What Makes the Top 20 Fastest Growing Tech Companies Stand Apart?

As the IT service industry transforms itself, due to emergence of SMAC, Silicon Valley start-ups are emerging with products and solutions, which redefine IT landscape with new ideas and concepts.

Top 20 Fastest Growing Tech Companies
are expected to grow at 47% YoY

FactSet released its 2014 list of the Top-20 fastest growing tech companies in the world. The list includes big and small names from Facebook, LinkedIn,  Salesforce, the big firms, to Textura, little known firms. The market capital of these companies ranges from $700Mn to $170Bn. These companies are expected to grow at an average of 47% YoY from their current levels. They are betting big on technologies such as SMAC, Security, Advertising, SaaS, Collaboration Service, Business intelligence, and Big Data. Their current and projected astronomical growth poses questions such as what makes them stand apart in the crowded Silicon Valley start-up league? Is there a common DNA which makes them stand apart?

Following is an account, based on a report by the corporate and investment bank on these fastest growing companies, and a few of the common notable trends that set these companies apart.

Connecting the dots

Most of these companies are in B2B segment with a strategy to connect the dot. Rocketfuel, the advertising technology company, helps in providing better ROI to marketers and help brands achieve their mission efficiently. The unique artificial intelligence system designed by Rocketfuel helps better the Google Adsense and Facebook advertising platform.

Marketo, the cloud based lead management service, helps businesses find future customers and works with major CRM providers like Salesforce.com. The Marketo service helps build, sustain, and grow relationships with buyers and engages with customers in real time.

The idea in this category is to connect the missing link for users and create comprehensive product/services.

Redefining the landscape

The companies also share an interesting product/service helping, which redefines the landscape. Zillow.com, the leader in online real estate listing service, offers map based property search. The service is topped up with Zestimate, a unique offering, which assists users in decision making process by providing market prices based on the internal estimates.

Textura Corp, the cloud based provider of collaboration and productivity tools for the construction industry helps streamline the processes and achieve efficiency across the operation.

The products mentioned above redefined the obvious, created newer ways of operation and value for end users.

Disruptive Innovations

The list also includes companies, which launched disruptive products and services to redefine their sectors and industry. Facebook.com, the leading social media player, redefined the social media experience with photos and created a global platform fulfilling the basic requirement of human being to connect. Palo Alto Networks, the firewall specialist, redefined the firewall market by providing a disruptive technology which delivered visibility and control over applications, users, and content.

The topic drills down to one single question, what can IT Service Company learn and leverage from these companies? We believe the three pronged approach of Innovation, Incubation, and Partnerships is the answer.

§  Innovation: Encourage a start-up environment within the company. Allow employees to come up with novel ideas in the current product/service line. For example, Gmail, the world’s most used email service, was a novel project executed by an employee under the 80/20 innovation model of Google.

§  Incubation: Invest in incubation and innovation center in partnership with educational institutions. For example, IIT Madras Research Park houses over 20 start-ups supported by who’s who of the tech industry from TCS to Cognizant.

§  Partnerships: Tie-up with matured start-ups and integrate their product offerings for clients and services. For example, Infosys tied-up with IPsoft to provide autonomics, which helped Infosys reduce cost in IMS service.

The three pronged approach will eventually lead to creating new products and solutions. But are the IT service companies undermining the threat from these companies?

The 20 fastest growing tech companies have been continuously innovating over the years to keep their products on top with effective lean teams ranging from 200-1500 members. As SMAC becomes the center of new innovative products and solutions this could be considered as a start of a product and service convergence.

Notes: The companies featured in the Top-20 fastest growing tech companies include FireEye, RocketFuel, Textura, Workday, Servicenow, Zillow.com, Cornerstone, Facebook, Tableau, Marketo,Demandware, PaloAlto Networks, Linkedin, Splunk, Netsuite, Salesforce.com, IMperva, Ring Central, Benefit Focus and Athena Health.

On 5/17/2014