Indholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2019/2020 i Inc. Magazine

The end of the year is always a time of reflection. Many of us look back to see how much we accomplished over the past 12 months, while, at the same time, we look forward to what lies in the year ahead and where we’ll strive to go. For some, the new year is about growing an existing business, and for others it is about taking the plunge to start a company from the ground up. Whatever the current focus, the leaders of America’s businesses are responsible for building one of the healthiest economies in our history. Inc. celebrates the courageous men and women in this country who are willing to put themselves out there and start a business. It is not an easy road to walk. But that journey…

BRAND TASTE • noun Mastercard wants to define the “taste of Priceless” with macarons: red (custard apple) for passion, and yellow (yuzu) for optimism. Which flavor defines 24.74 percent variable APR? Source: Marketing Week FULFILLIONAIRE • noun Someone who achieves “an experience of personal fulfillment, emotional well-being, and material success.” Which is much easier when you’re an actual millionaire. Source: Forbes DIGITAL DEXTERITY • noun “The ability and desire to exploit existing and emerging technologies for better business outcomes.” I’m currently using my newfound digital dexterity to make a hand gesture. Can you guess what it is? Source: Gartner NEW-COLLAR • adjective Used to describe digital-era jobs in cloud, security, or data for which a four-year degree is not needed. Since when do robots wear collars? Source: IBM/CloudPro…

Competitive Range Solutions is one of few businesses that can say its work is 100 percent in support of its country. The company provides mission support and technology services to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other federal agencies—a job that requires a precise skill set, experience, and a moral code. Most, if not all its employees are veterans—career mission partners who have dedicated their lives to their country. They connect to the company values, which reflect those of the military, including rigor, commitment, stewardship, agility, and professionalism. Founder and CEO Noah Vasquez, a service-disabled veteran, is uniquely qualified to lead the business and an embodiment of the culture. He enlisted after 9/11 to serve in a combat engineering unit called Prime Base Engineer Emergency Force (PRIME BEEF), a…

The past few months, I’ve begun to care about my company’s impact on the world. Actually, this is my job. Since my startup was acquired by GoodRx a few years ago, I’ve run research and communications, and given that GoodRx is all about helping people find affordable health care, understanding the social impact we have on a very big problem is a material concern. Not just for PR reasons, but also because the better we understand the problems our customers face, the better we can help them. Now, it’s one thing to identify customer requirements and quite another to understand them. And what I’ve realized of late is how disconnected I might have been—and how disconnected many company leaders are—from internalizing the reality of our customers and the impact we’ve…

When someone suffers a stroke, oxygen flow to the brain is impeded. Every second is critical. Imagine that a doctor could examine a patient in an ambulance remotely, and brain scans could be sent to the surgeon waiting to receive that patient. This is quickly becoming real. At Barcelona’s San Raffaele hospital, researchers are developing 5G-equipped ambulances that will allow remote specialists to view a patient in real time and deliver instructions as efficiently as if they were in the vehicle. At King’s College London, engineers are also focused on stroke victims: Using portable MRI equipment, a paramedic in an ambulance can scan a patient’s brain and upload the images to the cloud in seconds. A doctor can then review the images and give instructions on how to best position…

Will Hankinson, the Atlanta-based owner of video rendering service IntroCave, could have banked more of his business’s 2018 profits had he paid closer attention to a big change that went into effect as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. “Last year, my thinking was that my regular job already deducts taxes and I should try to zero out the small-business income,” says Hankinson, who also brings in W-2 earnings as the technology lead at marketing agency Dagger. To do so, he put all of IntroCave’s profits—nearly $9,300—into a solo 401(k) in lieu of contributing to his workplace retirement plan. As a result, Hankinson couldn’t capitalize on the qualified business income (QBI) deduction, which lets eligible pass-through businesses (sole proprietorships, partnerships, S corporations, and most trusts…

Thinking Boston? Check out Madison. Looking for a charming college town with world-class research institutions and early-stage funding? Shift your gaze from Boston to Madison, Wisconsin, where new VC firms take chances on companies like Alex Kubicek’s weather startup, Understory. Kubicek launched in Madison, couldn’t find funding, and relocated to Boston in 2013. He’s since moved back to Madison and secured $22 million, including two $7.5 million rounds led by local VC 4490 Ventures. “There are opportunities here,” he says. “The landscape in Madison has changed dramatically.” Into Austin? Try Durham. You want a smart, well-resourced city—and some good barbecue wouldn’t hurt. North Carolina focuses on pork instead of Austin’s beloved brisket—but if that’s not your thing, maybe paying 40 percent less for office rent in Durham is. And while…

Industry expertise, customized solutions, and technology innovation contribute to Visible Supply Chain Management’s continued growth. Market factors help, too. People are increasingly comfortable buying things—all sorts of things—online, and Visible benefits from the explosion of e-commerce brands. But the real driver is people—invested employees who take pride in their customers’ wins and in the role supply chain services played. President Casey Adams explains that an opaque supply chain frustrates business owners. They need to understand what they are paying for so they can make informed decisions about fulfillment, packaging, and shipping and also maximize profitability while meeting customer expectations. With this need in mind, Visible built a technology suite that allows businesses to understand every element of their supply chains, and in turn, make intelligent choices. “For example, if a…

When it comes to test automation compliance in life sciences, Tx3 Services steps up to the plate with a team of industry experts and an electronic signature solution to put its customers’ minds at ease. Tx3, a software and consulting company, “is well positioned to address regulatory compliance challenges with VERA (Validated Electronic Record Approval). VERA supports the use of automation tools to modernize software development and testing practices by securing electronic records through configurable workflow controls and electronic signature approvals,” says Jason Tepfenhardt, co-founder and CEO. “We work closely with leading tool providers such as our partner, MicroFocus,” he added. IN PURSUIT OF OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY The mission from Tx3’s start was making it possible for life sciences companies, comprised of pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device manufacturers, to automate the…

When Josh Luber, co-founder of StockX, was in the sixth grade, he started his first business: selling Bubblicious to his classmates. Covertly, because they weren’t allowed to chew gum in school. “It was a great business,” he says. “Good margins. I used to hop the fence behind my house, go to the Acme grocery store, and buy four packs of gum for $1. Each pack had five pieces, and I could sell them for a quarter apiece.” Like a lot of ’80s and ’90s kids, Luber also idolized Michael Jordan. He was 6 years old when Nike released the first Air Jordans, and begging his mom for a pair became a constant refrain. (Her answer: a constant no.) Post-college, after cashing a few paychecks from his furniture-store job, he went…

One of the great joys of working at Inc. is seeing how real stories of successful entrepreneurs differ from the clichéd notions you see elsewhere. Take Pat Brown, founder of Impossible Foods, the company that brought the world the meatless burger that sizzles, sears, and bleeds like the real thing (thanks to some fancy genetic engineering). Brown, while a notably driven founder, didn’t start his first company until he was in his mid-50s—challenging the popular wisdom that entrepreneurship is for the very young. He spent decades as a star academic before launching Impossible around one very big, potentially climate-saving idea. Specifically, as Inc. editor-at-large Burt Helm puts it: “What if juicy, delicious beef didn’t come from cows?” For one thing, if it’s juicy and delicious enough to make inveterate carnivores…

In 2013, Ohad Samet started getting calls from strange numbers. When he finally answered, he discovered the reason: He had a $120 balance on a store credit card. The agent making the call was not particularly pleasant, so, though Samet could afford the payment, he started thinking about what it must be like for those who can’t. “You get all these calls, then it’s, ‘You owe money. Cash, check, or credit card?’ And if you can’t pay,” he says, “you risk financial ruin.” So Samet founded TrueAccord, a collections agency that today counts Yelp and LendUp among its clients and communicates via friendly—even playful—texts and emails. (“I’ve been sitting here eating ice cream and listening to breakup songs because I feel like you’re avoiding me,” reads one dispatch the company’s…

1 Sanden’s Arlington, Virginia–based company sells its coding kits primarily through Amazon. For every kit sold, Boolean Girl Tech sponsors an hour-long computer programming tutorial for a girl in an underprivileged school. 2 After a wildly successful Kickstarter launch in the fall of 2016, the company had just 60 days to fulfill its first 180 orders before the holidays. “We hired a bunch of my 16-year-old daughter’s friends and made an assembly line in my basement,” Sanden says. 3 Sanden befriended co-founder Brian Moran at coding events he hosted for girls like her daughter in Northern Virginia. Programmer Sarah Eastman overheard Sanden and Moran working on their startup at a coffee shop and struck up a conversation. She became a co-founder several weeks later. 4 The smart-toy market could reach…

What was it like to take Box public? Exhilarating, partially because you’re on no sleep. You come off eight to 10 days on the road pitching your heart out, and then, the day of, you think: I control the world economy this morning. (Note: I did not control the world economy.) It’s important in terms of credibility. It’s important operationally. It adds more scrutiny and transparency, which I think lead to really good things. But it was not like, “Oh, wow, bucket-list item complete—now I’m done.” What’s been the biggest difference between running a private company and running a public one? Your hair absolutely changes color. Seriously. Everything is instantaneously different. And, as quickly as possible, you have to adapt. One day our stock drops 20 percent, and the next…

The immediate future of autonomous vehicles won’t be about cars, but about fleets of self-driving trucks, which are set to fuel another revolution in transportation. “The shippers are looking for and investing in that, and transportation operators are looking to take friction and cost out,” says Scott Corwin, leader of Deloitte’s global future of mobility practice. Levels of autonomous driving go from zero to five—from adaptive cruise control to complete, driverless autonomy. Today, fleets can hit level two, like Boston-based Embark’s trucks, which move freight autonomously on highways between L.A. and Arizona, while being monitored by human safety drivers. Much faster data speeds will be the ultimate drivers toward level-five automation. Why? Autonomous vehicles generate huge amounts of data. Moving that data in real time is the key to an…

Growth A city’s growth score is based on the percentage of jobs added and businesses formed in the past year, and also on the rate its population grew from July 2017 to July 2018. Opportunity The percentage of a city’s adults who are entrepreneurs and the change in a city’s average weekly earnings over the past year make up its opportunity score. Innovation A city’s innovation is scored on the number of early-stage funding deals and the number of high-growth companies per 100,000 adults. Sources: Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program, Current Population Survey, American Community Survey, Startup Genome, PitchBook, Inc. 5000…

Secure Medical wants to make insurance companies sweat. It offers a suite of telemedicine products and services that make it easier for patients—including those without medical coverage—to obtain affordable prescriptions. Convenience is part of the appeal. Rather than shoehorning a doctor’s visit into a crowded workday, people can access care around the clock. Moreover, while remote health care is not meant to take the place of traditional medicine, it is already helping people in all 50 states get treatment for certain conditions that don’t always require an immediate physical exam. AT THE FOREFRONT OF TELEMEDICINE The telemedicine field is nascent, but Secure Medical has a long history. It was one of the first companies in the space, founded by Kyle Rao, now the company’s president, in March 1999 under the…

Once a recurring punch line in Johnny Carson’s monologues, the agriculture-and-oil town of Bakersfield, California—home to the country’s most prolific carrot farm—is not the most obvious example of a West Coast startup hub. But the Central Valley city, population 400,000, has vaulted onto this year’s Surge Cities list by outperforming 46 other metro areas—including the Bay Area, Boston, and Seattle—in net job and business creation in the past year. “Incredible things are happening here,” says Irma Olguin Jr., co-founder and CEO of Bitwise Industries, a Fresno-based tech academy and software startup that’s helped create about 1,000 jobs in the area. It’s opening a Bakersfield location in 2020. “We’re seeing validation from VCs and investment banks, and there is a momentum around local revitalization.” According to Anna Smith, co-founder of local…

I was at a dinner meeting near the Arctic Circle recently, sitting at a table of international business leaders, and the conversation quickly focused on Estonia—its ultrahigh literacy rate, majority female population, and famous Singing Revolution of 1991, when citizens staged mass protests and broke away from the Soviet Union, all while chanting patriotic hymns. I was smitten. “Apply for residency,” the Estonians said, insisting I’d love their local wines. I explained that while political insanity had reached fever pitch in the U.S., I wasn’t quite ready to leave America. “You don’t have to,” they told me. “You can be one of our digital residents.” Estonia is one of the countries testing e-residency. This could mean big opportunities for small businesses that want to hire workers away from home, maybe…

First things first: Congrats on waiting for this moment when society is embracing software, mobile devices, and data to help solve what is essentially a large-scale matching problem. I am still shocked that it took until 2014 for online dating to become mainstream. Secondly, you’re in good company. There have never been as many unmarried adults as there are today. More than 110M U.S. residents are divorced, widowed or have always been single, and more than 45 percent of Americans over 18 live alone. Kudos for deciding not to settle with ‘Mr. or Mrs. Meh.’ If you weren’t sure they were your soulmate, they weren’t your soulmate. Next! Okay, back to your search for The One. I’m of the opinion that a soulmate is out there for all of us,…

A few years ago, Daniel Zubairi caught a job applicant in a flagrant lie. The woman’s résumé said she worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That didn’t sound right. Zubairi’s Bethesda, Maryland–based cybersecurity company, SydanTech, worked closely with NOAA—and Zubairi had never heard of her. As it happened, Zubairi was at the agency’s offices during the woman’s phone interview. He asked to meet her in person. “Sir,” she said, “I’d like to end the interview now.” Click. Zubairi ran a background check. She was a home nursing assistant. Job seekers have been fudging their accomplishments forever. But founders across the country say they’ve lately seen a surge of incidents that take job-applicant fakery to new—and shadier—levels. Totally false résumés featuring fictional employers. Professional interviewees. Covert coaching of candidates…

“A termite infestation. Our office basically started raining termites.”—Pek Pongpaet, IMPEKABLE “I’ve had to woo wives. Some of my candidates’ wives had the final say over whether they’d take the job.”—Shana Cosgrove, NYLA TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS “For one of my customers, I had to become a certified rescue climber and scale a 150-foot cellular tower.”—Heather Moyer, HNM SYSTEMS “We were trying to use a facility’s gaming system during an offsite retreat in Baltimore, but the system wouldn’t work properly. So we hacked it and rewrote the code on the fly.”—Michael Grier, MOSAIC TECHNOLOGIES GROUP “I had to get a big wad of cash, go to a shady liquor store, and transfer that cash to buy bitcoin from Colombia. Then I had to take that bitcoin and pay a hacker in East…

If you think we live in a society of instant gratification, just wait until 5G, the fifth-generation wireless network, reaches major cities worldwide. But first, let’s pause to ask a crucial question: Why 5G? First-generation wireless gave us voice. Then 2G added text, and 3G enabled basic mobile computing. With 4G, we got higher speeds and zillions of apps to help us work and play while we’re using our phones. 5G opens the floodgates to download speeds of one gigabit per second, or more than 10 times what we’re used to. Movies will download in seconds, YouTube clips instantly. South Korea and China now lead in development and rollout, but in the United States, 5G is now in more than two dozen cities—from Atlanta and Detroit to Indianapolis and Washington,…

A trip to the store will be more informative and entertaining in a 5G world, giving brick-and-mortar retailers a needed boost over online sellers. Trying on clothing, for instance, will become virtual, powered by high-definition screens that will replace traditional dressing rooms, while makeup counters with smart mirrors will let customers test lipsticks and eye shadows without ever touching a physical product. “The realism coming through devices or virtual dressing rooms with 5G will be staggering,” says Jon Nordmark, co-founder and CEO of Iterate.ai, an innovation R&D company in San Jose, California. By 2020, spending on AR and VR for retail could reach $59 billion, says research firm CB Insights. Major retail outlets are likely to have proprietary use of such apps initially, owing to high costs. For furniture sellers,…

As CEO and co-founder of the Grommet, a site that has launched innovative products like Fitbit, GoldieBlox, and SodaStream, Jules Pieri has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs to transform their brainchildren into businesses. Her book, How We Make Stuff Now: Turn Ideas Into Products That Build Successful Businesses, was published in April. For the Inc. Founders Project, Pieri is mentoring Grace Hsiang and Andrew Park, the married co-founders of 7Till8, a custom wetsuit company, based in Torrance, California, that launched in 2016. Park, a former open-water lifeguard, knows the problems of poor wetsuit fit. Too loose and water seeps in. Too snug and you can’t move easily. That’s why swimmers submit 16 measurements to 7Till8, which then produces a custom wetsuit. The cost ranges from $580 to $750—two to three…

1 Austin, TX 2 Salt Lake City, UT 3 Durham, NC 4 Denver, CO 5 Boise, ID 6 San Francisco, CA 7 Charleston, SC 8 San Diego, CA 9 Phoenix, AZ 10 Miami, FL 11 Nashville, TN 12 Seattle, WA 13 San Jose, CA 14 Boston, MA 15 Portland, OR 16 Raleigh, NC 17 Los Angeles, CA 18 Madison, WI 19 Orlando, FL 20 Tampa, FL 21 Colorado Springs, CO 22 Charlotte, NC 23 Palm Bay, FL 24 Atlanta, GA 25 Bridgeport, CT 26 Sacramento, CA 27 Bakersfield, CA 28 Washington, DC 29 Dallas, TX 30 Lakeland, FL 31 Spokane, WA 32 Ogden, UT 33 Greenville, SC 34 North Port, FL 35 Riverside, CA 36 Chattanooga, TN 37 Jacksonville, FL 38 Las Vegas, NV 39 Oklahoma City, OK 40 Minneapolis,…

After graduating from Y Combinator’s summer program in San Francisco, the three co-founders of Lumineye made a choice that many of their peers would not: They left town. The trio moved back to Boise, Idaho, where they had started the business, which builds portable wall-penetrating radar to help first responders locate people. “Staying in the Bay Area,” says Megan Lacy, one of the founders, “didn’t seem as necessary as it might have 10 years ago.” Idaho’s capital city has long been a hip and attractive place, given its rich music scene and proximity to nature. But it has routinely been ignored in favor of its cooler, and bigger, regional siblings, Seattle and Portland, Oregon. Today, though, Boise is luring talent from those northwestern giants and other costly coastal competitors, attracting…

The Walnut Street Bridge is unmissable: 2,376 feet of gleaming metal perched atop five stone-gray pillars, spanning the Tennessee River between the aquarium and Coolidge Park. It’s been one of Chattanooga, Tennessee’s defining features since it was built in 1890. In 2017, says Alexis Willis, director of small business and entrepreneurship at the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, a surprising figure was spotted on that bridge during the city’s fourth annual Ironman triathlon. “Twenty years ago,” she marvels now, “no one would’ve dreamed that we’d have the prince of Bahrain competing in our downtown for an Ironman championship.” Willis knew from her day job that all of it—the Ironman, the prince, the multiple unfamiliar languages she overheard at Publix that same day—was there because of a different kind of infrastructure:…

In 2014, when then–college freshman Jordan DeCicco found only sugar-heavy bottled coffee to sustain him through predawn basketball practice, he got creative. In his dorm room, he concocted a blend of black coffee, protein powder, and MCT oil—a supplement made from medium-chain triglycerides, a type of fat—that got his teammates’ attention. Soon he was fortifying lots more brew, which he called super coffee, and selling it at cost to his buddies. By summer, DeCicco smelled an opportunity to make Super Coffee a business, especially with older brothers Jim and Jake coming on board as co-founders. They launched as Kitu Life in early 2016; two years later, they had 18 employees in their New York City office—all hired through their network and social media. But their rapid growth—they project revenue of…

The Good Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd at Oracle After a 37-year reign as CEO, Oracle founder Larry Ellison assumed the role of CTO and executive chairman in 2014, giving former president Mark Hurd the opportunity to fill his shoes. Alongside co-CEO Safra Catz, Hurd led the cloud computing giant up until his unexpected death in October 2019. In a statement, Ellison showed that their friendship flourished through the role change, calling Hurd “a brilliant and beloved leader who personally touched the lives of so many of us during his decade at Oracle.” The Bad Martha Stewart and Sharon Patrick at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia After her infamous insider-trading scandal, founder and CEO Martha Stewart was forced to pass the baton to her COO, Sharon Patrick. Circumstances were far from…

In 2010, Justin Anthony co-founded Artwork Archive—an online platform where artists and organizations can manage their collections. The company’s Denver location allows Anthony to pursue his hobby—gold panning. “Panning gives me space from the day-to-day,” says Anthony. “Something I might have initially had a negative reaction to might turn out to be a great idea. It takes me time on the water to be able to swallow that.” Artwork Archive’s enterprise subscription costs $96 a month for unlimited storage. With clients like Neiman Marcus and Brown University, the river isn’t the only place Anthony finds gold.…