Fire Aside Opens San Anselmo Headquarters
Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures (MSIV) launched five years ago with a simple idea – that our community should come together to better support local entrepreneurs with dreams of building the next great North Bay companies. Startups are uniquely positioned to create high-quality, new economy jobs, and MSIV aimed to kickstart a job creation renaissance across Marin + Sonoma that ensures our economic future is bright.
To bring this vision to reality, we launched the first regional venture capital fund in the history of the North Bay community. In mid-2023, I met Fire Aside co-founders Jason Brooks and Don Moore when they were a relatively new business. What started as a side project – a way for a single Marin homeowner to better understand his home’s fire risk – turned into a business serving local fire agencies, most prominently the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority.
MSIV invested in Fire Aside then as part of their initial financing, when they were a small team working out of shared office space and serving a few dozen fire agencies, mainly in California. We believed in the potential of their technology to boost public safety and help communities all over America become more resilient to the risk of wildfire. Fast forward just two years later and Fire Aside is serving hundreds of fire agency customers across 12 U.S. states, and they’re still just getting started.
On the back of this rapid growth, Fire Aside has opened a new headquarters right here in Marin county. The company has so far created 11 high-quality jobs based in San Anselmo and are intentionally growing their physical footprint here in Marin with plans for further local growth. This is why we do the work we do. We are proud to have backed Fire Aside and for our North Bay startup community to have another shining example of local ingenuity leading to positive outcomes for all.
On Tuesday, October 21, 2025, Fire Aside officially opened their new headquarters. Nearly 35 local leaders and the Fire Aside team assembled for an intimate gathering to mark this important milestone in their company history. I’m thrilled to share the below recap of the gathering.
- Zachary Kushel, Founder & Managing Partner, MSIV
“Fire Aside’s collaboration with our local fire leaders shows exactly what makes Marin special. What started here is now strengthening communities in California and beyond. That’s the kind of forward-thinking, practical innovation we need more of here.”
-Supervisor Brian Colbert, Marin County Board of Supervisors, District 2
“Fire Aside’s technology supports our local fire agencies taking risk out of the ecosystem. We track that Marin homeowners have now spent $250 million on wildfire resilience from these efforts, making all of us safer.”
-Jason Brooks, Co-Founder & CEO, Fire Aside
“MSIV’s capital aims to have a large, quantifiable community impact. Fire Aside makes communities all around our country safer, and we are thrilled they are creating high-quality North Bay jobs."
-Zachary Kushel, Founder & Managing Partner, Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures
“We knew public agencies needed to partner with private enterprise to solve this problem. We were in a paper-based world and would still be today if it wasn’t for Fire Aside.”
-Todd Lando, Battalion Chief, Central Marin Fire Authority
Members of the Fire Aside team pose for a group photo at the October 2025 San Anselmo office opening
