Founder Mitesh Gala

Location Los Alamitos, California

2008 Revenue $29 million

Employees 200

Start-up Year 2000

Start-up Costs:  $600,000 in savings, most of which came from the $1.2 million proceeds of selling a restaurant in Long Beach, California

Breakeven  Became profitable one year after start-up; recouped initial investment in third year of business.

Biggest expense Salaries

Qualifications Years of industry expertise needed to identify and solve a common problem.

Red Tape None

Competition: While there are plenty of software companies out there, no others specifically target the back-office needs of large restaurant chains.

It seems that many tech companies can trace their roots back to college dorm rooms and bastions of higher learning (see Gates, William; Dell, Michael; and Zuckerberg, Mark). The same is true of Altametrics. Sort of. Mitesh Gala was only 13 when he became the youngest graduate of what's now called Jack's University, the franchisee-training program run by Jack in the Box, the national fast-food chain. And 17 years later, he would tap those early lessons to launch a software company aimed at pruning some of the more slippery and time-consuming tasks in running a restaurant.