Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Los Angeles Stacks Up Inc. 500 Firms
The latest ranking the fastest growing companies in the nation by Inc. magazine, has 42 companies in the Los Angeles area on the list. The Los Angeles metropolitan area was ranked just behind Washington, D.C. (50 Inc. 500 companies) and New York City (42 companies) in the Inc. 500 listing, well above San Francisco (19 companies). The highest ranking firm on the list in the area was PaymentMax, an electronic payments processor in Thousand Oaks, with 10,058 percent growth over 3 years; among many, many other local companies were Prodege, the parent firm of Swagbucks, at number 43 (4461% growth); Santa Barbara-based FastSpring, at number 53 and 3,851% growth; and San Diego's Black Mountain Systems, a developer of credit analysis software, at number 63, and 3446% 3-year growth. Los Angeles based Savings.com was 135, with 2,077% growth; San Diego's ServiceNow was 260 at 1,240% growth; and Santa Monica's TrueCar was 480, with 721% growth in the last three years. Among the types of local companies on the list were a significant number of payment processing firms, VOIP providers, search engine optimization companies, and software firms. Interestingly enough, among the top Inc. 5000 firms by revenue were two, privately held Southern California firms -- Fountain Valley's Kingston Technology, with $6.5 billion in revenues (#2 in terms of revenues); and Irvine-based Vizio, with $2.9 billion in revenues (#9 in terms of revenues).