A group of hackers is working out of a 7,000-square-foot office in Lake Forest.
No need to call the police on Tevora Business Solutions Inc. They’re the white-hat hackers, the ones squarely on the good-guys team. They even work with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
“We have a 100% track record of hacking into anything,” said Chief Executive Ray Zadjmool, who started the company with wife, Nazy Fouladirad, in 2003.
“We got a group of hackers who are young and awesome—one of the best hacking teams in the country.”
Tevora is proving the right side of hacking can be profitable. Zadjmool said it will generate about $60 million in revenue this year and is shooting for 35% annual revenue growth—“no more and no less.” It employs 83, double that of two years ago.
The company has 400 customers in Southern California, including fast-food chains, such as Irvine-based In-N-Out Burgers Inc., and government entities like John Wayne Airport.
Tevora plans to move into a 20,000-square-foot facility similar to Boardwalk on Jamboree Road in Irvine or The Hive in Costa Mesa, which houses the Los Angeles Chargers headquarters. It wants to replicate its local success in New York, where it opened an office in February, and eventually in Chicago.
The company, which has no outside investors, has two to three buyout offers a week from corporations and private equity, Zadjmool said, adding that a sale “is not out of the question, but it’s not in our line of sight.” The couple emphatically said “no” when asked about an initial public offering.
“This is truly a mom and pop company gone wild,” Zadjmool said. “One day we woke up and went, wow!”
Iranian Influence
Both are immigrants from Iran, which their parents fled after the 1978 revolution. The couple, who recently turned 40, met in high school. Fouladirad went on to college while Zadjmool enlisted in the Marine Corps straight out of Newport Harbor High School.
After the military, where he learned tech security, Zadjmool worked at dot-com companies in Southern California during the late 1990s internet bubble, including stints at Yahoo and a gaming company.
In 2003, he formed his own company, saying few firms were tackling security. He chose the name Tevora, not because it represented something but because it seemed to have a nice, marketable ring to it.
Finding customers was “never a problem,” and he quickly grew to 10 employees before they all quit because “the travel was getting to them.”
He decided to focus on Southern California, because “there is so much business here.” He grew again, this time to 16 employees, who all quit due to lack of advancement, he said.
About six years ago, Zadjmool went back to the drawing board. He said he had to humble himself and learn to rely on other people. He brought in seasoned management and convinced his wife to quit her job in order to handle operations. The firm created a 20-level career path to show employees they had a future there.
“That was all the difference,” he said.
All Kinds of Hackers
Over the years, he’s “aggressively” invested in the company, building proprietary software and adding services, such as compliance and procedures. He’s proud of “Unified Audit,” which helps big companies simplify audits conducted by various accounting firms.
He’s also proud of investing in and training American workers.
“You got guys with military clearances, 19 year olds with tattoos all over the place. We got all sorts of guys. These guys are the real deal. They know how to break into your systems as any hacker would.”
Tevora’s competitors include Big Four accounting firms, including Deloitte LLP, and internet-security firms, such as Denver-based Coalfire Systems Inc. and Chicago-based Trustwave Holdings.
Tevora takes a systemic approach to determine companies’ vulnerabilities. It doesn’t promise to prevent hacks but to limit damage.
“It’s very difficult to prevent a hack, because as a company gets larger, more people have access to its systems,” Zadjmool said.
Once the company completes an investigation, clients know the state of their security, and Tevora will issue a security clearance they can use to prove they’re compliant with regulations. He said that an initial investment in security is “painful”—about 5% to 7% of the IT budget.
But, “If you get hacked, you’ll have years lost,” he said. “If we’re able to get access to the company’s crown jewel, that’s valuable.”
