To Boldly Grow

The 2005 PROFIT 100 is out!

That’s PROFIT magazine’s annual list of Canada’s 100 – actually, 200, but that doesn’t sound as cool – smartest, fastest growth firms. All laid out for you on the Web, along with what they do and how they do it.

If you want to understand where Canadian business is heading, run (don’t walk) to the new list of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies at http://www.profitguide.com/profit100/index.asp

And get this: even the 200th-ranked company has tripled its sales over the last five years.

This is the 17th annual PROFIT 100: among the winners on previous lists are Research in Motion, Pivotal Corp., Clearnet, Bioware, QLT, DataMirror, Angiotech, OpenText, Janna Technologies, TLC Laser Eye Centres, Western Financial, Cangene, GAP Adventures, and many other growth firms you should have known much earlier than you did. Check out this year’s list to discover tomorrow’s best marketers, newsmakers and speculative stock plays.

This year’s No. 1 firm this year is Toronto-based Internet hosting service Hostopia.com, with five-year revenue growth of (gulp!) 13,000%. Interestingly, this firm includes the entire senior management team from Tucows, a multi-year PROFIT 100 firm from about five years ago. It’s a nail-biting story of a firm that struggled to make it – but is now a secure industry leader that may soon go public.

I was privileged last month to interview the CEOs of the top five companies on the PROFIT 100. You can check out those profiles at http://www.profitguide.com/profit100/2005/article.asp?ID=1329

This is required reading at the Starfleet Academy of Entrepreneurship.