Sacramento-region business Clutch is bucking the trend of remote work with a permanent office

Bucking the remote work trend, Clutch, a growing professional services firm, is moving into its first permanent office space in Rancho Cordova.

Clutch in late February will formally occupy the 78,000-square-foot building that was part of VSP Vision’s corporate campus.

VSP vacated three of its five Rancho Cordova buildings in 2022 as the popularity of remote work continued two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Clutch CEO Rachel Zillner, who is already working in the Quality Drive building, said that the company’s 160 employees will not be required to go to the new corporate headquarters — but she believes many will.

Zillner said frequent but optional in-person days at a co-working center in Folsom grew from 20 people in 2022 to 100 workers in 2023.

“People want to be together,” she said. “They just want to have the option of how that occurs.”

Clutch was founded in 2019 in Zillner’s home in Fair Oaks.

Initially, they were the only two employees, Zillner and her co-found Anne Descalzo. But even as the company grew, many workers had never met each other until the co-working events in 2022, Descalzo said.

She said working in person allows for mentoring and team building.

Zillner and Descalzo met as executives at Safe Credit Union before deciding to form Clutch in 2019. Zillner was vice president of community banking and membership while Descalzo was assistant vice president of community banking.

Clutch helps with public relations, marketing, business consulting, staffing and implementation strategies for a variety of California state agencies and private companies.

Zillner said Clutch started helping the California Department of Public Health with its COVID-19 information program in early 2020.

She said a key responsibility was developing how state public health staffers communicated complex information so the general public could understand it.

“Scientists and doctors were saying this is what COVID-19 is,” Zillner said.“This is how it might impact your body. This is how you need to run your business. But that was written from the perspective of a physician versus how we needed to give the information to our residents in California or business owners.”

Clutch, she said, made the information easier to understand for the layman, a continual task as new scientific information was disseminated.

Darrin Gross, executive vice-president of the planned Folsom Ranch Sports Complex, hired Clutch to help him with the September 2022 announcement of a facility that will have three NHL-sized ice sheets, a 2,500-seat arena and a 90,000-square-foot area for turf sports like football and soccer.

He said Clutch officials helped craft the message to convey to residents and city officials the economic and community benefits of the complex.

Gross said Clutch also helped with a presentation for investors interested in funding the sports complex project.

“Their work has been extraordinary,” he said.

He said Clutch continues to work with him and other executives on the planned sports complex.

Clutch has aggressive expansion plans

Zillner and Descalzo have ambitious plans to almost double their company’s workforce this year and increase it to 700 employees by 2027.

The plan for rapid job growth helped Clutch secure a $11.6 million state tax credit. If the company fails to grow its workforce to at least 592 California-based workers by mid-2027, some of the tax credits will have to be returned.

Zillner and Descalzo also said their Quality Drive headquarters will house a new coworking center called Frequency Coworking with room for 30 workers and an event space that could hold 160 persons.

Zillner said the aim is to have a space where entrepreneurs can collaborate.

The third venture is called MinervaVerse, which Zillner said will be a business accelerator, particularly aimed at helping women and people of color grow their businesses.

Unlike a startup business incubator, Zillner said companies will need to show some business accomplishments to be eligible for the program.

Zillner said the program fees will be determined on a case-by-case basis. She said the accelerator will operate out of the co-working center.