More on the PROFIT 100

If you want more information on PROFIT Magazine's new list of Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies (see previous post), here are the most likely links.

Click here for the "overview" story that explains what the PROFIT 100 is and what it means.

Click here for the PROFIT 100 rankings.

Here are the listings on a handy downloadable Excel spreadsheet.

Here's the profile of the No. 1 company. I was pleased to be asked to write it.

Here's Cam Cornell's story on P100 best management practices. Lots of great ideas you can borrow.

And here is the Next 100 - Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies, #101-200.

The magazine includes some enlightening interviews with past PROFIT 100 entrepreneurs, in celebration of the PROFIT 100's 20th anniversary. I'll let you know when they post that. (Or you can buy it on the newsstand in handy paper form.)

The issue also includes editor Ian Portsmouth's editorial grumbling about the year that PROFIT ranked 300 companies. So it wasn't one of my better ideas...

But it was 2000. That's the sort of thing people did back then.

Who are Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies?

My column in today’s National Post takes a look at the PROFIT 100, the list of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies that was just published by PROFIT Magazine.

(First, thanks to my Post editors, for letting me analyze another publisher’s project. Too often these days, the media giants cover mainly their own media partners [e.g., Globe and CTV, Canwest and Global TV], and ignore the worthwhile stuff in competing media.)

The PROFIT 100 tells us a lot about today’s economy: where the opportunities are, and why entrepreneurship is a much more dynamic force than your parents ever taught you it would be. The 100 companies on the PROFIT 100 enjoyed average five-year revenue growth of 1,800%. Only a handful of these companies existed 20 years ago, but now they account for $7.9 billion in export revenues.

A full 42% provide business services; just 19 are in manufacturing. There are 12 software developers, and lots of companies providing other high-tech products and services, including Research in Motion, which placed on the list for a record-tying eighth time.

But the No. 1 company is a daycare supplier: Kids & Company, of Markham, Ont., which had five-year growth of 12,639%.

Proof that opportunity is everywhere.

You can read my Post column here.

Lessons from Quebec’s fastest-growing companies

Some of you may not yet have checked out the executive summaries from the presentations at the Visa Small Business Big Thinking conference held in Montreal earlier this year.

What are you waiting for? There's a lot of good learning in the summaries, including the points of view of outstanding Quebec speakers and entrepreneurs whose opinions and learning don't usually break through into English Canada.

Besides, Visa’s team of Montreal writers did a bang-up job of compiling and translating the summaries.

Here’s a sample summary: someone named Spence analyzed the top 12 Quebec companies on PROFIT Magazine’s 2007 list of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies. Here, from his speech June 3, are the 10 “best practices” of Quebec’s top growth companies.

1. Find a niche and make it yours. Companies that did well on the PROFIT 100 list tended to specialize in smaller markets that they could “own,” rather than offer products for everyone.
2. Transform the business model. Growth leaders develop innovative strategies such as turning software products into recurring services, or signing exclusive distribution contacts with key partners.

3. Build value for customers. For instance, RadialPoint creates a “triple win” with its online security products for Internet service providers that not only benefit the ISPs’ customers, but discourage them from changing carriers.
4. Overcome your fear and make cold calls. Some of Quebec’s best-known companies have grown by picking up the phone and asking strangers for their business.

5. Be financially conservative. Quebec’s fastest-growing companies tend to shun venture capital and high-cost debt by hoarding their cash and arranging financial assistance long before they need it.
6. Master technology, and use it to differentiate what you do. Companies such as MarketingIsland and Triglobal Capital Management lock in customers with proprietary technology that gives them everything they need.

7. Find the best motivational tools for your team. To retain god employees, top companies offer incentives such as performance bonuses, pension plans and frequent parties.
8. Upgrade your management structure. Make sure your people and systems grow to keep pace with the company’s expansion.

9. Share opportunities with long-term strategic partners. DuProprio.com, a web service that helps consumers sell their homes privately, recently partnered with national networks of lawyers and appraisers in a deal that creates long-term advertising revenue and supplies valuable services for its clients.
10. Think like a customer. Keeping in touch with customer needs can produce a constant flow of new products and strong relationships that shut out competitors.

You can find much more at http://www.visa.ca/bigthinking/presentations.cfm

Reflections on DataMirror

I’ve never quite understood what data-automation firm DataMirror Corp. does. But I’ve always admired its CEO, Nigel Stokes.

Before the age of 40, he had built a database consulting company, Nidak Associates, taken it to the PROFIT 100 list of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies, and then sold it (to Ottawa tech giant SHL Systemhouse). He then founded Markham, Ont.-based DataMirror, which produces software that integrates inventory, point-of-sale and other commercial data. The company now has more than 2,200 customers, including Tiffany & Co., Ricoh and Imperial Tobacco.*

I often thought about investing in DataMirror, not because I understand it, but because I think Nigel Stokes is 10 years ahead of everyone else.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda…

Today IBM announced an agreement to buy DataMirror Corp. for $170 million. Its $27- a-share bid amounts to a premium of nearly 20% over the shares' recent price of $22.61.

IBM says the combination of DataMirror technology and IBM's information-management software will “help customers bring real-time data analysis closer to actual business processes, allowing them to be more competitive and to generate more value from their information.”

You'll get no hand-wringing about evil foreign takeovers from me. This is how the system works. Entrepreneurs create innovation, work out all the bugs, then sell out to bigger firms that can create more value with that asset because they can disseminate the technology more easily.

Better still, it frees up the entrepreneur to go out and start another business, thereby beginning the cycle again. Except that this time, he or she has more money to do it with. (Stokes, who is still only 52, will receive some $53 million for his DataMirror shares.)

Congratulations, Nigel, and good luck. We’ll be watching. Even if we don’t always understand…

* DataMirror itself says: "Our solutions encompass virtually every kind of data integration technology—spanning mainframes, midrange servers, and mobile devices—allowing organizations to provide real-time data integration between all systems that create and store data." I hope that helps.

Your best ideas from the PROFIT 100

PROFIT Magazine has posted my new "Bright Ideas" story featuring some of the best practices and best management tips from this year’s PROFIT 100 companies.

You can read the whole story here. Or settle for a blog-friendly summary of my key points:

MANAGEMENT
Open your books
Treat managers like entrepreneurs
Make your business plan matter
Delegate!

HIRING
Poach for profit
Make your applicants sweat
Try before you buy

INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION
Climb the family tree (Leveraging local subsidiaries of international companies to snag international contracts)
Be a night owl (how staying up late can help you get much more done when dealing with Asia)
Disappear the border (Look transparent to U.S. customers)

MOTIVATION
Treat your culture well
Wear your ethics on your sleeve
Pay—don't delay! (offering quarterly bonuses)

SALES & MARKETING
Call in the Army (using celebrity spokesmen)
Make your clients rich (helping clients make the most of your services)
Match sellers with what you're selling (sales strategies)
Pour on the referrals
Party with your partners

FINANCE
Drop your banker, call your buddies (borrowing from your employees)

Click here for the full story.
Unless you think you have nothing to learn from Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies.

Hot 50 deadline looms

Do you run a young, fast-growth company that deserves more recognition? Apply to the PROFIT Hot 50 ranking and you could get national publicity - and credibility – as part of PROFIT Magazine’s eighth annual survey of Canada’s Emerging Growth Companies.

The PROFIT HOT 50 ranks and recognizes Canada's Emerging Growth Companies based on two-year revenue growth. If your company was founded in 2003 or 2004, just fill out the online entry form found here. PROFIT honours the HOT 50 companies in the September 2007 issue of PROFIT, year-round at PROFITguide.com and at GrowthCamp, an exclusive three-day summit for HOT 50 leaders.

I devised the Hot 50 in 2000 because we realized that business was moving so fast that the PROFIT 100 list – companies ranked by five-year revenue growth – no longer reflected the cutting edge of new growth companies in Canada. The younger, fresher companies on the Hot 50 don't have the P100’s track record – but they have passion and innovation to spare. And experience has now taught us that most of them go on to do very, very well.

For entry information, click this way. For information on last year’s winners, click here.

Just remember that the deadline is June 30.

2007 PROFIT 100 ready for launch

I forgot to blog earlier to note that Monday, June 4 marks the launch of the 2007 PROFIT 100 survey of Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies. I got a sneak peak at the new June issue and it's full of great advice for entrepreneurs from growth leaders who know what it takes to succeed in today's economy.

If you have time to catch it, PROFIT editor Ian Portsmouth is scheduled to be unveiling the 2007 list on BNN (the former Report on Business TV) at 8:30 Monday morning.

If you don't catch him at 8:30, the interview will probably be available on the website at http://www.bnn.ca//. I'm away from the computer all day Monday at the Visa Small Business Big Thinking conference in Montreal, so if anyone reading this during the day feels like helping out, you could look for the link and post it in the Comment section below this post.

I'd appreciate it. And I'll see if we can't send you out a copy of the issue for your trouble.

Thanks.

By the way, my speech Monday is on the success secrets of Quebec's Fastest-Growing Companies. Play your cards right and I will post a summary soon.