We were beyond thrilled when we found out RoseRyan CEO & CFO Kathy Ryan would be recognized as one of the most influential women in Bay Area business by the San Francisco Business Times.
Of course, we’re always excited to get recognition, and Kathy, who co-founded this firm over 20 years ago, certainly deserves acknowledgement. She’s not one to brag, so the rest of us will do it for her: she was a pioneer in creating a consulting firm from scratch when she and a former colleague saw a better way to deliver finance and accounting services to Bay Area companies, particularly in tech and life sciences. The nod from the San Francisco paper comes on the heels of another noteworthy accolade Kathy received over the past year; she was named to Accounting Today’s national listing of the sector’s top 10 leaders, known as the Managing Partner Elite, last fall.
What makes the most recent honor truly special is the fact we are continuing to expand in San Francisco and it’s getting noticed. In recent years, of course, the city has enjoyed meteoric growth in the high tech sector. It’s positively bubbling over with well-funded startups and a few happy unicorns. So it’s natural for us to be there, too, working hand in hand to augment their finance teams, fill a gap or resolve a complicated accounting dilemma.
It’s a great time to be part of the San Francisco scene. The city has changed dramatically from when RoseRyan first started out two decades ago. In 1990, tech jobs made up just 1 percent of the economy and all the action was down in the Valley. Now high tech accounts for 30 percent of job growth there since 2010, absolutely transforming the City by the Bay. The growth has been astonishing—just witness the gleaming new private buses that shuttle the many thousands of new tech workers from their San Francisco homes to their Silicon Valley jobs. New transportation systems have risen amidst the chaos, Uber is everywhere, and Chariot and Leap offer special shuttles.
There is a raging battle over commercial real estate in town. The prices for office space are up and inventory is down. Last year the overall vacancy rate dropped to 8.3%, the lowest rate since 2001, according to the San Francisco Center for Economic Development. The mid-market corridor has been anchored by Twitter and other innovative companies, and SoMa is smoking with hundreds of new businesses.
There’s excitement everywhere you turn: the streets are awash with Millennials carrying messenger bags, furiously typing into small devices. The hotels are popping full. Some days the Giants pitch exceptionally well. And the fog has been remarkably light this year.
What could be better than all of those things? Well, we’re still praying for rain.
Eve Murto heads up our marketing and leads the charge for getting the word out about the stellar work that the finance pros do at RoseRyan. Before joining the firm in 2011, Eve held leading marketing roles at various Silicon Valley software startups, after building up steam at Sun Microsystems and Apple.
