U.S. home-services firms face a very different market today—one where software answers before a dispatcher does. Bekhruz Nagzibekov, founder of Cupertino-based United HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical, learned that during the pandemic’s stop-start months. Since launching his own shop in 2020 after an earlier stint as a co-owner in Sacramento, he has pushed the business off paper and into automated workflows—growing it to about 70 employees and $10-$11 million in annual revenue.
Trained as an operator rather than a technologist, Nagzibekov reorganized fieldwork around licensed U.S. crews while moving non-regulated support tasks to remote teams. He wired AI into call triage and scheduling, streamed job-cost data into automated P&L alerts, and trimmed manual content work with LLM pipelines. In 2025, United HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical ranked No. 483 on the Inc. 5000, reflecting 844% three-year growth.
In a recent conversation, Nagzibekov explained what an AI-assisted dispatch actually does, how guardrails work on safety-critical calls, and why unit economics—not hype—decide whether software sticks. “We moved from one-off fixes to an operational layer,” he says.
Walk me through the start. How did you enter home services, and why launch your own firm?
Bekhruz Nagzibekov: I got in through friends. In 2017, they asked me to help with a project in Sacramento, so I came in as a co-owner and fixed the workflows. Two years later I was ready to build my own firm. I opened a plumbing business in San Jose in 2020. Then the pandemic hit—overnight I was the dispatcher, the salesperson, and the technician. That was my crash course. We started hiring again in August. By 2021, the system was standard. Now it’s three lines: plumbing, electrical, and HVAC.
You went from a one-person scramble to a multimillion-dollar shop. What unlocked that growth?
BN: I’d highlight two factors: customer experience and innovation. From the very beginning, our strategy was built around exceeding customer expectations, and second, systematically implementing automation. Over five years, the company’s revenue grew to $10-$11 million annually, which put us in the top 1% of companies by revenue in the industry. To put this into perspective: there are about 250,000 companies in the U.S. home-service segment, but only around 2,000 of them cross the $10 million annual revenue mark.
You run a 70-person hybrid model. What makes it work day to day?
BN: It’s part of our innovation strategy and the backbone of the digital transformation that drove our growth. Licensed fieldwork stays in the U.S. Remote teams handle non-regulated tasks—HR, accounting, first-line scheduling, marketing ops. We run on written SOPs, clean handoffs, SLAs, and QA scorecards. Sensitive cases escalate to a U.S. dispatcher. The setup keeps service local, lowers cost, and captures structured data across calls, schedules, and jobs that we use to power AI. I set the rules for where humans stay in the loop and what AI is allowed to touch; the team executes against those rules.
“I’m not chasing AI; I’m chasing unit economics. If software doesn’t move response time or margin, it’s a demo, not a system”
You say digital transformation drove growth. What, exactly, did AI change in the workflow?
BN: We moved from paperwork to AI-assisted operations. We began with basics—e-invoices, cleaner document flow, fewer repeats. Then we made it systemic. In marketing, work that took four people is now done by one specialist with AI tools, and output and quality rose across social, YouTube, and the website. In accounting, reports and P&Ls generate automatically from job data. In customer service, when an operator can’t pick up, AI answers in real time, books a slot, and hands it off to a human when needed. The effect is faster response and a lighter load on the team.
What didn’t work on the first pass—and how did you fix it?
BN: We over-automated at first. Low-context calls went to AI, and nuance got lost. Booking conversion slipped, and hold times crept up. The voice model also struggled with accents and noisy lines.
We fixed it by adding guardrails. Safety keywords and low-confidence scores now trigger an instant handoff to a U.S. dispatcher. Scripts are A/B-tested, and we run call audits with QA scorecards. We narrowed AI’s scope to after-hours triage and missed-call recovery, and we built a prompt library with do/don’t rules. We also retrained on our own transcripts.
Result: faster time-to-answer, fewer complaints, and a higher share of calls booked—without risking safety calls.
Inc. 5000 recognized you in 2025. What does that ranking reflect?
BN: I’m proud of it—because it’s independent recognition. Inc. 5000 ranks companies by three-year percentage revenue growth using documented revenues, and it screens for U.S.-based, privately held, independent firms. In 2025 we placed No. 483 with 844% growth. To me, that says an outside process recognized the impact of our standardization and digital transformation. That independent methodology matters to me because it validates my approach beyond our own marketing.
What does this change for customers on the ground?
BN: Practically, it means you get a human-backed answer fast, a real ETA, and work that passes code the first time. The system triages the call and preps the ticket; a dispatcher vets edge cases and a licensed tech decides on site. That’s how you shorten the window, avoid return visits, and keep judgment where it belongs—with people.
Before the U.S. chapter, which roles shaped how you run this company now?
BN: I was an entrepreneur even in “official” roles. In Moscow, I ran small businesses—a store, a beauty salon, and a restaurant. Later at Aeroflot, I moved from dispatcher to first-class engineer in seven months and managed 250+ people. That pushed me toward a systems view: observe and absorb, map the process, then improve it. The ability to spot optimizations and lift operations became a core strength I use now.
You added e-commerce and an in-house marketing unit. How do they support the core?
BN: They support the core. Besides our main company, we run another growing business with four locations in California. For those brands we built an in-house marketing agency that, for now, serves only our companies—with an option to open to external clients later. E-commerce runs remotely on Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and Walmart: we buy from brands, move goods to warehouses, and fulfill to customers. Both lines help us scale and refine the hybrid model without pulling focus from the field.
Three to five years out, how does home services change?
BN: AI adoption will be aggressive. Operators that don’t adapt will struggle to compete. It lowers operating cost, frees budget for growth, and improves the customer experience. Founders will need two things: the nerve to take calculated risks and the ability to ship new tech into real workflows. Without that, the traditional model’s economics break.
For young founders, where should they start to modernize ops?
BN: Take measured risks and experiment. Start by automating one simple task. Early savings may look like nothing, but over time they compound. Think less like a tradesperson or a plumber and more like an AI operator—integrate tools into marketing, accounting, and customer service. That’s how you build a sustainable business that can compete.
After these years building, what’s the one lesson you return to most?
BN: That breakthroughs are possible even in conservative industries. The work is to see the turn early and be willing to rebuild the system. For me, digital transformation isn’t a slogan; it’s a tool for sustainability and scale. And the payoff is not just a stronger company—it’s knowing the work nudges the industry forward.
