Author Archives: Inc. Staff

America’s Fastest-Growing Telecom Company

No. 1 in Telecommunications ClearAccess 3,460.3% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $5.7 Million Employees: 30 Founder: Ken Hood Founded: 2005 Overall RANK: No. 66 Vancouver, Wash. clearaccess.com Ken Hood spent seven years in Silicon Valley and held high-level management positions at companies including 3Com. A trend became increasingly apparent to him: The number of consumer electronics in the average home that required an Internet connection was growing, but direct support from service providers wasn’t keeping up. So, in 2005, he set out on his own and started ClearAccess to assist broadband service providers, including telcos and cable operators, with customer and device management. ClearAccess gives the provider a control panel on which it can see all the devices connected to a customer’s gateway. That makes it easier to identify where the problem is occurring and offer remote support. ClearAccess – Silicon Valley – 3Com – Consumer electronics – Service provider Continue reading

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America’s Fastest-Growing Software Company

No. 1 in Software Vendormate 7,108.1% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $10.7 Million Employees: 58 CEO: Andy Monin Founded: 2005 Overall RANK: No. 25 Atlanta vendormate.com In December 1999, Andy Monin set out with his wife on a 460-mile drive from Atlanta to Cincinnati to celebrate the holidays with family. To pass time, the couple crafted a list of life goals—100 of them. A family with four children. Check. A beagle named Beau. Half-check (the family named him Boo). And for Andy, the successful launch and sale of two businesses. A few months later, Monin co-founded his first business, whose software helps companies audit phone bills and uncover errors. In 2003, an investor bought out Monin, and in 2005, he was on to his next start-up, launching Vendormate out of his attic. The company makes software that performs due diligence on, and registers, vendors for hospitals and other health care facilities. With 1,000 hospitals under contract, Monin now has his sights set on the financial services industry. That second sale may not be far off. United States – Business – Atlanta – Health care – Cincinnati Continue reading

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America’s Fastest-Growing Security Company

No. 1 in Security LifeLock 11,474.3% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $131.4 Million Employees: 482 CEO: Todd Davis Founded: 2005 Overall RANK: No. 8 Tempe, Ariz. lifelock.com Since its inception in 2005, LifeLock has guaranteed its customers that it will spend up to $1 million to resolve any instances of identity theft. But the company didn’t take off until CEO Todd Davis dreamed up an even bolder advertising message: He gave out his Social Security number to demonstrate just how confident he was in his company’s services. The pitch was so zany that one television host wouldn’t allow him to mention it during an interview. It also resulted in a Federal Trade Commission complaint, which LifeLock settled with a payment of $12 million. But LifeLock adjusted its service and kept growing. “The unintended consequences were that it made us even better,” Davis says. Today, LifeLock has more than 1.7 million customers; fewer than 1,500 of them have had to invoke the guarantee. LifeLock – Federal Trade Commission – Identity theft – Social Security number – United States Continue reading

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America’s Fastest-Growing Retailer

No. 1 in Retail ModCloth 17,191% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $15.6 Million Employees: 100 CEO: Eric Koger Founded: 2002 Overall RANK: No. 2 Pittsburgh modcloth.com Just before starting college in 2002, Eric Koger convinced his girlfriend, Susan Gregg, to set up a site to sell her collection of vintage clothes. That site, ModCloth , now draws close to two million visitors a month and recently landed $19.8 million in funding from Accel Partners. Koger, who designed websites in high school, initially provided tech support for ModCloth, while Gregg handled sales. In 2005, they decided to turn their hobby into a full-fledged business by selling items from independent designers, and, in 2006, after graduating from Carnegie Mellon, they married. Koger now leads ModCloth’s operations and technology strategy, including the development of online contests that gauge the demand for new products, while his wife (now Susan Gregg Koger) remains the company’s creative muse. “We have a left-brain, right-brain kind of deal,” he says. Business – Accel Partners – Modcloth – Carnegie Mellon University – Technical support Continue reading

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America’s Fastest-Growing Construction Company

No. 1 in Construction Direct Exteriors 2,723.8% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $5.5 Million Employees: 32 President: Mike McAlpin Founded: 2003 Overall RANK: No. 91 Maple Grove, Minn. directexteriors.net Construction com Continue reading

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America’s Fastest-Growing Real Estate Company

No. 1 in Real Estate Platinum Realty 2,011.1% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $2.5 Million Employees: 4 CEO: Scott DeNeve Founded: 2005 Overall RANK: No. 129 Overland Park, Kan. platinumrealtykc.com Scott DeNeve was just 24 years old and had been working as a real estate agent for all of two years when he had his I-can’t-possibly-work-for-someone-else moment. He founded Platinum Realty during the housing bubble, but he was wise enough to avoid the high living he saw in his competitors. For the company’s first year and a half, DeNeve and his 20 agents crammed into a rented office that was just 110 square feet. He stressed the importance of working backward in order to stay debt free—the primary focus would be on profit, and more spacious digs would come later. DeNeve’s approach worked (meanwhile, a number of competitors didn’t survive the downturn), and his days in cramped quarters are now a thing of the past. Today, Platinum Realty has three offices and is the largest independent real estate company in Kansas City, with 242 agents. United States – Real estate broker – Real estate – Kansas City – Business Continue reading

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America’s Fastest-Growing Media Company

No. 1 in Media Blurb 4,829.6% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $45 Million Employees: 68 CEO: Eileen Gittins Founded: 2005 Overall RANK: No. 47 San Francisco blurb.com In 2003, having led two tech companies to acquisitions, Eileen Gittins was doing some consulting and pursuing what she calls a self-assignment, which was to photograph entrepreneurs from the Internet boom. She wanted to turn her photos into a book to give to her subjects, but couldn’t find a press that would print only 40 copies at a reasonable rate. So Gittins decided to build one: an Internet-powered, geographically distributed press that would turn digital photo albums and blogs into beautiful books. It took a year to find investors willing to buy in. “We were putting digital assets back into analog,” she says. “To most people, it looked like I had two heads.” Once Blurb ’s service launched in 2006, however, the company quickly grew, and it became profitable after two years. Last year, the company published 350,000 titles. Publishing – San Francisco – Blurb – Eileen Gittins – United States Continue reading

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America’s Fastest-Growing Manufacturing Company

No. 1 in Manufacturing InterGroup International 1,285.2% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $3.2 Million Employees: 25 CEO: Neil Gloger Founded: 2005 Overall RANK: No. 239 Warren, Ohio intergroupinternational.com In December 2007, a fire broke out at one of InterGroup International ’s warehouses. The facility was filled with plastic scraps; InterGroup buys plastic from vendors, recycles it, and then sells the product to compounders. It took three days and an environmental contractor to put out the flames. The damage was catastrophic: The 40,000-square-foot building, and every single plastic product inside, was destroyed. InterGroup, however, was not. “I’m proud to say that during that experience, we didn’t miss one pickup,” says founder and CEO Neil Gloger. “We had to reroute deliveries, but we didn’t turn a single truck away. I told my employees, ‘Now, we’re just going to have to work a little harder.’ Once that decision was made, it supercharged our growth and made us even more focused and determined.” Plastic – Business – Ohio – United States – Polymers Continue reading

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America’s Fastest-Growing IT Services Company

No. 1 in IT Services Carbonite 11,207.6% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $19.1 Million Employees: 100 CEO: David Friend Founded: 2005 Overall RANK: No. 9 Boston carbonite.com David Friend had observed that everyone with a PC had purchased, or obtained in a bundle with their computer, antivirus software. As more information moved into the cloud and the cost of digital storage dipped, Friend, who had founded four tech companies, decided to try to do for personal computer backup what Norton had done for antivirus protection: make it simple, inexpensive, and ubiquitous. With Jeff Flowers, who had been his co-founder and chief technology officer on three previous ventures, Friend founded Carbonite , the first company to sell unlimited online backup space. “Compared to anything else I’ve ever done, this is the biggest market,” Friend said. “We launched the service, and, literally on Day One, people started signing up.” Carbonite – Carbonite.com – Jeff Flowers – Backup – Information technology Continue reading

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America’s Fastest Growing-Insurance Company

No. 1 in Insurance QuoteWizard 5,950.5% Three-Year Growth Revenue: $9.1 Million Employees: 31 CEO: Scott Peyree Founded: 2006 Overall RANK: No. 36 Seattle quotewizard.com Scott Peyree’s first company, an online marketing firm called WorldClass Strategy, survived the dot-com crash by creating EarnMyDegree.com , a website on which visitors could browse course listings from the University of Phoenix, Kaplan, and other education companies. By the end of 2003, Peyree had shed all his noneducation clients except one, an insurance brokerage, which he felt was too large to give up. He launched another portal, QuoteWizard.com , on which consumers shop for coverage, and eventually spun it out into a separate company. When WorldClass Strategy was sold in 2007, most of Peyree’s partners, including his brother, stayed on as executives. But Peyree believed the insurance market offered a bigger opportunity. The site now has a network of 3,000 agents, who pay for customer referrals, and delivers 125,000 quotes a month to visitors. By 2009, all of Peyree’s former business partners had joined the company. Insurance – Business – United States – University of Phoenix – Financial Services Continue reading

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