This article was co-written with Anand Thaker, my collaborator on the marketing technology landscape.
Inc. Magazine’s annual list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in the U.S., the Inc. 5000, was just released for 2018. Out of those 5,000, 2.64% of them are martech companies that appeared on this year’s marketing technology landscape, e.g., the Martech 5000.
Now, 2.64% might not seem like a very large percentage, but when you consider that’s out of every other possible kind of private business in America — construction, education, energy, health, IT services, manufacturing, retail, travel, etc. — it’s a visible dent in our commercial landscape.
The Inc. 5000 is ranked by year-over-year growth, over a three-year time period, of the companies who participate. Only private companies, not public ones, can participate, and they have to disclose their revenue.
You can see the ones at the top of the list have an insane growth rate of more than 100X from 2015 to 2018. Now, that’s easier when your revenue is relatively small, but still — many of these businesses have tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Such growth at that scale is pretty spectacular.
23 martech companies were in the top 500, with a minimum growth rate of 1,000% over three years. Podium, PowerInbox, SOCI, ConvertKit, ClickFunnels, Bbroadly, LiftOff, Aha, SellerLabs, Choozle, Coschedule, Apptimize, HYPR, StrikeSocial, G2 Crowd, Braze, Bluecore, Radius Networks, Lob, Springbot, Upfluence, TripleLift, and NinjaCat. (Congratulations!)
Anand pulled together a spreadsheet of all the Inc. 5000 martech companies, which you can download here:
There are several noteworthy data points in the analysis of this spreadsheet:
- The average growth rate of these martech companies is 822%, which is incredible (compared to the remarkable average 531% growth rate of the rest of the list).
- The average age of these martech companies is 9 years, i.e., founded around 2009. Martech is maturing, but it’s still growing.
- These martech companies span many categories on the marketing technology landscape: marketing automation, mobile marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, optimization, ecommerce, native advertising, etc.
- The geographic location of these martech companies is spread across the U.S. Sure, there’s a cluster of 24 in New York City and 13 in San Francisco, but Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Denver, and Seattle all have multiple winners. Two of the top ones — ConvertKit and ClickFunnels — are based in Idaho!
Keep in mind, these are only the martech companies that were eligible (private businesses in the U.S.), who chose to participate, and had a growth rate of at least 57% to make it into the top 5000. The fact that there were 132 of them is pretty impressive.
That’s just about the size of the original 2011 marketing technology landscape.
It’s also interesting to note that the industry category of Advertising & Marketing on the Inc. 5000 has 479 companies. Most of these are not martech firms, but rather agencies and other kinds of marketing services businesses. They account for nearly 10% of the list, which is a testament to the growth and reinvention of the marketing industry overall.
So much opportunity. Congratulations to all the martech winners on the Inc. 5000!
P.S. Speaking of growth and opportunity, a quick reminder that the early bird “beta” rate for tickets to the MarTech conference in Boston, October 1-3, expires on September 1. Reserve your seat now. It’s going to be a fantastic program you won’t want to miss.
