Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i Inc. Magazine

As I sit at home on my sofa writing this note, it's about a week before the 2022 Inc. 5000 Conference & Gala, and maybe another week before you’re reading it. The Conference is the first celebration of the greatest get-together in entrepreneurship since 2019, and I’m more than a little anxious. I’m kind of making things up as I go. I mean, not entirely. I have a vision for what this edition of the Conference should be, I know whom I want there, I know what it should accomplish. But I’ve never done something like this before, and we’ve hit a couple of speed bumps, like some Speaker cancellations and a few deadline conflicts. My tuxedo isn’t even back from the tailor yet. To be honest, I’m a bit…

“RON CONWAY IS basically the godfather of Silicon Valley. He was an early investor in Google, Square, and Airbnb. But when I met him at a party in San Francisco in 2017, I was filled with self-doubt. Our storytelling app, Hooked, was in its second year, and one of our seed investors had expressed interest in leading our Series A. But then he turned around and led the Series A for a Company that had cloned our app. My husband—who's also my co-founder—and I were pretty upset, and a lot of our investors were like, ‘This is really messed up. You need to kick him off the cap table. You need to tell him, and other people, that he's a jerk.’ I was sharing all of this with Ron, and…

Startups are crazy hard. I learned this when I started Grubhub in my apartment and spent months going door-to-door picking up paper menus from every restaurant in San Francisco and Chicago. I also learned the difference between giving up and quitting, a lesson that I think is the best part of my new book, Hangry: A Startup Journey. As entrepreneurs, we need to be good at quitting—at recognizing when our best efforts aren't working. Quitting is smart. Giving up, on the other hand, is refusing to do the hard work. What's key is knowing when to make the call. More than once—after a long, tiring day of sales and a lonely evening coding Software—I wanted to punt Grubhub. That would have been a terrible idea. It would have been giving…

While RPM Freight Systems started in 2012 as a generalist freight brokerage, founder Barry Spilman and histeam soon earned a new reputation: a Company that could handle shipments other logistics providers could not. After several years of growth, Spilman was ready to venture into new markets. So, in 2019, he brought in Sergio Gutierrezto launch RPM Europe as President ofthe new venture with headquarters in Amsterdam and operations in Gdańsk, Poland, and Hamburg, Germany. A year later, Spilman named Gutierrez CEO of RPM and in the years since, the two men successfully transitioned their roles, allowing Gutierrez to turn RPM into an international transportation and logistics powerhouse. The Company is now hyper-focused on finished vehicle logistics and specialized industrial freight transportation. RPM delivers thousands of freight loads per month and…

DAYMOND JOHN HOOKS A LIVE SQUID onto a fishing line and casts into the Pacific. It's early in Los Angeles. His sunglasses reflect the last remnants of the morning fog. Fishing has been one of John's favorite pastimes since he was a kid, something he still makes time for while juggling Shark Tank appearances, investing in startups, and running the apparel brand FUBU, which he created as a young hustler in Queens, New York, back in the '90s. Holding the rod with one hand, he flashes the face of his Apple Watch. His Sleep app reveals that he slept for three hours and seven minutes last night—a decent amount, he says, but less than his preferred four hours. I didn't sleep much longer, but I'm exhausted to the point of…

• Rivian Irvine, Calif. RJ Scaringe, CEO EV panel trucks MARKET CAP $29 BILLION • Gatik Mountain View, Calif. Gautam Narang, CEO Middle-mile distribution FUNDS RAISED $122 MILLION • Einride Stockholm, Sweden Robert Falck, CEO Electric, digital, and carbon-neutral logistics FUNDS RAISED $150 MILLION • Locomation Pittsburgh Çetin Meriçli, CEO Hub-to-hub freight runs FUNDS RAISED $60 MILLION • Tore Robotics Blacksburg, Va. Michael Fleming, co-founder Autonomous longhaul trucking SUBSIDIARY OF DAIMLER BENZ • BrightDrop Palo Alto, Calif. Travis Katz, CEO EV fleet Operation SUBSIDIARY OF GENERAL MOTORS • Udelv Burlingame, Calif. Daniel Laury, CEO Local and middle-mile delivery FUNDS RAISED $20 MILLION…

Voyo Popovic was a 24-year-old immigrant from Montenegro when he started his New York City-based moving Company in 2017. He had a single truck and the vision to become the largest and most-loved mover in the country. Today, the business has a national fleet of more than 200 of its signature pink trucks, a 500person workforce, and year-over-year revenue that has more than doubled annually since the company's inception. Piece of Cake Moving & Storage has built its successful brand around the idea of turning one of life's most stressful events—moving—into a seamless experience. By prioritizing the happiness of both its customers and employees, it has grown to become No. 104 on the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private Companies. SPIRIT OVER QUALIFICATIONS “I really wanted to create a…

The day California shut downfor the Covid pandemic in March 2020 was the same day Jill Stelfox and her colleague Dan Waldschmidt signed the term sheet to buy Silicon Valleybased Panzura, the market leader in hybrid multi-cloud data management. When Stelfox finally met her employees— about 100 faces on a videoconference during lockdown—she recognized the unique challenges ahead. “Imagine meeting all these people on Zoom who don't know if they're coming back to work or if the Company is surviving, and I'm like, ‘Hi! I'm your new CEO!’” says Stelfox, a former certified public accountant (CPA) who helped develop player tracking Software for the National Football League (NFL). GROWING DURING TURBULENT TIMES Yet just two-and-a-halfyears after she took the heim, the company not only survived but grew revenue 485 percent—four…

Some digital platforms make it near impossible to connect with a real person. Not 1031 Crowdfunding. The real estate investment platform for 1031 exchanges—a Capital gains tax deferral strategy for real estate—turns off artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities on its website, requiring people to reach out and connect with a licensed financial Professional. Most clients are high-net worth individuals ages 55 to 90 who appreciate the personal touch. “If you want true Service, somebody to help give you direction, then you're our customer,” explains President and CEO Edward Fernandez. A growing pool of satisfied investors and a stream of referrals have led to remarkable revenue growth and a first-ever ranking on the Inc. 5000 for this family-run business. And more innovation and expansion are on the horizon. CUSTOM CODE, CUSTOM SERVICE…

CDL 1000's growth lies in giving customers greater control over their shipments. Asurge in online shopping, labor shortages, manufacturing slowdowns, and port congestion continue to disrupt global supply chains. However, consumers still want their goods at lightning speed. Retailers, caught in the middle, are struggling to meet demand, making the right logistics partner more important than ever. For many Companies, CDL 1000 is that partner, catapulting the Company to No. 3 on the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private Companies. Based in Chicago, the supply chain Solutions Company uses innovative tools to digitize archaic supply chain processes. This leads to greater efficiency, cost transparency, and supply chain visibility for its clients. TRANSFORMING SUPPLY CHAINS CDL 1000 digitally transforms drayage, or the transport of freight from an ocean port to…

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Scott Omelianuk SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SALES Jennifer Henkus CREATIVE DIRECTOR Richard Baker DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL OPERATIONS Janice Lombardo DEPUTY EDITOR Ty Wenger EXECUTIVE EDITORS Laura Lorber, Diana Ransom MANAGING EDITOR, INC.COM Lindsay Blakely FEATURES EDITOR Graham Winfrey SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR Eric Hagerman SENIOR EDITOR Tim Crino EDITORS-AT-LARGE Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan, Tom Foster, Bill Saporito SENIOR WRITERS Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, Steven I. Weiss STAFF REPORTERS Melissa Angell, Rebecca Deczynski, Ali Donaldson, Ben Sherry ASSOCIATE EDITOR Brittany Morse EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Nick Hawkins, Xintian Wang SOCIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR Andrea Hardalo RESEARCH DIRECTOR Karen L. Smith-Janssen COPY CHIEF David Sutter PRODUCTION MANAGER AND STAFF ILLUSTRATOR Grey Thornberry SENIOR COPY EDITOR Pam Warren DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Jessie Adler ART DIRECTOR John Yun DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL TOOLS Joel Froude ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Caya Tull ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR Nathan Bajar…

DENNIS CAIL HATES predatory lenders. That's why the 52year-old founder and CEO of lending platform Zirtue is using geofencing—a technology that sets a digital boundary around a physical space—to putthem out of business. When potential Customers cross that border, they get a text alerting them to a cheaper option: Zirtue. For Cail, this is about more than taking out the competition. It's personal. He grew up in Monroe, Louisiana, in a neighborhood that lacked banks and credit unions, institutions that often avoid doing business with low-income communities. When Cail's neighbors needed cash for unexpected expenses like medical bills or just to keep the electricity on, they would turn to payday lenders—the only game in town—to borrow against their future paychecks at an average annual interest rate of 400 percent. “Even…

Talent acquisition and retention have long been challenges for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), with new challenges continuing to emerge. The pandemic has permanently changed the underlying dynamics in employer-employee relationships, and that is reflected in new recruitment and retention strategies. While the battle for top talent is waged on multiple fronts, payroll Services play an important role in helping SMBs succeed in their efforts. Seventy-seven percent of North American businesses polled for “The Talent Game,” Hire Right's 15th annual benchmark report on workforce trends, cited finding qualified candidates as their most significant talent acquisition challenge in 2022, up from 63 percent in 2021. At the same time, employee expectations are on the rise. The percentage of workers ranking total compensation packages—including pay, benefits, bonuses, and incentives—as their top concern…

ERIC RYAN HAS a soft spot for startups. After selling Method, his ecofriendly cleaning-products Company, to Ecover in 2012, Ryan just had to do it all again, twice, launching the Supplements startup Olly in 2015 and the first-aid Company Welly in 2019. The three businesses have a combined valuation of more than $1 billion. Ryan's latest venture is the direct-to-consumer jewelry brand Cast, which he helped launch in 2021 as a founding investor, and which represents his first Company outside of the consumer packaged goods category. “I always want to go out and do something I've never done before,” says Ryan, 49. “That's the only way to find out what you're capable of.” Cast co-founder and chief Creative officer Rachel Skelly shares Ryan's penchant for branching out into new industries.…

Entrepreneurs have to do it all. Or at least they worry about it all. Strategy, yes, but also hiring, compliance, infrastructure, marketing, sourcing, operations, cloud migration—on top of the never-ending effort to raise funds. But it doesn't have to be that way. There's an entire world of Companies built around the express purpose of helping yours focus on its core mission. You make your secret sauce; let them worry about the dishes. Whether your business needs help with software-as-a-service or customer service, stationery or stationary bikes for the employee gym, the Companies that deliver quality results on time, on budget, every time, are what we call Power Partners. On the following pages, you'll find 252 of them to choose from on Inc.'s inaugural list of the best B2B companies across…

When Sean Fogarty founded CuraLinc Healthcare in 2008, many Companies did notyet see employee mental health as abusiness imperative. That has changed since Covid-19. CuraLinc's dient base has increased threefold since the Start of the pandemic. “Our growth journey is directly correlated to the attention that employers are finally starting to pay to the mental health of their workforce,” Fogarty explains. More than rising tides account for the exponential revenue growth that earns CuraLinc its inaugural spot on the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private Companies. By combining personalized advocacy with technology, CuraLinc creates business advantages for more than 3,000 employers worldwide. These Companies offer CuraLinc programs free of charge to their employees, a user base that includes more than five million people. CHOICE CREATES POSITIVE IMPACT “With nearly…

Achieving goals during an economic downtime is not easy, but it is possible. “Just because events beyond your control are happening doesn't mean that you shut down or stop growing,” explains Hafiz Sikder, founder and CEO of Axiom Healthcare Strategies, a thinktank style strategy Consulting Company that works with biotech and pharma Companies to advance patient care in the fields of oncology and rare diseases. Sikder urges clients to stay hungry and actively manage changes and challenges where clients operate. And he heeds his own advice. Team Axiom has artfully adjusted strategies and mitigated risk in light of market forces, without compromising its mission. In fact, Sikder is building Axiom 2.0: the next Iteration of the business, poised to make an even greater impact on patient care and the industry…

Skymount Property Group's strategy of buying and rehabbing residential real estate has taken off post-pandemic. CEO Brandon Moherman explains that although the cornpany's hard assets are property, the business is all about people—serving clients in person by hiring the best talent possible. “ We try to provide unique Solutions for people who don't want to go through the typical channels to sell their property—that's our specialty,” he says. Moherman credits his College physics coursework for his ability to take a complex Situation and break it down into simpler components to find the best solution possible. Although he never imagined himself as a physicist, pairing the construction experience he gained in his teen years with that cognitive ability led him to amass a growing portfolio of Ohio real estate. PERSONAL CONNECTIONS…

Legendary Marketer CEO David Sharpe could be the poster child for resilience. As a ninth-grade high school dropout, teen father, and struggling heroin addict, the odds seemed to be stacked against him. Today, Sharpe runs Legendary Marketer, a thriving multi-milliondollar education Company that has served hundreds of thousands of people around the world. “I figured out how to turn my struggles into my strengths,” he says. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, the world was filled with fear and panic. However, Sharpe remembered Warren Buffett's sage advice, “Be greedy when people are fearful, and be fearful when people are greedy.” Instead of retreating and cutting back, as many business owners elected to do during that uncertain time, Sharpe went all-in on growing Legendary Marketer. His first Step was to…

AdOutreach founder and CEO Aleric Heck has always aimed high. Bootstrapping his digital marketing enterprise through a string of technology startups over the course of a dozen years, he hit the Inc. 5000 list at No. 87 last year. Heck's ultimate goal is to make AdOutreach a billion-dollar business. With a jump to No. 60 on the current list, it is on the right trajectory to get there. AdOutreach, based in Austin, Texas, provides training and Consulting to help other businesses integrate video marketing, namely, YouTube video ads, into their marketing strategies. It is Heck's brainchild, but he is quick to share credit for its success with members of what he calls his “Dream Team.” COMPLEMENTARY SKILL SETS Heck started AdOutreach while still in College, and his first hire was…

EXPERT ADVICE FROM INC.'S INNER CIRCLE AS PEOPLE of color, the co-founders of Supplements Company Pure for Men know what it's like to feel excluded. So they never imagined that their business, which they launched in 2015 to serve gay men, could be accused of discrimination. Yet in 2017, Customers began complaining that the brand's marketing felt exclusionary. The team say the issue can be traced back to their early, bootstrapping days, when they spent their limited ad dollars marketing to the niche group for which they built their product. They figured they'd get the best bang for their buck by partnering with the Instagram influencers who had the most gay followers. Problem was, those influencers all looked the same. “At one point,” says co-founder and CMO Fabian Prado, “if…

DIANNACOHEN'S face didn't launch 1,000 ships—but her hair launched a multimilliondollar Company. Asked the secret to her luscious locks, the Crown Affair founder (pictured below) shared a Google Doc of best practices for healthy hair—which, she says, are out of Step with the hair care industry's focus on “masking” with harmful products. That resonated with her friend—and the 100-plus strangers they shared the doc with. Having marketed brands like Away and Harry's, Cohen knew a viable business idea when she saw one. So she spent the next two years creating more affordable versions of the products she loved, launching New York City-based Crown Affair in 2019 with $50,000 of her own money. Today, the Company sells in Sephora Stores nationwide, and with revenue doubling yearover-year, you could say Crown Affair…

FROM THE PANDEMIC to climate change, global crises are forcing consumers and employees to rethink their relationships with institutions. Consumers are aligning themselves with Companies that are both committed to positive social change and invested in caring for their own teams—making a social mission vital for any entrepreneur starting a company today. In 2010, when my co-founders and I were launching Warby Parker, we could see it was becoming increasingly critical for the private sector to step up its role in solving global issues, but the road map hadn't exactly been drawn yet. We were determined to build a new kind of business, one that could scale quickly while doing good in the world. We just needed to figure out how to do it. We knew the problem we wanted…

Founded 2011 AUM $125 million Portfolio Companies 23 Based in Southeast U.S. 50%+of portfolio Helping people tend to their mental and physical health is big business. The global wellness industry is expected to become a $7 trillion industry by 2025, according to the Global Wellness Institute. For Relevance Ventures, a Native American-owned venture capital (VC) firm based in Nashville, this fastgrowing category represents something more: a tremendous opportunity to make a difference in people's lives. Managing Partner Cameron Newton founded Relevance Ventures in 2011 to help bring technology and software companies to Tennessee, The firm has since expanded its reach and its mission, investing in companies that promote wellness and positively impact the social determinants of health. More than half of its portfolio companies are based in the Southeast. “In…

NO. 1 The Parents Are Not All Right. It's a Problem for Your Talent Pipeline If the lack of affordable child care options hasn't hit your workers yet, it will. Most families now pay more than double the cost of what the federal government deems “affordable.” Meanwhile, child care workers—who in 2021 earned a median of $27,490 per year—are leaving the fieid in droves. “Child care has been in crisis for decades,” according to Misty Heggeness , associate professor of public policy at the University of Kansas, where she studies the economic impact of child care, “If you want to grow your Company, you need an environment for workers that will reduce drop out and leave. It's costly to train new employees—especially when you have high turnover.” Since Uncle Sam has…

Josino Ferreira dreamed of being a doctor. He studied biology in College and had a passion for the health care industry. But as a Student working full time, he switched his major to business, which allowed him to better balance his work and studies. His mother, Liamar became ill with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and he needed to care for her. For years, Ferreira accompanied his mother to doctor appointments and helped her navigate the health care System. He eventually ended up in the medical field, selling medical equipment for more than a decade. Both his personal and Professional experiences helped him found and build his Company, All States Medical Equipment Distribution (M.E.D.), which provides new and refurbished, competitively priced equipment to…

More than a Century ago, John Wanamaker famously complained that half the money he spent on advertising was wasted, but he just didn't know which half. Since then, devising a way to accurately measure advertising's impact on sales performance has been the holy grail of marketing. The thought leadership tearn at Spurrier Group, a boutique advertising agency based in Richmond, Virginia, has found it. Founder and CEO Donna Spurrier started out in the music business, but advertising and entrepreneurship are in her blood. She landed a record contract in her early 20s, and while she loved writing music and singing, “I didn't much like the [music] industry,” she recalls. She took a job at an agency owned by her father, advertising entrepreneur Jess Duboy, the brains behind the “sell-a-thon” concept…

Nearly every business department has reaped the benefits of game-changing technology. It is the legal team's turn to modernize, says Vishal Sunak, co-founder and CEO of LinkSquares. Since 2015, the Bostonbased Software Company has been creating artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Solutions for every aspect of the contract management process. “Our focus is enabling in-house legal teams to work more effectively and effieiently, collaborate better, and just have a better overall experience during the whole contracting process,” he says. By staying focused on the customer, the Company has achieved jaw-dropping revenue growth and earned a second appearance on the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing Companies, this time in spot No. 379. And this is just the beginning. With more products on the horizon, and a strong team and process in place,…

In 2020, travel came to a halt, the U.S. economy shrank, and Vape Guys, a global distributor of vape and hemp-derived products, experienced its first revenue drop since its founding in 2014. Rather than playing it safe and tightening spending as many competitors did, founder and CEO and Yan Gleyzer took a gamble: he purchased an additional $1 million-worth of inventory in a matter of weeks. “I realized everybody else was scaling back, so there was not enough supply. Somebody had to fill that void. I wanted to be that somebody.” The risk paid off. In 2021, Vape Guys increased revenue by nearly 100 percent. This year, the company earns a place on the Inc. 5000 for the fourth time. Gleyzer credits the achievement to strategic risk, a steadfast focus…

WH EN MICHELLE CORDEIRO grant, a former Victoria's Secret executive, founded Lively in 2015, her mission was clear: to bring a touch of athleisure to lingerie. Two and a half years later, Lively had a dedicated production facility, its first brick-and-mortar store in New York City, and representation by an enthusiastic brandambassador community of more than 50,000. But in 2019, when Japanese apparel giant Wacoal made a surprise acquisition offer, Grant needed a crash course in dealmaking, as well as her signature creativity in marketing, to get the $85 million sale done. —As told to Christine Lagorio-Chafkin “About four years ago, my first investor, Yossi Nasser, asked me to come to a meeting. I was deeply busy. He said: 'Trust me, you want to come.' It was with a banker…