Indholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2022/2023 i Inc. Magazine

Jack is a generous guy, and you could see that from the start. Aware of others and his place in the room, emotionally attuned, successful, too. He is ex-military, served in Afghanistan, now an Inc. 5000 entrepreneur—and, at the time I met him, painfully aware of the plight of civilian Afghan contractors who had worked for the U.S. and were left targets of the Taliban, as it reasserted its unforgiving theocratic rule over the country. He was 8,500 miles away from those people when we met, but they preoccupied him, and he asked me if I knew anyone who could help. He needed to find the resources to exfiltrate some of those contractors and their families, who were on the run and would otherwise face a very certain and cruel…

Q: What’s your most unusual productivity hack? A: “If my team sees a frog outside my door, they know I’m working on something important and won’t bother me,” says Kurt Rewa, co-founder of logistics company Sherpack. Live frogs can be a bit jumpy, so Rewa uses a rubber amphibian (that’s it up there, pictured) to block disruptions. The Inc. 5000 honoree’s affinity for frogs comes from reading motivational speaker Brian Tracy’s book, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. The book’s title comes from Mark Twain, who once said something like: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to…

WHEN MEGAN GLOVER heard about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in 2016, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Megan wasn’t a water expert, and her home near Indianapolis was far enough away that the contamination posed no immediate danger to her. But as a concerned mother, she wondered if there was a way for ordinary people to test their water—and she found that the answer was no. Megan was a marketing professional who had worked with startups. And the local startup scene was thriving, thanks in part to ExactTarget, a software company Salesforce had bought in 2013. Rather than move the operation to San Francisco, Salesforce had left it in Indianapolis. ExactTarget’s founders, in turn, had doubled down on the city. It made for the kind of supportive environment…

GENERAL EXCELLENCE AIRSLATE CEO: Borya Shakhnovich AREA OF IMPACT: Ukrainian aid CHIEF CEO: Carolyn Childers AREA OF IMPACT: Women’s entrepreneurship CO.CO.HAUS CEO: Mari Rosas AREA OF IMPACT: Health care access JUST FUNKY CEO: Raj Arora AREA OF IMPACT: Education KELLY ROACH COACHING CEO: Kelly Roach AREA OF IMPACT: Clean water access MATTER UNLIMITED CEO: Rob Holzer AREA OF IMPACT: Pro bono work THE MENKITI GROUP CEO: Bo Menkiti AREA OF IMPACT: Community development OMG COMMERCE CEO: Brett Curry AREA OF IMPACT: Foster children and families PRAY.COM CEO: Steve Gatena AREA OF IMPACT: Family-owned farms RELATIVITY CEO: Mike Gamson AREA OF IMPACT: Pro bono work SEMPER FOODS CEO: Eric Ouellette AREA OF IMPACT: Food insecurity VARO BANK CEO: Colin Walsh AREA OF IMPACT: Entrepreneurship VITA INCLINATA TECHNOLOGIES CEO: Caleb Carr AREA…

CEO: Keegan Caldwell AREA OF IMPACT: Recidivism Keegan Caldwell gets letters every week from inmates asking for help from his law firm. Not with appeals, but with their inventions. The firm is Caldwell Intellectual Property Law, and its pro bono work is filing patents for the incarcerated—an investment of years and hundreds of hours of legal work that could cost paying clients more than $100,000. Carrying the stigma of criminal backgrounds, the formerly incarcerated face 30 percent higher unemployment, and more than half return to prison within five years. Entrepreneurship can sidestep systemic hurdles and reduce rates of recidivism. “The folks we’re working within the prison system are outstanding people who are doing everything they can to improve the quality of their lives,” says Caldwell, 43. “Everyone deserves that.” His…

As told to Christine Lagorio-Chafkin BEFORE SHE WAS real estate royalty turned Shark Tank star, Barbara Corcoran accepted $1,000 from her then-boyfriend to quit her waitressing job and start her first real estate business alongside him. She led her second firm, the Corcoran Group, for 23 years, growing it into the largest real estate group in New York City before selling it for $66 million in 2001. Today, when she’s not on the set, or advising the companies she’s invested in, or managing her own personal brand, she hosts her podcast, Business Unusual—and is eager to lend some helpful advice to up-and-coming founders. 1 GET GOOD WITH FALLING DOWN Today, a lot of parents protect their kids from failure. In my family, there were 10 kids, and my mother didn’t…

There’s no one path to reach the top—least of all in entrepreneurship. Every business owner is on his or her own journey, and the proper steps for one industry aren’t necessarily right for another. But listening to good advice—or, heck, even heeding it—is never a bad idea. That next bit of guidance might well help you scale both today’s maddening challenges and those you’ve yet to face. The best move of all? Don’t do this alone. All climbers need a sherpa, and you want to scale the Seven Summits—not fall into Chapter 7. So to help you tackle your challenges, we’ve enlisted dozens of highly successful entrepreneurs and executives for their advice on running, building, and growing a business. Hard-won lessons on everything from fine-tuning your leadership style to delegating…

When Jens Gamperl surveyed the electronic component industry in 2015, he noticed that distribution hadn’t really changed much in roughly three decades, even though technology had advanced. Historically, gathering pricing information for electronic components was cumbersome and time-consuming. The process required mailing component specifications to various distributors and asking for a quote, which could take up to two weeks to receive. More recently, sourcing involved visiting multiple distributor websites, logging in, and then paying through each site individually to amass all the parts needed for an electronic product. Gamperl took matters into his own hands and revolutionized this process with Sourcengine™, the electronic component marketplace he and his team at Sourceability North America, LLC built. “On Sourcengine, users can search or upload their parts list, receive real-time offers, and check…

Visit Anthony Dohrmann’s mother’s house, and you’ll likely meet Addison. Addison reminds Anthony’s mom to take her medications and explains what they treat. Like any good caregiver, Addison helps record vitals and encourages appropriate physical activity. That’s important because his mom has emphysema and asthma. Plus, she’s a fall risk, having previously fallen twice, shattering her shoulder and suffering a compound fracture in her leg. Addison is a virtual caregiver that provides health management at home. “My mom has formed a relationship with Addison that she has never had with any other type of technology,” says Dohrmann, the CEO of Electronic Caregiver, the digital health technology and services company that developed Addison—an innovative, 3D-animated digital caregiver. Clients can choose from eight avatars to customize the display. Addison is the latest…

Business owners devote countless hours to their work, often at the expense of their personal lives, health, and well-being. Allison Maslan, founder of Pinnacle Global Network (PGN) wants to change that. Her company provides mentoring to CEOs of multimilliondollar companies and helps them reclaim their lives by adopting new scalable models, engaging in strategic business planning, and building team-managed companies. “When you start a business, of course you’re doing everything,” she explains. “But as you grow the business, you need to shift out of working in the business to being the strategist working on the business.” Maslan and her team help CEOs make that shift. When founders join the PGN community, they are paired with one of Pinnacle’s mentors, all of whom have founded multimillion-dollar organizations. Collaborating with a high-level…

Nooshin Behroyan Founder and CEO PAXON ENERGY & INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES “I run almost every morning about four to five miles by the water. I have the privilege of starting most of my mornings in California’s nature. Admiring the beauty of the ocean helps me quiet my mind, plan my day, and set visions for the future.” Behroyaris Pleasanton, California, energy services company landed at No. 9 on both the 2020 and the 2021 Inc. 5000 lists. 76% OF SELF-MADE MILLIONAIRES EXERCISE AT LEAST 30 MINUTES A DAY. Source: Change Your Habits, Change Your Life by Tom Corley Anthony Coombs Founder and CEO SPLENDIES “I like to have meditative experiences when I think about anything but business. This usually means a long drive along water or a solo hike. If you…

EXPERT ADVICE FROM INC.’S INNER CIRCLE Imagine walking into a dentist’s office and seeing a broken chair in the waiting room with a hand written sign that reads, “Don’t Sit Here.” Not once, but twice. That’s the gloomy experience that inspired Doug Hudson, 54, to give the dental industry what he saw as a long-overdue cleaning. After getting fitted for a mouth guard at a New York City dentist in 2016, Hudson returned weeks later to find that that chair still hadn’t been fixed. “I had just paid $500 for the device I was picking up,” he says. “In that moment I thought, I know we can do better.” To do that, he launched Tend, a chain of chic and consumer-obsessed dental clinics, in 2019. At the time, Hudson was…

Between 2014 and 2017, I worked with private investors and public shareholders on both sides of the political aisle to solve the Greek debt crisis. That inspired my new book, Free Market: The History of an Idea. I want entrepreneurs to learn from my experience, and embrace the idea that free markets need good government, and that good government can be shaped by private enterprise. Case in point: In the 1620s, two of England’s most important entrepreneurs and economic thinkers, Edward Misselden and Thomas Mun, persuaded the British government to help domestic shipping companies compete with the Dutch through subsidies and protection. The strategy worked: By the end of the 19th century, British merchants were global shipping leaders and their government exited with a profit.…

Animal lovers who don’t want a side of guilt with their meat may soon be able to enjoy a slaughter-free burger thanks to SciFi Foods. The startup, which launched in 2019, plans to bring the very first labgrown-meat product to market, beating out 100 or so competitors in the $119 million industry. Its secret sauce? Gene editing. The company’s co-founders, CEO Joshua March, 36, and CTO Kasia Gora, 39, say that for bovine cells to grow, they need a surface—like the sides of a tank—to latch onto. But the surface area of a cylinder is always less than its volume, which limits output and drives up overhead. That’s partly why it cost Dutch researchers $330,000 to make the first lab-grown burger in 2013. To clear this hurdle to commercial viability,…

LEAVING OUR HOME country of Guatemala as gay men three years ago meant escaping life in a hyper-conservative, developing country. We wanted to live freely as a family, so the decision to leave wasn’t tough. The hard part came after we landed in Austin. A condition of our visa required us to start a “substantial” business. And while Hans had founded an earlier iteration of our sweets brand, Wunderkeks, in Guatemala in 2012, U.S. consumers had never heard of us. We needed to effectively start from scratch. Farmers’ markets were a perfect entry point, because we didn’t need an expensive storefront, and by 2020, we had landed the opportunity to host a pop-up at South by Southwest. Of course, we all know what happened next: The pandemic hit and the…

CEO: Carolyn Childers AREA OF IMPACT: Women’s entrepreneurship Patience is no virtue to Carolyn Childers, 43, and Lindsay Kaplan, 38. When they founded Chief, their professional network for female executives, the plan was to change the face of leadership, fast. Three years later, they’ve achieved unicorn status and are making a real impact developing leaders—of today and tomorrow. “We’re breaking the myth that there’s limited space for women in power,” says Childers. “There are five million U.S. women at the VP level and above, and plenty more positions available.” Based in New York City, Chief supports and trains leaders through resources like group coaching and a digital network (think Reddit meets Linkedln). Its membership base of nearly 20,000 female entrepreneurs is notably diverse: 35 percent of its members identify as…

PRESIDENT: Dan Bowling AREA OF IMPACT: Child welfare Toy’n Around, an Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based sales representation firm, helps brands sell toys and sporting goods to Target. The company also runs a philanthropic arm that aligns neatly with its core business: Every year, Toy’n Around invites its customers and partners to donate money to causes related to the well-being of children, from building orphanages in Uganda to providing clean water for a pediatric hospital in Haiti. The business then matches those donations by dipping into its own profits. In 2020, president and owner Dan Bowling set a 10-year goal of feeding one million hungry children in America by raising $100,000—and hit that target in less than two years. Bowling, 40, did what anyone who knows him would expect: he matched the…

CEO: Daniel Chu AREA OF IMPACT: Financial inequity You can’t do much in Texas without a set of wheels. Yet for the state’s 1.7 million undocumented workers— nearly 6 percent of the workforce keeping the Lone Star economy running—buying a car is often difficult: Without a social security number, it’s nearly impossible to build credit and thus qualify for an auto loan, which in turn can make a purchase prohibitively costly. And without a car, it’s hard to get to work and drop off the kids at school, creating a negative feedback loop. At Tricolor, a combination used-car dealer and lender founded by Daniel Chu in 2007 to address that inequity, 75 percent of the customers are undocumented Hispanic immigrants. Only about one in five with a FICO credit score…

Scott Curley remembers his childhood friend-turned-business-partner Brian Gordon as the type of kid who wore a tie and carried a briefcase through middle school and high school. Gordon knew, even at that young age, that he would succeed. Curley didn’t share Gordon’s fashion sense, but he did possess the same drive. The co-CEOs of FinishLine Tax Solutions, a firm that negotiates resolution agreements for clients who have tax problems, grew up in Crosby, Texas, as friendly rivals. In fact, whenever they found themselves in a game or match together, their peers made them play on opposite teams, no matter the sport. No one else had a chance of winning when Gordon and Curley were on the same side. “I will tell you, that dude right there,” says Curley, pointing to…

No534 2022 Ranking 1171% 3-Year Growth $42 million 2021 Revenue 2x Inc. 5000 Honoree Kate spends several hundred dollars a month playing games on her phone. So, why not let Kate earn points for playing, the same way other companies, such as credit card issuers and airlines, incentivize their loyal customers? That’s the logic behind Influence Mobile, a rewarded gaming platform that entices and nurtures mobile gamers. “Since the majority of people playgames and also participate in some kind of rewards program, we take two things that are very popular and combine them in a unique way,” explains Daniel Todd, Influence Mobile’s founder and CEO. Customers use the Rewarded Play app, available in the Google Play Store in the U.S. and Canada. There, they can access their favorite games and…

No2797 2022 Ranking 30 Employees 45% BIPOC Workforce 62% Female Workforce When their former employer shut down its health care practice near the end of 2017, a door closed, but another opened. That’s when Roz Pierson, Fred LaManna, Felisha Lewis, and Marie LaFerriere, partnered to establish Luminas LLC, and clients, from pharmaceutical companies to academic medical centers to big box pharmacy retailers followed. “Clients had faith in us,” says Pierson. Luminas prides itself on a customized approach by asking all the right questions, including what the client thinks success looks like for each project. “We think about their goals and the story they’re trying to tell,” Pierson says. They will challenge a client’s thoughts and push back on their thinking but do it respectfully and with grace. GROWTH THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS…

In his late teens and early 20s, Jeremy Conder toured the world, playing music with metal and hard-core punk bands, including his own, I Am the Ocean. The bands were successful, but they made more money from merchandise than anything else. Conder took care in creating the merchandise, partnering with skilled artists to design T-shirts, hoodies, and accessories. He paid attention to retail trends and often introduced new items. Merch became bragging rights. So, in 2010, when Conder was ready to hang up his bass guitar and stop living out of buses and vans, he made merchandise his full-time focus. He founded Huge Brands to specialize in merchandise for the music industry but quickly spotted opportunities for expansion. “Just about every industry is being more thoughtful about merchandise and going…

4x Inc. 5000 Honoree 1 Number of Employees 4 Companies Sold $20 million Company Revenue Generated Philip F. Smith—a serial entrepreneur and founder of the Inc. 5000-ranking company PJP Marketing—isn’t one to talk about himself. At the Inc. 5000 gala in 2018, his wife took the lead on networking. When someone asked about his company, Smith would reply, “I am only a one-employee company.” But his response almost always led to follow-up questions. How had he managed to rank among the fastest-growing businesses in America as a solopreneur? Also, how did he place on the Inc. 5000 list four times? The answer comes down to two words: lead generation. MONETIZING DATA Smith started his first business when he was in his 20s. He has since sold four companies, founded others,…

Daina Trout founded Health-Ade Kombucha with her husband, Justin Trout, and best friend, Vanessa Dew, in 2012. During the next five years, the company released many flavors of its probiotic tea and opened its own brewing and bottling facility just south of Los Angeles. By 2021, Health-Ade was profitable and generating $200 million in annual revenue, but its investors were eager for a return. That is, until the company’s steady growth led its first investor to rethink its exit strategy. — As told to Christine Lagorio-Chafkin “As CEO. I’d heard horror stories from founders about what happened when they sold their businesses—like they were fired, or strategic investors installed their own operations and killed the culture. But I had been giving my all to grow this company for 10 years,…

Anjula Acharia Founder and CEO of A-Series Management & Investments When someone pitches me a business idea, first I want to know whether they’re trying to solve an actual problem. So many people want to convince me that they’re solving a problem that doesn’t exist. From there, I want to know why they’re the best person to solve it—and how they’re going to do it. That’s why I invested in ClassPass founder Payal Kadakia more than a decade ago. When Payal came to me, she was very clear and concise in answering those questions. She said, “Look, it’s really hard to book these classes. People don’t have a place to find alternatives. As a fitness junkie, I know how to solve this problem because I deal with it all the…

Whether you’re a bear or a bull, there’s no denying that the past year’s economic volatility has been tough on business. If interest rates keep rising and inflation persists, the tumult may continue. Such chaos presents a big opportunity for savvy entrepreneurs. We talked to Jim McKelvey of Square, Brett Keller of Priceline, and others who have led their companies through tough times and emerged better for it. Follow their sharp insights to get ahead. • Enjoy the Discounts Economic downturns are “a sale for entrepreneurs,” says McKelvey, 57, the co-founder of payments platform Square. “It might not be the best time to open a coffee shop, because there are a lot of coffee shops, but if you’re trying to invent something that the world hasn’t seen before, then downturns…

IN 2013, SHAN-LYN MA was fed up with wedding registries. Most were set up through clunky department store websites offering few options, and all led to terrible gifting experiences. Ma recalls one registry in which every item was made of silver. The only thing she could afford was a single spoon. • A former general manager at e-commerce company Gilt Groupe, Ma knew there had to be a better way. The more she researched wedding planning, the more broken processes she found. “The pain point in registries was replicated at every other part of the wedding planning journey,” says Ma, 45. “It felt like a huge opportunity.” • In May 2013, Ma co-founded the wedding e-commerce startup Zola. A one-stop shop for wedding planning, the New York City-based company has…

As the crowd of 600 or so Patagonia employees gathered on the morning of September 14, they had an inkling that something big was coming. If the all-day hold placed on their calendars hadn’t clued them in, what they found in the courtyard of their office in Ventura, California, did: a fleet of food trucks; big displays charting the company’s milestones; a smattering of alums, some of whom dated to Patagonia’s founding in 1973; a new stage with Patagonia signage; and video cameras beaming the event to the rest of their 3,500 colleagues. As a giant screen came to life, the crowd cheered a rousing cold open from Trevor Noah, followed by a video of the company’s leaders that erased any doubt about the enormity of the moment. “None of…

CEO: Joshua Morales AREA OF IMPACT: Foster children and families Josh Morales has a soft spot for kids. The 40-year-old founder of International Van Lines, a moving company based in Coral Springs, Florida, with annual revenue of $35 million, could do just about anything with his spare time, money, and all that sunshine. But instead of golfing, racing cars, or deepsea fishing, the father of three coaches youth soccer. He’s also a major advocate for foster care, and has been since he and his wife ended up adopting the first two children they fostered more than a decade ago. “Going into it, our assumption was that we were going to have a revolving door,” says Morales. “But these two boys came into our lives, and they never left.” More typically,…

If your gym smells like something— and most every gym smells like something—it’s likely a combination of spray cleaner and sweat. Maybe you’ll get a whiff of rubber, or whatever gunk greases the weight machines. Then there’s SoulCycle, which smells instead of white grapefruit rinds, with a hint of freesia—a pervasive scent that’s cast by glossy yellow, designer candles. The candles also light the cycling studios, affording the space an air of intimacy amid the energy of a Berlin nightclub, while you and your fellow riders all sweat, pedal, and thrust your limbs in semidarkness to EDM. If you don’t immediately recognize the Soul Cycle scent, or its aesthetic, or if you haven’t casually joked about the “cult” of Soul Cycle over the past two decades, you are likely not…

N°99 2022 Ranking 4385% 3-Year Growth 150 Employees 2018 Year Founded Happy workers can be a competitive edge. One U.K. study found that companies with happy employees outperform the competition by up to 20 percent, underscoring how critical human capital management (HCM) is to a business’s success. “HCM is arguably the most important technology that any business is going to install in their organization,” says John Wallace, CEO of HCM Unlocked, which provides HCM software implementation and consulting services. HCM Unlocked works closely with HCM software providers and their mutual clients, to ensure that the custom software being designed and built will do what the clients expect and need it to do. Although the industry originated with payroll and tax management activities, HCM technology combines those core functions with several…

Tanya Jansen Co-founder BEQOM “Employees are not blind to the existing problems; they expect to hear directly from their employer about a plan to address them. To prevent distrust or misinformation, employers must open up lines of conversation and feedback with employees.” Beqom, based in Nyon, Switzerland, is a compensation and performance management solution that’s used by clients like McDonald’s and PepsiCo. Robert F. Smith Founder, chairman, and CEO VISTA EQUITY PARTNERS “Make sure you take time to think. I tell my CEOs: My job is to make their lives quiet so they can take one day a week or one day a monthdepending on how dynamic their business is—and just think. Ask: What are the systemic things you want to change in your business? How do you want to change them, and how…

During the Great Recession in 2008, Sean Kelly saw the impact on his retired grandparents when their investments were affected. The whole family was worried and stressed. As he looked for solutions for his family, he found a role helping clients invest in gold and silver. He realized that, unlike stocks, precious metals are tangible and timeless. This led to a career in precious metals. Kelly also wanted to work in a place where people were valued. An executive at a former company once told Kelly that he would replace employees with software if he could. He knew he needed to make a change and cashed out his retirement plan, even though his wife was pregnant at the time. In 2017, he bought Red Rock Secured, pivoting the financial services…

No 310 2022 Ranking 1836% 3-Year Growth 15 Employees and Contractors 509 Clients Across All Programs Shameca Tankerson is no stranger to setbacks. The mentor, who has been an entrepreneur for more than two decades, helping clients make millions, struggled to make her own financial services firm succeed after the Great Recession wiped it out. “I realized that rebuilding wasn’t what needed to happen; I needed to create something new,” she says. Tankerson’s breakthrough came during CrossFit classes. The experience inspired her to apply the same mental toughness, grit, and tenacity that powered her through her workouts to business. Seven years later, her company, Shameca International, is one of the fastest-growing business and personal development coaching companies in the country. Tankerson wants to show people that you don’t need to…

Jim Tobin Founder and CEO IGNITE SOCIAL MEDIA “When my kids were younger and my company was growing 100 percent a year, the best I could hope for was that I’d feel equally guilty about not giving enough to my company, my family, and myself. I didn’t strive for no guilt. Instead, I tried to balance the various levels of guilt. It may sound counterintuitive, but I found it strangely comforting.” Ignite is a Cary, North Carolina-based social media agency that supports large and midsize businesses. Graham Greytak Founder and CEO HIRERISING “Mondays at noon, I do hot yoga and a cold plunge. I am offline for 90 minutes. It sets boundaries and prioritizes my mental and physical health.” Greytak’s Phoenix-based staffing, project consulting, and recruiting firm made the Inc. 5000…