CorpNet is proud to announce that our CEO and Co-Founder, Nellie Akalp, has been named to the Pacific Coast Business Times’ 2026 Top 50 Women in Business list. The recognition celebrates women leaders across California’s Central Coast who are building exceptional companies, mentoring future entrepreneurs, and making lasting contributions to their industries and communities. For the entire CorpNet team, seeing Nellie included in this distinguished group is a moment of real pride.
Since launching CorpNet in 2009 alongside her husband and co-founder Phil Akalp, Nellie has built the company into a national leader in business formation and ongoing compliance services, guiding hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs through the legal, regulatory, and administrative work of starting and running a business. This recognition reflects more than a single year of accomplishment. It reflects more than a decade and a half of leadership, persistence, and a genuine commitment to making entrepreneurship more accessible.
“To be named alongside so many extraordinary women leaders across our region is a tremendous honor. I want to thank the Pacific Coast Business Times for this recognition, and I want to share it with our team, our partners, and the entrepreneurs who trust CorpNet every day. They are the heart of this company, and they are the reason this work matters” (Nellie Akalp, CEO and Co-Founder of CorpNet).
About the Pacific Coast Business Times Top 50 Women in Business
The Pacific Coast Business Times Top 50 Women in Business is an annual award that honors the most influential women executives, founders, and leaders across California’s tri-county region — Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties. Honorees are selected for their professional achievement, business impact, leadership in their industries, and their commitment to mentorship and community.
For more than two decades, this recognition has spotlighted the women shaping the Central Coast economy and inspiring the next generation of leaders. The 2026 class includes founders, CEOs, attorneys, financial leaders, nonprofit executives, and creatives from across the region. CorpNet is proudly headquartered in Westlake Village, California, in Ventura County, which makes Nellie’s inclusion in this regional honor especially meaningful — both for her personally and for the local team that has helped build CorpNet into what it is today.
A Recognition Built on More Than 15 Years of Leadership
Nellie’s path to this recognition is one many CorpNet customers will find familiar in spirit, if not in scale. Before launching CorpNet, she and Phil co-founded MyCorporation, an early online incorporation company that they sold to Intuit in 2005. Rather than step away from the industry, the Akalps saw a continuing opportunity to serve entrepreneurs with a more personal, more responsive, and more comprehensive formation and compliance experience. CorpNet was founded in 2009 with that vision in mind, and it has guided the company ever since.
Under Nellie’s leadership, CorpNet has grown into a trusted national provider for entrepreneurs in all 50 states — serving solo founders, growing small businesses, multi-state operators, and a national network of professional partners. Beyond her role at CorpNet, Nellie is also a frequent contributor to small-business publications, a regular speaker at entrepreneurship and accounting industry events, and a vocal advocate for making business formation and compliance simpler for everyone — particularly women, who continue to start businesses at record rates.
Congratulations From the CorpNet Team
On behalf of every team member at CorpNet — across operations, customer service, technology, marketing, partnerships, and leadership — we want to say congratulations to Nellie. She has built a company that is genuinely a great place to work, and she does it while still personally caring about the customer experience, the team experience, and the broader entrepreneurial community.
We also want to thank everyone who has been part of this journey: the customers who trust CorpNet with the legal foundation of their businesses, the accountants and CPAs who partner with us to serve their own clients, and the Central Coast business community that has supported Nellie and CorpNet for years. While Nellie would never write this herself, we will say it on her behalf — the CorpNet of today does not exist without her. This recognition is well-earned.
What’s Next for CorpNet
Recognition is wonderful, but it is also a reminder of how much there is left to do. Small business owners are facing a more complex compliance landscape than ever — multi-state operations, evolving federal reporting rules, beneficial ownership requirements, state-by-state annual reports, and a tax environment that is anything but static.
CorpNet’s job is to keep making that landscape feel navigable. That is why the company continues to invest in its team, its technology, its partner network, and its educational content. It is also why CorpNet is continuing to develop its proprietary Formation AI Assistant within strict UPL-compliant boundaries — so entrepreneurs can get reliable educational guidance and then bring those questions to the right experts: their accountants, their attorneys, and CorpNet’s own compliance specialists.
Congratulations again to Nellie and to every woman included on the Pacific Coast Business Times’ 2026 Top 50 Women in Business list. CorpNet is proud to count Nellie among them.
If you are ready to start your own business, the CorpNet team would love to help. You can explore our incorporation services, browse our ongoing compliance solutions, or call 1.888.449.2638 to talk to a live CorpNet specialist.
