Sierra Bravo again makes 2009 Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest growing private companies with four-year growth rate of 237%
Launch of Nerdery Interactive Labs division propels Minneapolis web developers as go-to nerds of ad and design agencies nationwide
Inc. Magazine has announced its annual list of America’s fastest growing private companies – and Sierra Bravo is #1,346 on the Inc. 5000. From 2005 to 2008, Sierra Bravo’s revenue jumped from $1.9 million to nearly $6.5 million – an increase of 237.2%. Sierra Bravo has now made the Inc. 5000 in its first two years of eligibility – having debuted at #556 last year. Additionally, Sierra Bravo ranked #25 on Inc.’s Top 50 Businesses in Minnesota.
The 2009 Inc. 5000 serves as a unique report card on the U.S. economy. Despite the ongoing recession, aggregate revenue among the companies on the list actually increased to $214 billion, up $29 billion from last year, with a median three-year growth rate of 126 percent. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs.
Driving Sierra Bravo’s steady growth is its Nerdery Interactive Labs division, launched in May and solely dedicated to partnering with advertisers, designers, and others with big interactive ideas. The Nerdery has more than 80 agency partners in 15 states.
“With the launch of The Nerdery, we’ve essentially doubled-down on our bet that – with the web capabilities we bring to agency partners – we’re positioned to defy the combined gravity of a recession and an ad industry slump,” said Sierra Bravo CFO Michael Derheim, one of three programmers who founded the company in 2003, along with partners Mike Schmidt and Luke Bucklin.
“The Nerdery charts new territory compared to our programming roots of helping businesses running on old legacy systems get more from their investment by extending their capabilities through web-based services,” said Mike Schmidt, senior vice president of software development. “And while our legacy work continues, we carry forward with a far greater web development toolbox for our agency partners.”
“Partnering with agencies started for us a couple years ago when some ad agency friends asked us to help with their interactive projects,” said Luke Bucklin, president. “They liked our work and we wanted more of it, but all the while we’ve held steady to our engineering roots and yielded creative control to our agency partners as designers and strategists while we focus on executing their pixel-perfect vision. It has been win-win-win – for us, for our agency partners, and for their clients.”
The Inc. 5000 are responsible for creating more than 1 million jobs since their founding, making the list perhaps the best example of the impact private, fast-growing companies can have on the economy. Health is the top employer with 156,223 jobs, followed by Business Products & Services (122,911), IT Services (89,632), Food & Beverage (86,572), and Construction (65,494).
IT Services had the most companies on this year’s list with 658, followed by Business Products & Services (502), Advertising & Marketing (398), Construction (354), and Manufacturing (342). Topping this year’s list is Northern Capital Insurance, a Miami-based firm that is helping to revolutionize Florida’s ailing insurance industry. The company generated $95 million in revenue in 2008 and an impressive three-year growth rate of 19,812 percent.
“Savvy trend spotters and those who invest in private companies know that the Inc. 5000 is the best place to find out about young companies that are achieving success through a wide variety of unprecedented business models, as well as older private companies that are still expanding at an impressive rate,” said Inc. 5000 project manager Jim Melloan. “That’s why our list is so eagerly anticipated every year.”
The Inc. 5000 posted aggregate revenue of $214 billion in 2008, up nearly 16 percent from the previous year. The top five industries by total revenue include Health ($22.7 billion), Business Products & Services ($19.6 billion), Construction ($18.8 billion), Energy ($14.7 billion), and IT Services ($13.2 billion). The Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2005 through 2008. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of 2005, and therefore able to show four full calendar years of sales.
About Sierra Bravo and Nerdery Interactive Labs
A division of Sierra Bravo Corporation, Nerdery Interactive Labs (The Nerdery) partners with ad, design and marketing agencies nationwide to execute their clients’ web projects, including social media and Web 2.0 applications. We developed Fallon’s vision for Skimmer, a lifestreaming app pooling users’ social media content and winner of a 2009 Cannes Golden Lion. Also in 2009 we won the PhizzPop Design Challenge at SXSW Interactive by developing Zeus Jones’s Usemore idea, an application for living green. We created the Overnight Website Challenge, a 24-hour community event pairing volunteer programmers with nonprofits to build better websites. During the first two years of our Overnight Website Challenge, volunteer web pros from the Nerdery and the web development community at large have donated more than 5,000 hours of professional services to 23 Minnesota nonprofits – with a street value of more than half-a-million dollars. The Nerdery is a real place near Minneapolis where more than 70 people draw little distinction between work and play.
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| 08/24/10 | Nerdery makes Inc. 5,000 list of America's fastest growing private companies for third consecutive year |