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55 Articles

"These entrepreneurs aren’t just competing with the tech giants; they’re sharing the skills and knowledge they picked up while working inside.” Issie Lapowsky A journalist whose work has also appeared in Fast Company and The New York Times, Lapowsky reported on the new wave of startups created by those who lost jobs in recent tech layoffs (page 52). “All of these people had to explore who they were without those jobs and who they wanted to be,” she says. “These founders were handed a big career setback and tried to build something new.” João Canziani Canziani’s work as a photographer for titles like Esquire and Men’s Health has taken him around the world, but he enjoyed being in his home city of L.A. to photograph Spill CEO Alphonzo Terrell (cover story). “Phonz brought something…

If You're Looking for New Revenue (and Who Isn't?), Here's an Untapped Way to Find It

I recently asked a group of Inc. 5000 CEOs which marketing channels were performing best this year in terms of sales conversion. I’m not exactly sure what answers I expected, but I would not have been shocked to hear about partnering with TikTok influencers, plowing budget into demandgeneration campaigns, or fine-tuning email newsletters. And some of those tactics certainly came up. But to my surprise, the most common answer was decidedly nondigital: the classic word-of-mouth referral. Natasha Miller, founder and CEO of Entire Productions, was one of the founders who told me her company has ben e fited from referrals this year. When we spoke, Miller was in a Lyft, having just returned to San Francisco from a 10-day vacation in Italy. Unlike many businesses, her events-production company is having a…

If You're Looking for New Revenue (and Who Isn't?), Here's an Untapped Way to Find It

Backers Should Have Your Back

Three years ago, U.S. entrepreneurs were enjoying one of the best funding environments in decades. Venture capital and private equity hit all-time highs as banks loaned at historically low interest rates. All you needed to get a term sheet, it seemed, was a smile and a pitch deck. Then, the music stopped. In 2022, VC and PE activity declined, while business owners in need of debt financing faced a higher cost of capital thanks to a series of steep interest rate hikes. Things got worse in 2023, as Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, interest rates kept rising, and investment activity fell for the second straight year. Though 2024 has seen only slight increases in VC and PE investment, there are reasons to expect a rebound in 2025. Investors are sitting on large stockpiles…

Backers Should Have Your Back

A Bankable Pet Project

Berenice Giannini’s startup, eTailPet, wasn’t a natural fit for Moonshots Capital. The Austin-based venture firm, launched in 2014 by Kelly Perdew and Craig Cummings, both of whom had previously served in the U.S. Army, frequently backs companies founded by military veterans. Giannini didn’t have a military background. She and her husband ran a chain of pet stores in Southern California called Protein for Pets. But her spinoff company offered a promising solution to a problem she and more than 13,000 other independent pet store owners across the country had been struggling with for years: how to compete against retail giants such as Petco and online sellers like Amazon. Relying on her data and programming experience, Giannini built e-commerce and inventory management software that let pet owners buy products online and pick them…

A Bankable Pet Project

One Founder's Second Act in Hollywood

John Finn was working as an accountant in Syracuse, New York, when he decided he needed a change. A fan of 1970s films (The Godfather and The Sting are favorites), Finn moved to New York City, where he freelanced on movie sets before founding GreenSlate, an entertainment payroll and accounting company. By 2017, Finn had moved GreenSlate to Los Angeles and had offers from several private equity firms, most of which wanted to acquire a majority stake in his company. Finn didn’t want to give up control, but needed capital to accelerate growth. “I had some debt that I could have paid off, there were some software acquisitions we were looking to do, and it just seemed to be the right time,” Finn says. In 2018, GreenSlate accepted a minor ity investment from…

One Founder's Second Act in Hollywood

Never Left Holding the Bag

Dagne Dover co-founder Deepa Gandhi didn’t want to spend the week of her wedding securing a business loan. But in the fall of 2017, she found herself doing exactly that. A third-party logistics company holding Dagne’s inventory of ecofriendly handbags and backpacks had hit the business with an unexpected bill and had the ability to halt shipments if it didn’t receive payment. Paying the bill would deplete Dagne’s cash reserves, but not paying could have delayed delivery of customer orders. Founded as a direct-to-consumer brand in New York City in 2013, Dagne Dover had a $1 million line of credit from asset-based lender Dwight Funding, but needed a supplemental loan to pay the bill. Gandhi called Dwight, which approved a new six-figure loan within 24 hours, allowing her to return to…

Never Left Holding the Bag

Want to Scale Your Business? First, Work on Your Trust Issues

A lesson many business owners learn the hard way is that chasing growth too early can compromise the quality of a product or service. It can also overwhelm a young company’s operations, with potentially disastrous results. So how do you scale a successful business that’s inherently difficult to scale? To answer this question, we turned to three founders whose business models don’t readily lend themselves to fast growth: Sarah LaFleur, founder of womenswear brand M.M.LaFleur; Ariela Safira, founder of mental health care company Zeera; and Christina Tosi, founder of bakery chain Milk Bar. All three of these founder-CEOs have faced unique challenges while trying to expand, from struggling with delegation to managing excess inventory to launching during the early days of Covid. Working through these issues has made them better leaders,…

Want to Scale Your Business? First, Work on Your Trust Issues

Chip Conley | There will always be those who doubt you and your vision. Here's how to tune them out.

Recently, I invited an experienced luxury hotelier to visit the new campus we were building near Santa Fe for Modern Elder Academy, the midlife wisdom school I co-founded in 2018. Looking out at the 2,566-acre site, he remarked, “You’re quite a risktaker.” He’s not wrong, but his tone was more cautionary than it was cheerleading. My entrepreneurial balloon of confidence popped. I went for a long walk after that meeting. “Could he be right?” I worried. “Am I a lunatic?” I had so much invested in growing the business, which to me is a calling. This new campus was supposed to show a U.S. proof of concept after the success of our Baja campus. Was it too much, too soon? Throughout my career, people have called me a risk-taker. They were shocked…

Chip Conley | There will always be those who doubt you and your vision. Here's how to tune them out.

Finding the Right Talent with AI Solutions

Among the top issues keeping business leaders up at night— particularly leaders of small and midsize businesses (SMBs)—are finding, hiring, and retaining the best talent. While the labor market has improved since the height of The Great Resignation in 2022, recent data from The Conference Board, a think tank that regularly measures employment trends, suggests labor shortages are reemerging as a prodigious challenge for SMBs. Forty percent of smaller firms report having jobs they are unable to fill, according to the August 2024 Conference Board Employment Trends Index (ETI). “For SMBs particularly, every hire they make is critical to their business goals,” explains LinkedIn Director of Product Andrew Chimka. “Oftentimes, hirers at SMBs aren’t full-time recruiters; they are doing the hiring themselves on top of other responsibilities. These hirers need simple,…

Finding the Right Talent with AI Solutions

"We made the choice early on not to name the brand after me because we wanted to make sure it could live on without me. That’s important for this new wave of influencer-driven brands to keep in mind. A lot of people think it’s taboo to say you started a company knowing you were eventually going to sell it, but I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. When you have investors, it’s their intention to have an exit. You can have that roadmap and still be passionate. If anything, it helped us reach our milestones faster. “We started conversations with our investment banker in late 2022. They pointed out things we never would have even thought of—like a trademark we hadn’t secured in Spain—to make it a smoother…

Marina Khidekel | Misjudging your audience at launch could kill your startup. But with the right mindset, you can turn it around.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made as a founder is misjudging my audience. From the moment my brand launched, I limited its growth potential. I started my business, Hugimals World, in the summer of 2022 because of my need for our anchor product: a substantially weighted, design-forward, machine washable, eminently huggable plush I could use to calm my racing mind as I tried to sleep. Though I had created Hugimals with input from therapists on what would help anxious adults like me, they were also suitable for kids, and I was intently aware that this was a line of stuffed animals, which are usually seen as toys for children. So upon debuting Hugimals at a specialty toy trade show, I marketed almost exclusively to families and children. This seemed justified at…

Marina Khidekel | Misjudging your audience at launch could kill your startup. But with the right mindset, you can turn it around.

How Partnering With Private Equity Helped One Company Transform Care

BOYNECAPITAL.COM 2006 Year Founded ~$700M Assets Under Management 30 Employees 19 Portfolio Companies When Dr. Khan Nedd, founder of Infusion Associates, met representatives of Boyne Capital in 2018, he already knew he had tapped into a tremendous opportunity. The infusion treatment center’s first location in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was growing fast, and Nedd was focused on finding a partner to help take its services to more communities. It was a critical inflection point for the business. In just over five years following Boyne’s investment, Infusion Associates grew sales and earnings by five times, expandiwng from one to 14 locations in four states across the Midwest and becoming a major industry player. “Boyne Capital wasn’t just a partner—they were the missing piece we needed to reach our true potential,” Nedd says. Millions of Americans suffer from chronic health…

How Partnering With Private Equity Helped One Company Transform Care

LIFT OFF Would you pay $50,000 to touch the edge of space?

SO YOU WANT to go to space. To take in the expansive curvature of the Earth glowing miles above the atmosphere, surrounded by pure darkness. To experience the mind-altering overview effect described by astronauts as a transcendent state of awe, staring back at the planet on which you’ve inhaled your every living breath. But for a civilian, traveling to space is an arduous journey. First, there’s the price. The known cost of an 11-minute flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is $1.25 million. Then, of course, there are physical demands. After months of training, you must be able to climb seven flights of stairs in 90 seconds. And liftoff is a shock to the body. The first two minutes are a vertical climb accelerating to more than 2,000 miles per…

LIFT OFF Would you pay $50,000 to touch the edge of space?

What I Bought When I Made It

Statement Bag Louis Vuitton Graceful PM, $1,760 “I knew I wanted to buy a nice purse for myself that I would feel proud to wear. When we hit our first milliondollar mark, I bought my first designer handbag—a Louis Vuitton.” Noelle McInerney, founder and CEO, Ladidadi Events & Incentives Indelible Ink Montblanc Meisterstück Classique, from $460 “When my brother and I first made the Inc. 5000, I bought us two Montblanc pens engraved with the year of the deal that landed us on the list.” Paul L. Gunn Jr., founder and CEO, KUOG Winning Watch Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean 600M, $7,100 “I had my eyes on a luxury watch, a reward I promised myself once I hit $1 million in sales. Within a year, I’d surpassed my goal. I was nervous about the hefty price, but my aunt’s…

What I Bought When I Made It

Why Esther Dyson Says You Should Seek Out Mistakes and Messes

Esther Dyson admits she grew up in “one of the world’s most bubbly bubbles,” surrounded by Nobel Prize winners in Princeton, New Jersey, where her father, theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, worked for J. Robert Oppenheimer. But the 73-year-old Swissborn investor and futurist has spent her adult life following her interests in unexpected directions. That’s included working on Wall Street, immersing herself in the Eastern European startup scene after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and training to go to space; she’s now wrapping up work on the community health nonprofit Wellville, which she founded in 2014. Dyson, who has backed prominent companies such as Square and LinkedIn, affirms that her success isn’t a product of opportunity; it’s a consequence of curiosity. 1 SEEK SOLUTIONS, NOT A JOB TITLE People who say “I…

Why Esther Dyson Says You Should Seek Out Mistakes and Messes

REBOUNDER FOUNDERS

Alphonzo Ter rell had just returned home from Twitter’s Los Angeles office in November 2022 when he found himself suddenly locked out of Slack—the first sign that he and about half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees had been laid off. “It was like the scene in Avengers: Infinity War when Thanos goes like this,” Terrell says, snapping his fingers, “and people start evaporating into dust.” Not that the layoffs came as any big surprise. For the better part of a year, Terrell and his colleagues had followed every twist of the will-he-won’t-he drama surrounding billionaire Elon Musk’s attempts to take over the company. They watched as Musk made a play for Twitter, tried to back out, and then had his hand forced by the board. They learned more than they ever wanted…

REBOUNDER FOUNDERS

The CPG Conundrum

THE BUZZ AROUND Me & the Bees lemonade just kept growing. The Austin-based company charmed its way into recent startup lore with its young founder, Mikaila Ulmer, getting stung by a bee at the tender age of 4 and then deciding to sell family-recipe lemonade with honey in it to bring attention to the issue of plunging honeybee populations. What started as a family project in 2009 made it from a few local youth-entrepreneurship fairs all the way to a deal with Daymond John on Shark Tank in 2015. It was a business fairy tale, with nationwide distribution in the largest grocery chains, international press attention for Mikaila, and a spot in the 2022 Inc. Regionals as the 36th-fastest-growing company in the Southwest. But right about the same time Me &…

The CPG Conundrum

ELECTRICAL AUDIO TURNS IT UP

Inc. 2024© On Tuesday, May 7, 2024, Steve Albini ended one long day of work by preparing for the next. The renowned audio engineer was recording the sixth album by a local Chicago band called FACS, which had booked an entire week at Albini’s Electrical Audio studios. When he opened the two-story brick recording complex in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood in 1997, Albini was 35 years old and already the most celebrated audio engineer of his generation. His fame was tied to a set of ideals that led him to reject the title “record producer” and many of the traditions that went with it. It was also inseparable from his having recorded three classic albums that helped define what what came to be called alternative music: the 1988 Pixies record Surfer Rosa, PJ…

ELECTRICAL AUDIO TURNS IT UP

Inc. POWER PARTNERS

HOWDY, PARTNER As 2024 wraps up, you’re probably budgeting for the new year and taking a close look at every expense. Which investments paid off beautifully, and which SaaS licenses did your teams underuse? Which business partners are worth every penny? These are the questions we seek to answer through Inc.’s Power Partners program, our definitive ranking of the best vendors and suppliers for the small- and midsize-business market. It’s crucial for businesses like yours to find the right solutions as you meet today’s challenges and keep pace with industry trends, such as remote and hybrid workforce technology, cyber security, software solutions including AI, creative financing, digital presence and omnichannel retail, and methods of attracting a new generation of employees. That’s why we have worked diligently to uncover the best B2B companies that…

Inc. POWER PARTNERS

THE BEST DEFENSE

VIRTRU 2012 Washington, DC CEO: John Ackerly Company Size: 158 John Ackerly was working on federal privacy legislation at the National Economic Council, a White House advisory group, when terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. “I saw firsthand the pain that happens when you can’t connect dots that should be connected,” says Ackerly, cofounder of encrypted email and secure file-sharing company Virtru. Meanwhile, the privacy protections for citizens’ data that he and his colleagues planned to lobby for legislation around went out the window with the passage of the Patriot Act. A few years later, John’s brother Will got a job as a cloudsecurity architect for the National Security Agency, devising ways to protect classified information. Through their government work, the Ackerlys became concerned about two opposing issues: the need…

THE BEST DEFENSE

A SLACK PM SHARES 5 TiPS FOR MANAGiNG A HYBRiD STAFF

SLACK 2014 San Francisco, CA CEO: Denise Dresser Company Size: 72,000 01 Focus on Outcomes Grace acknowledges that many hybrid team leaders fear not being able to see what their employees are working on. She advises bosses with such concerns to “focus on outcomes rather than timecards,” adding that as a manager herself, any worries she has about her team’s efficiency should be “my problem, not my employees’ problem.” 02 Use DMs Sparingly At Slack, Grace’s team mainly works out of project-specific channels, and tries to keep all nonpersonal communication out of DMs. While some of the best ideas come from informal one-on-one conversations, either in person or through direct mes sages, if these ideas aren’t brought into a central location, it can create confusion for the workers who weren’t included. 03 Record Everything (With AI) Grace says that…

HOW YOUR ACCOUNTiNG OPTiONS ADD UP

INTUIT QUICKBOOKS 1983 Mountain View, CA CEO: Sasan Goodarzi Company Size: 17,300 XERO 2006 Wellington, New Zealand CEO: Sukhinder Singh Cassidy Company Size: 4,322 Company overview When you think of SMB financial software, you probably think of QuickBooks. With more than seven million global customers, the powerhouse platform, launched by Intuit co-founder Scott Cook in 1992, offers a range of features including payments, invoicing, employee time tracking, benefits, and payroll. “We do core accounting very well, but we’ve expanded beyond that,” says Joe Black, director of product for QuickBooks Online. “Our aim is primarily to help improve and automate a lot of the back-office functionality that a small business needs to do to free up the small-business owner’s time.” Founded in New Zealand in 2006, Xero (pronounced “zero”) has been making inroads into the North American market for over a…

A HUBSPOT SVP TALKS Ai AND iNSiGHTS

HUBSPOT 2006 Cambridge, MA CEO: Yamini Rangan Company Size: 7,829 HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM platform, which empowers teams to use customer data insights for the creation of targeted sales strategies and personalized marketing content, has earned the company thousands of clients and revenue of $2.17 billion in 2023. It also recently launched Breeze, a suite of AI tools. We asked HubSpot SVP Karen Ng how businesses can get the most out of every interaction. Q: What’s the most common mistake businesses make in trying to understand customers? A: The average company uses 15 different apps just to manage customer interactions, which is not only inefficient, but also often results in disconnected data. From the beginning, HubSpot made a big bet on small businesses by making complex technologies approachable. We’re big champions of bringing customer data together with…

THE POWER TO CHOOSE YOUR TiMELiNE

CARROT FERTILITY 2016 Menlo Park, CA CEO: Tammy Sun Company Size: 450 Like millions of Americans who use employer-sponsored health care, Tammy Sun’s fertility treatments were not covered when she underwent three rounds of egg freezing about a decade ago. So, she left her job in tech and, in 2016, planted the seeds of Carrot Fertility, a benefits platform that works with employers and insurance com panies to provide employees with affordable access to egg freezing, in vitro fer tili zation, gender- affirming care, menopause support, and more. Today, Carrot works with more than 1,000 health plans and employers ranging in size from 100 employees to more than 70,000. “The workforce today is as diverse as it’s ever been, which includes age, sex ual orientation, and gender identity. There are varying needs around the most…

THE POWER TO CHOOSE YOUR TiMELiNE

WHAT'S THE MOST VALUABLE UPGRADE YOU MADE THiS YEAR?

"We built a custom project-budgeting and forecasting tool that integrates with our QuickBooks accounting system and provides our teams with real-time cost data and revenue projections on their construction projects.” "Docusign IAM, an AI-powered platform that helps businesses navigate the critical information hidden in their agreements for smarter decisions, faster work-flows, and greater efficiency.” “Tools that enable hybrid work. Our Bevi water machine, infrared sauna, Sonos setup, and Zoom rooms help ensure that in-office collaboration time is fun and worthwhile, while remote work vibes rely on G Suite and Slack.” “Financial Flywheel, an advanced reporting platform that enhances our team’s ability to deliver deeper insights, driving smarter decisions to fuel our clients’ growth and strategic goals.” “An AI-powered essay grader that gives immediate feedback and recommendations, providing students within one minute something that previously…

WHAT'S THE MOST VALUABLE UPGRADE YOU MADE THiS YEAR?

Busy is an understatement, right? You’re running a company, after all, with every thing that entails. That’s why we’re launching Action Items, a distillation of the most useful instructional content, tips, tricks, and strategies published by Inc. each quarter. Think of it as a handbook, a field guide to entrepreneurship. Whether you’re a solopreneur chasing invoices (check out the Starting Up section), or a CEO optimizing your hybrid schedule (Leadership/Workplace), there’s something in here for every business owner, big and small. In this issue, be sure to head over to the Business Productivity section to learn how you can cut back on your SaaS subscriptions. Meanwhile, the Sales & Marketing section has advice for selling your ideas from Bozoma Saint John—a marketing guru for big names like Netflix and PepsiCo—and…

1 Find your inspiration 2 Launch a DTC brand 3 Thrive in the age of AI 4 Get your invoices paid 1 Find Your INSPIRATION WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR? The golden age of direct-to-consumer businesses may be over, but these DTC brands have found success in increasingly competitive markets. 2 Launch a DTC BRAND “To succeed in the direct-to-consumer world, you used to just need a pretty product and a nice-looking website,” says Lauren Kleinman, founder of the performance PR firm Dreamday and co-founder of the media company the Quality Edit. “Now that is the very minimum you need. It’s table stakes.” To stand out in crowded markets, she says, businesses need the full package: compelling founder stories, great creative assets, and smart marketing. And they need to do it amid uncertainty about the role…

A Scientific Discovery that Unlocks Your Body's Healing Power

STEMREGEN.CO NO 1765 2024 Ranking 2016 Year Founded 2021 Launched in the U.S. 297% 3-Year Growth Nearly 30 years ago, when Christian Drapeau first shared his hypothesis that stem cells are the body’s repair system, and plant extracts can stimulate your stem cells, most of the medical community thought he was nuts. But Drapeau stayed the course and discovered existing, long overlooked scientific studies that supported his hunch. “A voice kept telling me, ‘Stick with it. It’s just a matter of time,’” he recalls. Eventually, the world caught up. Stemregen, the company Drapeau founded in 2016 to pioneer a plant-based approach to supporting stem cell function and cellular regeneration, after decades of studying the impact of plant extracts on stem cell stimulation, is a 2024 Inc. 5000 honoree. Steeped in history and research Drapeau’s journey began in…

A Scientific Discovery that Unlocks Your Body's Healing Power

Transformative Growth: Agency Masters the Art of Evolution

AWESTRUCK.AGENCY NO 121 2024 Ranking 2,811% 3-Year Growth $17.4M 2023 Annual Revenue 60 Employees Making its second consecutive appearance on the Inc. 5000, the destination marketing agency Awestruck has had a three-year growth rate close to 3,000 percent. Co-founders and co-CEOs Ryan Sprance and Dave Marcy, who have been friends for more than 25 years, say a big reason for that success has been their close alignment as business partners. They share the same business instincts but bring different experiences and skill sets to the table. Marcy has a more extensive history in advertising sales, while Sprance has a deeper background in corporate structure and operations. “We teach each other every day, which lends to the strength of this organization” Marcy says. “At the same time, we’re great friends, and we make each other laugh constantly.…

Transformative Growth: Agency Masters the Art of Evolution

MONEY / FINANCE

1 Hone your pitch 2 Follow the money 3 Apply for grant funding 4 Deal with flaky investors 5 Locate the exit 1 Hone Your PITCH “Investors like to fund strategy,” says Sarah Dusek, founder of Inc. 5000 honoree Under Canvas and Enygma Ventures, a venture fund that invests solely in female-led businesses based in southern Africa. Her new book, Thinking Bigger: A Pitch-Deck Formula for Women Who Want to Change the World, offers actionable insights on raising money for female founders. Much of the book’s advice is drawn from her own journey with Under Canvas. One key takeaway? Show your strategy. Though she told Inc. that some investors might go purely off vibes and instinct, those instances of blind faith are rare. Instead, Dusek says, most “like to think about what it is that we’re backing,…

MONEY / FINANCE

For the Love of the Restaurant Experience

DJBHOSPITALITY.COM NO3624 2024 Ranking 5X Inc. 5000 Honoree 131% 3-Year Growth 17 Locations Chat with Dennis Barbaro about his business, DJB Hospitality, and you will leave the discussion hungry, thirsty, and ready for a night on the town. Because Barbaro’s business is restaurants—and his passion is infectious. “I love the energy in a restaurant,” he explains. “And we don’t know why guests come in. It could be for a happy occasion. It could be for a sad occasion. It could just be because it’s a Wednesday. I love that for many people, going to a restaurant is escapism.” And Barbaro gets to curate that escape. A concept with legs 2024 marks DJB Hospitality’s fifth Inc. 5000 honor. A key to its success is a focus on people: guests and employees. This commitment was crystal-clear during the Covid-19…

For the Love of the Restaurant Experience

Custom PEO Solutions for Blue-Collar Industries

COMPEO.IO NO17 2024 Ranking 10,915% 3-Year Growth HQ Dania, Florida 2017 Year Founded When COMPEO, a provider of cost-effective, customized HR management software platforms, entered the scene in 2017, most, if not all, of the professional employer organization (PEO) software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions on the market were designed for people behind a desk, says COMPEO CEO and co-founder Oscar Montenegro. These solutions won’t work for the on-the-go business owner, specifically those in blue-collar industries, like contractors in construction. COMPEO’s proprietary underwriting platform and mobile app make it simple for business owners to obtain workers’ compensation and manage HR processes from the palm of their hand—a game changer when you’re jumping from job site to job site. By filling a need for a previously overlooked market, COMPEO has achieved astronomical scale, landing the No. 17 spot on the…

Custom PEO Solutions for Blue-Collar Industries

Homebuying Was Broken—Meet the Founders Here to Fix It

CECILIANPARTNERS.COM NO1033 2024 Ranking 492% 3-Year Growth 2024 Inc. Best Workplaces Honoree 2019 Year Founded John Cecilian Jr.’s initial pitch to his brother-in-law and co-founder Philip Worland wasn’t in a boardroom–it was in the MetLife Stadium parking lot, during a family tailgate in 2017. The unlikely setting didn’t diminish the impact. Cecilian’s vision for a new venture was so compelling that Worland, who was then thriving in a client advisory and digital innovation role at Accenture, found himself at a coffee shop two years later, laying the groundwork for what would become Cecilian Partners. This Inc. 5000 honoree is now bridging the digital divide between homebuilders, community developers, and home buyers with a multi-patented technology platform. It starts with a vision Their first brainstorming session was electric. “We sat there for two-and-a-half hours, and we talked about…

Homebuying Was Broken—Meet the Founders Here to Fix It

1 Choose the right generative AI tool 2 Take these steps if you’ve been hacked 3 Shrink your LLM 1 Choose the Right GENERATIVE AI TOOL For entrepreneurs looking to use generative AI tools in their business, few choices are more important than picking the right model. To help you do that, Inc. conducted tests of our own, challenging four of the most popular large language models currently available to complete four routine tasks that entrepreneurs commonly need to do: summarizing a lengthy document, rewriting a letter from a CEO, helping to analyze market environments, and writing an elevator pitch based on a deck. Typically, engineers use scientific benchmarks to describe how effective models are at certain tasks, but these benchmarks aren’t exactly self-explanatory. For example, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, the flagship model from AI startup…

A Focus on Complete Solutions for Regulatory Environments

NORTHCROSSGROUP.COM NO1706 2024 Ranking 305% 3-Year Growth 50 Employees 3 Locations Christopher Bender takes pride in competing against the big consulting firms to help clients with compliance and growth efforts. As founder and president of the Northcross Group (NCG), a professional services and advisory company, “we try to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes” to determine what needs to happen for success. NCG works with companies in highly regulated environments, like banking, health care, transportation, manufacturing, and the federal government. They often help with mergers and acquisitions integrations or implementing compliance programs. “What makes us different is that we take a client-centric look at challenges for a complete solution perspective,” Bender says. “Others like to specialize in either programmatic steps, pure compliance, or tech.” With NCG’s model, the company avoids templates and cookie-cutter approaches, instead listening…

A Focus on Complete Solutions for Regulatory Environments

An AI Startup That Sanctifies Time

LAUREL.AI NO700 2024 Ranking 35 Employees 679% 3-Year Growth HQ San Francisco, Calif. The business Ryan Alshak started up in 2018 began life as Time by Ping, the trailblazing creator of AI time software for professional service firms. Six years later, the company has raised $55 million in venture funding, undergone a complete platform rebuild, and rebranded to a new name. Now known as Laurel, the San Francisco-based company has clients that include a Big Four accounting firm and one of the world’s top five law firms. It has an average contract value of ~$200,000, with multiple contracts topping seven figures. Alshak’s inspiration for the business came when he was a corporate litigator who abhorred the manual logging of his time required for billing. “I was billing out $650 an hour and yet was being asked to manually…

An AI Startup That Sanctifies Time

LEADERSHIP / WORKPLACE

1 Get vulnerable 2 Rethink your approach to hiring 3 Benchmark your benefits 4 Tighten that HR budget 1 Get VULNERABLE In early 2023, Kelly R. Culhane, co-founder and chief growth officer at Culhane, a Dallas-based law firm, noticed that one of her executive assistants was falling behind. Instead of bluntly telling her that the higher-ups were frustrated, Culhane took the assistant out to dinner and shared some of her own struggles: Two of her children had recently graduated, and her work-life balance had gotten out of whack. That “opened up the door,” Culhane says. The assistant shared concerns about her own child and family issues that were distracting her at work. Right there at the table, they worked out a plan to redistribute some tasks and adjust deadlines. Culhane also pointed the employee to resources for…

LEADERSHIP / WORKPLACE

The Former Wall Street Analyst Teaching Wealth-Building to the Masses

EMPIFY.COM NO652 2024 Ranking 712% 3-Year Growth 2017 Year Founded HQ Atlanta, Georgia Ashley M. Fox, founder of Empify—a fintech startup on a mission to revolutionize how adults and children learn how to build wealth—never wanted to run a business. She wanted to be “a profound African American woman on Wall Street.” After three Wall Street internships, she landed a job in asset management at a large investment bank, working with individuals with a net worth of $25 million or more. “I saw the ins and outs of how wealthy individuals built their wealth. I was inside the bank accounts of millionaires and billionaires every day,” Fox explains. The seeds that sprouted a new approach Fox soon found herself wanting to become the clients she served and to show the world how they could, too. She was…

The Former Wall Street Analyst Teaching Wealth-Building to the Masses

Delivering Care That Always Puts Patients First

CBSCLINIC.COM NO3309 2024 Ranking 144 Employees 8 Locations HQ Los Alamitos, Calif. When the doctors at Cancer and Blood Specialty Clinic founded their Los Angeles-area practice in 2009, they had a clear vision: to create a health care environment where patient care is the absolute priority. Drawing from diverse backgrounds—including large health care corporations and venture capital-funded entities—these physicians were united by a common goal: to establish a practice driven by compassion, excellence, and ethical integrity. Cancer and Blood Specialty Clinic is not just another health care group; it’s a physician-led team that operates with a flat organizational structure. This streamlined approach to decision making allows the group to remain agile, efficient, and deeply focused on what matters most— patient care. “Our flat structure means we can make decisions quickly and efficiently, without the layers of bureaucracy…

Delivering Care That Always Puts Patients First

Connecting People and Local Organizations to Solve Social Needs

GROUNDGAME.HEALTH NO447 2024 Ranking $20M+ Revenue in 2023 993% 3-Year Growth 145 Employees in 2023 When Susan Rawlings Molina and Sri Akula were looking to start up a company around 2020, they knew they wanted to combine Molina’s health care and Akula’s product and technology backgrounds. They found the perfect combination in an existing startup, GroundGame.Health. The company’s technology and services solution helped reduce emergency room visits by identifying and solving health plan members’ social needs locally. Some of the most common social needs included food, transportation, housing instability, and financial assistance. “And we were getting paid for it,” Molina says. GroundGame.Health brought in $1.5 million in revenue that year. In 2021, Molina joined as CEO and Akula as president, raising money to stabilize and grow the business. The hourglass They continued delivering better health outcomes for health…

Connecting People and Local Organizations to Solve Social Needs

An Independent Electric Supply Powerhouse

MAINELECTRICSUPPLY.COM NO4631 2024 Ranking 87% 3-Year Growth 621 Employees HQ Santa Ana, Calif. From 1946 to 1999, the year nowprincipal and CEO Scott Germann joined as a salesperson, Main Electric Supply Co. was a one-location supplier of electrical material to the construction industry. But Germann immediately saw that the business had greater potential. Within a year of being hired, Germann conducted an audit of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. He wrote up what he found and called his report, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Main,” sharing it companywide. This vision for what Main Electric could grow to become earned him a promotion to manager in 2000. Germann understood the assignment from the outset, starting with converting the operations from an outdated paperbased system to a high-tech forerunner. “At that time, Main didn’t…

An Independent Electric Supply Powerhouse

One-Stop Facilities Management Services

THESCIENTIFICGROUP.COM NO406 2024 Ranking 210 Employees 1093% 3-Year Growth 10K+ Client Locations The Scientific Group stands out in the building services industry as a rare self-performing provider. The company is adept at delivering comprehensive solutions for commercial building management without relying on subcontractors. “A building is a living, breathing thing,” Jeffrey Kaufman, CEO of The Scientific Group explains, with a multitude of interconnected systems. When one system fails, it frequently impacts others. His firm’s unique approach addresses this complexity through a diverse portfolio of 12 in-house service providers handling nearly every aspect of building maintenance and management. Kaufman highlights how common building amenities like automatic doors, elevators, climate control, and clean carpeting are often taken for granted. The Scientific Group ensures these elements are always operational by offering a one-stop self-performing solution for property managers. Instead of juggling…

One-Stop Facilities Management Services

Help for Families Who Need Comprehensive Autism Care

AUTISMTHERAPYUSA.COM NO132 2024 Ranking 2607% 3-Year Growth 367 Employees $11M+ 2023 Revenue Derek Bullard, CEO of Already Autism Health, unwittingly followed in his mother’s footsteps when she left the banking industry to pursue her dream of becoming a foster parent for a child with special needs. Bullard wanted to be a “big brother” and help his parents care for their 15-year-old foster son, going so far as to receive official training. That action triggered far-reaching ripple effects. About a week after earning his license as a foster parent, Bullard received a call from a social worker asking if he would consider temporarily taking in a 14-year-old boy named James. That placement lasted four years and shifted Bullard’s entire career focus. From employee to entrepreneur The experience Bullard gained while serving as a foster parent became a passion, which lead…

Help for Families Who Need Comprehensive Autism Care

SALES & MARKETING

1 Formulate your talking points 2 Start selling faster 3 Pick a social platform 4 Grow your community 5 Survey smarter 1 Formulate Your TALKING POINTS “If you’re creative and you’re not quite sure how to sell your idea, you have to make the rounds. You have to do the one-on-ones and figure out how people need to see the information. Then you reverse engineer it so you can hit the points they’re looking to hit. If you’re able to come up with big, creative ideas, you should be able to sell the idea in bite-size pieces.” Bozoma Saint John Former marketing executive for Uber, Apple, Netflix, and PepsiCo 2 Start Selling FASTER “Sales is the numberone thing you need to learn as a business owner.” That’s according to Brian Town, a fractional CMO and serial entrepreneur who…

SALES & MARKETING

Trailblazing Outdoor Camera Technology

TACTACAM.COM NO352 2024 Ranking 1,244% 3-Year Growth 322 Employees 800K+ Customers The hunting community is close-knit, so in 2013 when husband-and-wife hunters Jeffand Tara Peel set out on a weekend trip in Wisconsin and met fellow hunter Ben Stern, they became fast friends. Stern had developed a new hunting camera to allow his aging grandfather to share the experience. Branded as Tactacam, the point-of-view camera could be mounted to a bow or rifle to record a video of the hunt, which could then be shared with his grandfather to allow him to see what Stern saw out in the woods. Stern gave one to the Peels to try; they were immediately impressed. A few months later when word got out that Stern wanted to sell Tactacam, the Peels proposed working together. The Peels, Stern, and a fourth…

Trailblazing Outdoor Camera Technology

Cabinet Door Maker Views Challenge as the Doorway to Growth

CABINETRESTYLERS.COM NO2311 2024 Ranking 226% 3-Year Growth 60 Employees HQ Ashland, Ohio Based in Ashland, Ohio, Cabinet Restylers provides custom kitchen cabinetry to the remodeling industry across the United States. Along with earning a spot on this year’s Inc. 5000, the company ranked No. 56 on the magazine’s list of the fastest-growing businesses in the manufacturing industry. The family-owned business got its start in 1967 as a retail cabinet restyling provider but no longer sells directly to homeowners. Nevertheless, Eric Thiel, who took over as president 27 years ago, says: “We have the end user in mind every day.” Besides making sure everyone at Cabinet Restylers stays laser-focused on satisfying those who will have the products installed in their kitchens, Thiel points to another key reason for the company’s rapid rise. “The most important factor in being able…

Cabinet Door Maker Views Challenge as the Doorway to Growth

Automation and Customer Attention Drive This Company's Growth

ROYALTYSHIPS.COM NO3381 2024 Inc. 5000 Ranking 20 Employees 144% 3-Year Growth 2018 Year Founded Rachel Blatt had the seed of entrepreneurship planted at a very young age. Her father was the first employee at Compuware, a startup that later became a billion-dollar publicly traded company. After watching Compuware grow as she herself grew up, she also landed her first corporate job with the company. There, she began to learn the art of sales. When she stepped into the auto industry she incorporated her tech knowledge, becoming a top performer. Blatt had the opportunity to work for three different companies before deciding to do it better on her own. In 2018, she founded Royalty Logistics. “I fell in love with the industry, the customers, and saw tons of opportunity,” she says. The company focuses on moving vehicles, working…

Automation and Customer Attention Drive This Company's Growth

A Leader in Auto Transport Builds on a Proven Strategy

MONTWAY.COM NO4643 2024 Ranking 86% 3-Year Growth 6X Inc. 5000 Honoree 100K Online Customer Reviews Thomas Gartland, chairman and CEO of the top-rated auto transport company Montway Auto Transport, makes being a six-time Inc. 5000 honoree sound almost simple. First, you develop a strategy and continually refine it. Next, you get the right people in the right jobs and execute together. “Inspect what you expect. Manage the execution. When I get up in the morning, I go through a whole set of KPI documents to understand ‘What happened yesterday?’” Gartland shares. While the approach is straightforward, every business owner knows the magic–and the challenge–lies in the execution. Montway’s focus on customer service, smart strategy refinements, and clever ideas for driving sales amount to yet another Inc. 5000 honor for the category leader and lay the groundwork…

A Leader in Auto Transport Builds on a Proven Strategy

BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY

1 Gauge Your WORKPLACE 1 Gauge your workplace 2 Manage remote workers effectively 3 Optimize for hybrid work 4 Audit your SaaS contracts BREAKDOWN OF WORKPLACE MODELS 2 Manage Remote Workers EFFECTIVELY “When our work is more complex, measuring productivity is difficult,” says Chris Bailey, an author focused on productivity. Even the various apps that claim to gauge it likely won’t give you the full picture, he adds: “Productivity is not busyness. So many of these measures of productivity are one-dimensional.” When remote work is added to the mix and managers lose touchpoints, it becomes even more difficult to keep teams on track, says Robert C. Pozen, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Yet effective remote management can be as simple as following two rules. SET CLEAR PRIORITIES The first step for company leaders in improving…

BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY

The Unconventional Founder Shaking up IT Services

THEWISERAGENCY.COM NO1686 2024 Ranking 308% 3-Year Growth 2X Inc. 5000 Honoree HQ Austin, Texas There’s a Reddit channel devoted to talking trash about Chris Wiser. People have posted that he is cocky or selling results that are too good to be true. But Wiser doesn’t mind. In fact, his company sells “Chris Wiser Sucks” T-shirts. “You get polarizing when you are dealing with an industry that has never changed,” he explains. Some IT services professionals cling to how things have always been done. Most are introverted and risk averse, Wiser says. That’s the opposite of his approach. His coaching program, 7 Figure MSP, a Wiser Agency brand, challenges entrepreneurs to think bigger, expand their mindset, and, ultimately, increase sales. A few of its clients earned their first Inc. 5000 win this year. This is The Wiser…

The Unconventional Founder Shaking up IT Services

Meet the Consulting Firm Ushering in a Retail Renaissance

NO1106 2024 Ranking 463% 3-Year Growth 45 Employees 3 Locations LEGACYRETAIL.COM The largest retailers are only getting bigger and more complex. Each retailer’s approach is different and requires deep knowledge of their merchandising strategies and process. Legacy Retail has grown its business on this knowledge, landing a spot on the latest Inc. 5000 list for the second year in a row. Founded in Rogers, Arkansas, near one of the most prolific retailers, Walmart, Legacy’s location has helped the company develop its capabilities and understand how to create value for its clients. The region’s retail ecosystem helped it attract cross-functional teammates including some of the most talented people working in retail. Offices in Issaquah, Washington, Costco’s home base, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, which boasts Target headquarters, helped the company grow its expertise as well as its head count. Building…

Meet the Consulting Firm Ushering in a Retail Renaissance

An Exhibit in Success

ENGAGESTAR.COM NO1936 2024 Ranking 271% 3-Year Growth $52M 2023 Revenue 229 Employees When Mark Johnson founded STAR, a Minneapolis-based trade show company, in 1993, there wasn’t much outside-the-box thinking in his industry. Agencies would ask clients for the date of their trade show and the size and color of their booth, and that was about it. Johnson saw an opportunity to be different. People-first vision “We wanted to be the Nordstrom of the trade show industry,” says the company co-founder and CEO. “We wanted to have customer intimacy as our No. 1 business model, by asking our clients about their ideal customer, find out what made them different, and ultimately become an extension of our client’s marketing departments.” That vision has been central to its success. During the last 31 years, Johnson, along with his growing team of 229…

An Exhibit in Success

The Fashion Business Model, Reimagined

MARCELLANYC.COM NO577 2024 Ranking 780% 3-Year Growth 61 Employees 3X Inc. 5000 Honoree Leaving corporate America to bootstrap the women’s designer fashion brand Marcella, husband-and-wife duo Andy and Siyana Huszar quickly recognized that they would need to reimagine the entire fashion business model. Adopting a conventional approach couldn’t be profitable while still being ethical, sustainable, and socially impactful. As a result, Marcella rethought the fashion process from top to bottom, shrinking the time to market, minimizing textile waste, and boosting profitability, all the while advancing women and girls across the brand’s every aspect, says Siyana, co-founder and chief creative officer. Minimalist designer fashion with a mission Marcella’s distinctive “minimalism with an edge” clothing, shoes, and accessories are designed in New York City and handcrafted in Europe’s traditional textile hub, Bulgaria. Siyana initially launched the brand on Etsy in 2011,…

The Fashion Business Model, Reimagined

This Technology Company Wants to Improve Health Care

CEDARGATE.COM NO427 2024 Software Ranking 116% 3-Year Growth 1036 Employees $124M 2024 Revenue Ever since David B. Snow Jr. launched his career in the 1980s, the veteran health care executive has wanted to fix what he viewed as a broken system. “I saw how perverse fee-for-service incentives were and how they contributed to poor clinical and financial outcomes,” says the chairman and CEO of Cedar Gate Technologies. Since then, Snow has advocated for a value-based health care system, which encourages proactive care to keep patients healthy versus the existing model, which focuses entirely on volume, without accountability for patient outcomes. In 2014, as health care shifted to a value-focused approach, Snow launched Cedar Gate Technologies. The Connecticutbased software platform offers health care analytics, care management, and payment technology. At the time, payers, providers, and self-funded employers that…

This Technology Company Wants to Improve Health Care

Karen Dillon | Inner strength isn't everything. When times are tough, resilient leaders look outward for support.

• Scott MacGregor, founder of Madison, Connecticutbased talent strategy company Something New, is one of the best networkers I’ve ever met. But not in the way you might think. Nearly a decade ago, Scott and I chatted briefly before I spoke about my book How Will You Measure Your Life? at a conference he was attending. A few months later, Scott reached out: He had decided to leave his job as a chief revenue officer to start his own company—something partly inspired by my talk. I couldn’t help with his business, but we connected over the struggles and joys he would face as an entrepreneur. We’ve stayed in touch in the years since, periodically checking in as we navigate personal and professional challenges. Scott has had his share of both. “I’ve always…

Karen Dillon | Inner strength isn't everything. When times are tough, resilient leaders look outward for support.

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