By: Emma Pierce
A conversation with Stanislav Pakarin, co-founder and CEO of Fuse Service Inc., a Santa Clara home services company that has grown rapidly across the Bay Area since 2017.
You might not know the name Fuse Service Inc. yet, but there’s a decent chance one of their vans has rolled down your street. The Santa Clara-based company provides HVAC, refrigeration, electrical, and plumbing services across the Bay Area and beyond, and has grown from a literal one-van operation in 2017 to a multi-million dollar enterprise with hundreds of employees.
Behind that growth is Stanislav Pakarin, a Russian immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in 2017, spent his first year learning the trade as a field technician, and then co-founded Fuse Service with a partner and a minivan.
We sat down with Pakarin to talk about building a business from scratch, the unexpected challenges of rapid growth, and why he thinks the future of HVAC is being written right now in California.
Q. Let’s start at the beginning. You grew up in Russia, studied economics, ran a furniture business, and then ended up fixing air conditioners in San Jose. How does that happen?
Stanislav Pakarin: (laughs) It sounds strange when you say it like that, but honestly, it makes sense to me. I’ve always been someone who wanted to build things. I ran a furniture manufacturing company in Russia, Pakarin LLC, starting in 2011. I was doing everything: designing products, managing production, marketing, and hiring people. It was a great school for entrepreneurship.
But I wanted more. I wanted to build something bigger, and I wanted to do it in a place where the opportunities matched the ambition. In 2017, I moved to the United States. I didn’t have a trade license. I didn’t know the market. So I started the most logical way. I worked as a service technician in San Jose, learning the industry from the ground up.
Q. And that led to co-founding Fuse?
SP: Yes. Ruslan Khusniyarov, who had already started building the brand, brought me on as his first in-person hire. He was a former IT specialist who had moved to the U.S. and was documenting his whole journey on YouTube. Very entrepreneurial mindset. We clicked immediately.
In those early days, Ruslan was doing everything himself. He handled advertising, scheduling, and repairs. When I joined, we started dividing and conquering. We were taking on every job we could get, building relationships with customers, and learning what the Bay Area market actually needed.
The real turning point came when Ruslan got his HVAC license, and then I got my C38 refrigeration license. That opened up a whole new tier of work, including complex installations, commercial refrigeration, and bigger contracts. And we just kept adding capabilities from there. Electrical license, plumbing license. Every new license was a new door opening.
Q. When did it shift from “two guys in a van” to a real company?
SP: It happened faster than either of us expected, honestly. The Bay Area has an enormous demand for home services, and there was a real gap in quality. Most contractors were either unreliable, too expensive, or both. We committed early to being neither.
We kept the focus on the customer relationship, showing up on time, explaining the work clearly, and standing behind what we do with real warranties. Word spread. The calls kept coming. We hired, trained, and hired again. Before we knew it, we had five employees, then ten, then fifty.
The company was founded in 2017. By the time we hit 100 employees, it felt surreal. I remember a moment where I thought: I fell asleep as a technician and woke up as a CEO.
Q. What was the hardest part of scaling so fast?
SP: Maintaining culture. That is always the hardest thing. When it’s two people in a van, culture is easy. You either both care or you don’t. When you have dozens of technicians, office staff, and franchisees across multiple cities, you have to build systems that carry your values even when you’re not in the room.
We document everything. Every process, every standard, every expectation. That’s something I learned from my furniture business days. If it isn’t written down, it doesn’t exist as a policy; it just exists in one person’s head. And one person’s head doesn’t scale.
We also treat our employees with genuine respect. The motto at Fuse Service is simple: take care of the people who take care of customers. Happy technicians do better work. Better work creates loyal customers. It’s not complicated, but a lot of companies forget it.
Q. Fuse Service is based in Silicon Valley, surrounded by tech giants. Does that environment influence how you run the business?
SP: Absolutely. You’re in a place where everyone is obsessed with efficiency, optimization, and data. That rubs off on you. We use technology heavily for scheduling, dispatching, customer communication, and performance tracking. We were paperless from the very beginning, which is unusual for a trade company.
But I think Silicon Valley also teaches you something more important. The best companies here are not just selling a product, they’re solving a problem. We don’t sell air conditioners. We sell comfort, reliability, and peace of mind. When you frame it that way, every decision, from how a technician greets a customer to how you structure a warranty, comes from a different place.
Q. California is in the middle of a major shift away from gas-powered home systems. How is Fuse Service positioned for that?
SP: This is a massive opportunity, and we’ve been preparing for it for years. California is phasing out the sale of new gas furnaces and water heaters by 2030. The Bay Area Air District is moving even faster, with stricter standards on water heaters as early as 2027. The 2025 Energy Code is already pushing new construction heavily toward heat pumps.
We know this equipment inside and out, and we know how to guide homeowners through the rebates and incentives that make the transition financially worthwhile.
But more than the certifications, it’s the mindset. We’ve always been an eco-conscious company. We think long-term. Helping a homeowner install a heat pump today isn’t just a transaction. It’s building a relationship with a customer for the next decade.
Q. What’s next for Fuse Service?
SP: Growth, but intentional growth. We want to capture a significant share of the Bay Area market and continue expanding our franchise network nationally. We’re looking at Texas, Florida, and other high-growth states.
But the bigger picture for me is impact. Every energy-efficient system we install reduces someone’s utility bill and reduces the state’s carbon footprint. Every technician we train has a career, not just a job. Every franchise we open creates a small business in a local community. That’s what gets me up in the morning.
We started with a minivan and two people who refused to just be repairmen. That spirit hasn’t changed.
Fuse Service Inc. is headquartered at 2222 Ronald St, Santa Clara, CA 95050 and operates 7 days a week, 8 AM–8 PM. For service or a free estimate, visit fuseservice.com or call (408) 898-1576.
