United HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical doesn’t look like a mom-and-pop home-services operation. In a modest office near Cupertino, monitors glow with live routes and ticket queues, while dispatchers watch a dashboard that predicts how long the next job will actually take. Field crews still carry wrenches, but much of the paperwork that used to slow them down has been replaced by alerts, SOP checklists, and QA scorecards.
Founder Bekhruz Nagzibekov, who launched the company in San Jose in 2020 after an earlier co-owner stint in Sacramento, didn’t set out to build software. He set out to survive the pandemic. “For a while I was the dispatcher, the salesperson, and the technician,” he says. The crash course forced decisions: standardise what could be standardised, keep judgment with licensed crews, and wire everything else for speed.
Five years later, the business employs roughly 70 people across plumbing, electrical, and HVAC, with annual revenue in the $10-$11 million range. In 2025, it landed at No. 483 on the Inc. 5000, reflecting 844% growth over three years—recognition Nagzibekov calls “independent validation” of a shift from paper to AI-assisted operations.
Colleagues describe him as steady, unsentimental, and allergic to hype. “He’ll test a tool for a week and kill it if it doesn’t move response time or first-pass approvals,” said a senior dispatcher who joined during the stop-start months of 2020. “If it helps us give a real ETA and pass code the first time, it stays.”
That pragmatism shows up beyond service calls. Alongside the core home-services lines, Nagzibekov built an in-house marketing unit that currently supports only his companies, including another growing business with four California locations, and a remote e-commerce arm that runs on Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and Walmart. He calls them “synergy projects”—test beds for processes that later flow back into field operations.
The center of gravity, though, is an operating system that routes calls, books jobs, and escalates edge cases to U.S. dispatchers. AI answers when a human can’t, fills in tickets from transcripts, and nudges schedules when a job is running long. Licensed technicians still decide on-site; the software’s job is to make that decision faster and cleaner.
Here, Nagzibekov talks about expanding beyond plumbing, what AI actually does in his workflow, why he built e-commerce and a marketing agency alongside the core, and how he thinks about trust when the work happens inside people’s homes.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Your company began in plumbing and now spans multiple lines. How do you see that journey?
When I started, the job was simple: stay afloat and deliver good work. Very quickly it became clear that without expansion and diversification you’re stuck in a niche. We added electrical first, then HVAC. They’re all home services, but the combination is what lifted us to a different level. I think of a business like a living organism—it has to grow to stay viable.
Do you see yourself first as a technologist or as an operator?
I’m an operator who uses technology. When I launched in San Jose in 2020, survival came first—I answered phones, sold jobs, and did the work. That forced discipline: standardise what can be standardised, leave judgment to licensed technicians, and wire everything else for speed. Five years in, we’re about 70 people across plumbing, electrical, and HVAC, with annual revenue around $10-$11 million. The tech isn’t the story; the operating system is.
With roughly 70 employees today, what’s the leader’s job: hands-on or building the system?
Early on I did everything—answered calls, sold jobs, even went on-site. Now the role is different: don’t be a cog, build the machine. Culture comes first. Everyone should know their lane and responsibility, and technology should strip out routine. AI, to me, is a tool that frees people for more meaningful work.
You talk about AI often. What, specifically, did it change in your process?
A concrete example is assignment. It used to take hours to process orders and match specialists. Now the system parses requests, looks at geography, technician availability, and even predicts job complexity. We assign the right person faster, cut cost, and lift quality. Customers feel it as quicker service; we feel it as efficiency.
So AI is your competitive edge?
Absolutely. Many companies still run on paper notebooks or spreadsheets. We moved faster because we treat technology as the foundation, not an add-on. I always say: AI isn’t the future here—it’s the present.
Does AI replace people?
No. It replaces friction. We keep licensed field work in the U.S., while remote teams handle non-regulated tasks—HR, accounting, first-line scheduling, and marketing ops. We run on written SOPs, clean handoffs, SLAs, and QA scorecards. I set the rules for where humans must stay in the loop and what AI can touch. That’s how you scale without losing judgment.
Why build e-commerce and an in-house marketing agency in a home-services business?
Synergy. E-commerce lets us test solutions we can bring back into service operations. The marketing agency grew naturally—we built a strong digital engine for ourselves and realised that expertise scales. For now, the agency serves only our companies, including another brand with four locations in California, but it can become a standalone player.
Trust is everything when work happens inside people’s homes. How do you build it as tech expands?
Tech should strengthen trust, not replace it. We let customers see a technician’s bio, rating, reviews, and sample photos of completed jobs—transparency and a sense of safety. Technology helps create trust; only human factors—politeness, honesty, quality—keep it.
Inc. 5000 recognised you in 2025. What does that ranking reflect to you?
Independent validation. Inc. ranks three-year percentage revenue growth off documented numbers and limits it to U.S.-based, privately held, independent firms. Placing No. 483 with 844% growth says the impact of standardisation and digital transformation shows up outside our own marketing.
Have you become an expert beyond home services—on digital transformation itself?
I’ll be direct: yes. Home services have been our proving ground, but the lessons are broader. When your company sits in the top 1% of revenue in the segment, you’ve earned the right to talk about systems, not just tactics.
What’s the next stage for the company?
A platform model: one operating layer for plumbing, electrical, and HVAC, driven by digital tools. That lets us scale faster than traditional shops and expand beyond California.
If you were starting from zero today, where would you begin?
With digital architecture. Too many founders think, “First the business, then the tech.” That’s a mistake. Build in algorithms, automation, and analytics on day one. It saves years and opens a different horizon.
What does success mean to you personally?
It’s when the idea stops belonging only to you and lives in the company, the people, the customers. Revenue matters, but the real win is building something that runs on its own and benefits the community.