Everywhere people are talking about Innovation and Startups. It hardly goes by a day without seeing some cool ideas.
And, while we often see earlier stage companies in this part of the world ( or the supersized ones, but not the ones in between), we thought it would be fun to look at companies which have generated substantial revenue, have not been around for too long and are growing fast. Will we be able to learn anything?
Hence, we did some digging and found out there is a list called INC 5000, which was compiled by the Inc Magazine. The list tabulates 5000 fastest growing private companies. And, probably because of the way the companies were approached, many of them are rather young. So, it is really interesting to look them. (http://www.inc.com/inc5000)
And, don't forget, the best way to look for a new venture is actually to look at stuff which has happened elsewhere and see whether one can adapt them for local markets.
Therefore, we thought it would be good and fun to take that 5000 companies and did some analysis --- we become the human "small data" machine for a while. The 5000 companies covered about 25 sectors, and employed about 1.2 million people.
Spread of this company in different sectors can be seen below:
Some more information:
Average Revenue Per Company US $39.8M
Average Revenue Per Staff US $170K
Average Company Size 234 Staff
Highest Revenue Per Staff
Computer Hardware: $580K Per Staff
Lowest Revenue Per Staff
Human Resources: $39.4K Per Staff*
*We do confess that there are some clarifications needed, as some of the "human resources" companies provide temporary and part time staff; and we do wonder if they are counted.
The fastest growing company is a company called Loot Crate which has a 3-year growth of 66,789%, and started only in 2012. Revenue hit US$116.2M and is based in Los Angeles. The concept of this company is very interesting. Basically, it is a monthly fixed budget personal shopper. You pay a fee per month to Loot Crate, tell them the kind of items you like, and then each month the company mails you a box of "surprises" --- items in your category, to you. It makes sense because Loot Crate knows the monthly purchases budget and can negotiate with suppliers to get you different things which would be more expensive, or harder to get by yourself. We feel that this idea is sort of like a combination of Groupon buy/book-of-the-month-club/taobao/ebay/NiemenMarcus personal shopper. Very interesting indeed! The company now employs more than 200 people.
Hope that will inspire some of you!