This artificial Christmas tree company has Silicon Valley written all over it

Downtown Redwood City is home to cloud-storage company Box, virtual reality start-up AltspaceVR, music identification app Shazam and artificial Christmas tree-maker Balsam Hill. "It's definitely weird for us to be here," said Thomas Harman, the 40-year-old founder and chief executive of the holiday decoration company. But rather than feel like his company doesn't belong in a neighborhood known for its software businesses and venture capital firms, Harman has embraced his 11-year-old company's tech hub home. He describes his business as having one foot planted in the slow-moving seasonal decorations world (where products are planned 18 months in advance) and another in Silicon Valley (where thinking-outside-the-box is often thought to be the only way to think). "If you compare us to people doing artificial intelligence and machine learning, or Google and Facebook, we're obviously not doing anything earth-shattering like that," Harman said. "But we like to think we're pushing the envelope when it comes to holiday decorations."