny Seth, CEO

What does your company do and why is it growing?

Great Work Perks is the industry’s largest and most comprehensive global employee discounts and perks platform. More than 10 million employees across over 20,000 organizations in 45-plus countries have access to more than 2.5 million offers through our platform. Our clients span virtually every industry, including technology, financial services, healthcare, education, manufacturing, retail, consumer goods, professional services, transportation, hospitality and entertainment. Our growth is driven by three fundamental competitive advantages: comprehensiveness, exceptional value and complete customer accountability. We believe our rapid growth demonstrates that employers no longer want to compromise between local savings, nationwide coverage, global reach, competitive pricing and dependable customer service – they want one comprehensive partner that can deliver it all.

Why did you start this business?

Great Work Perks was founded by Jonathan Rapport in Los Angeles in 2005 after he recognized a challenge facing HR departments: employers wanted to provide meaningful employee discounts and perks, but negotiating individually with restaurants, attractions, entertainment venues and other businesses was time-consuming and difficult to manage. Rapport saw an opportunity to simplify that process by bringing these savings together under one platform. Instead of requiring each employer to negotiate and maintain its own discount programs, Great Work Perks could leverage the collective purchasing power of thousands of organizations to deliver better prices and a broader selection of benefits. What began as a local employee discount program in Southern California expanded into a nationwide platform and ultimately a global employee discounts and perks platform.

What has been your biggest challenge as your company has expanded?

Our biggest challenge has been building the infrastructure necessary to consistently deliver a superior customer experience at scale. That infrastructure has also become one of our greatest competitive advantages.

It’s relatively easy to aggregate millions of discount offers. It’s much harder to negotiate directly with major suppliers, leverage our collective buying power to deliver real savings, develop proprietary technology, support refundable purchases and take responsibility for transactions across multiple countries and currencies.

What are your expectations heading into 2027?

We’re extremely optimistic about 2027 and the next five years. We believe the employee discounts, perks and savings industry is entering a period of significant transformation. Employers increasingly want comprehensive solutions that deliver measurable financial value, while employees expect better prices, greater transparency and seamless purchasing experiences. We believe we’re still in the early stages of our growth, and our investments in technology, supplier relationships and customer experience position us to accelerate our expansion in 2027 and beyond.

No. 4 The Partner Masters Corp.

Justin Slagle, CEO

What does your company do and why is it growing?

The Partner Masters helps Microsoft’s partners achieve more profitability and ROI from their Microsoft partnership. Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of partners, but only a few hundred get a dedicated Microsoft manager. We fill that gap. We have the expertise to complete this work on the partner’s behalf: incentives, co-selling, marketplace, licensing and technical delivery. Partners see results in their Microsoft numbers, and Microsoft itself has become our biggest source of referrals. We’ve gone from an idea in early 2023 to more than 50 full-time employees, servicing more than 200 Microsoft partners.

Why did you start this business?

My co-founder, Matt Soseman, and I both spent over a decade at Microsoft working within their partner ecosystem. When I joined Microsoft in 2012, our team actively managed about 50,000 U.S. partners. By 2023 that number shrunk to about 500, out of roughly 125,000 partners doing business with Microsoft in North America. That left tens of thousands of capable companies with nobody in their corner. Most Microsoft programs don’t require a dedicated manager. You just have to know where to go and what to do. We knew, so we left Microsoft and started The Partner Masters.

What has been your biggest challenge as your company has expanded?

In three years, we’ve grown from a few former Microsoft colleagues to a company with a full executive team, a headquarters in Irvine and several lines of business. Every new service started because a partner asked us for help, and saying yes that often means you’re constantly building the plane while flying it. Our focus now is scaling the business with clear roles, scorecards and growth plans for every employee.

What are your expectations heading into 2027?

It is the year that we change what kind of company we are. For three years we’ve been a services company that uses software to assist us. Going forward, we’ll be a software company that uses services to complement the software. We’ve spent the last three years learning exactly what Microsoft partners need to grow, and now we’re building it into technology that can serve far more partners than people alone ever could. Our experts will still be there, but the software will lead our growth. We expect to scale to serve more than 400 additional customers.

No. 5 Klear.ai

Brij Kumar, Founder & CEO

What does your company do and why is it growing?

When an injured worker files a claim, a city manages liability across dozens of departments, or a self-insured employer tries to understand why its costs keep rising, someone behind the scenes is often wrestling with software that was never truly designed for their needs. Klear.ai was built to address that challenge. We developed an AI-native platform for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry. Our platform helps insurance carriers, third-party administrators, self-insured organizations and public entities manage claims, risk, safety and analytics within one integrated system – not five separate tools stitched together, but one platform designed around how these organizations actually operate. We are growing because we have moved beyond asking customers to change how they work to accommodate their software. Instead, we build technology that adapts to the way they work.

Why did you start this business?

Honestly, it was frustration on behalf of our customers. For years, we worked closely with the P&C insurance industry and saw how much valuable data these organizations possessed, yet how difficult it was for them to turn that information into meaningful, actionable insights. The software they relied on was often rigid, dated or simply not designed around their real-world needs. They had enormous amounts of information but limited ability to translate it into actionable intelligence.

What has been your biggest challenge as your company has expanded?

The greatest challenge has been building a comprehensive platform without losing what made us trustworthy in the first place. Every organization has its own workflows, requirements and data. Then there is AI. The opportunity is real and significant, but in an industry where decisions affect injured workers, public institutions and businesses that depend on protection, new capabilities must be implemented thoughtfully. The lesson we have learned is that sustainable growth is not just about building good technology. It is about listening carefully, investing in people and ensuring that innovation genuinely improves the lives of the people who use it.

What are your expectations heading into 2027?

We are entering 2027 with a clear understanding of where the P&C insurance industry is heading and the role Klear.ai can play in its future. Our investments in native AI go well beyond adding a chatbot to a dashboard. They focus on bringing practical intelligence directly into business workflows, helping professionals find the information they need faster, reducing time-consuming manual work and making better-informed decisions using the data they already have.