MEDIA CONTACT: 

            Richard Sheridan

            rsheridan@menloinnovations.com    

            (734) 272-0040

 

Inc. Magazine Reveals Its 26th Annual List of America’s

500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies

 

Menlo Innovations Ranks No. 420 on the 2007 Inc. 500

With Three-Year Sales Growth of 686.1%

 

NEW YORK, August 29, 2007 – Inc. magazine ranked Menlo Innovations No. 420 on its 26th annual Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. 

 

“If you want to find out which companies are going to change the world, look at the Inc. 500,” said Inc. Editor Jane Berentson.  “These are the most innovative, dynamic, fast-growth companies in the nation, the ones coming up with solutions to some of our most intractable ills, creating systems that let us conduct business faster and easier, and manufacturing products we soon discover we can’t live without. The Inc. 500 list is Inc. magazine’s tribute to American business ingenuity and ambition.”

 

Menlo Innovations offers software design and development services as well as training for IT teams seeking assistance in adopting agile software development practices. Menlo, named in honor of Thomas Edison’s famous research facility, is dedicated to producing usable software with customer value. The company collaborates with their clients to fully understand their unique challenges while proceeding to explore the most practical solutions.  They have designed everything from software to accompany a precision scientific measuring device made by a tool company to a program to manage the logistics of organ transplants.  Menlo’s unique High-tech Anthropology® team seeks to understand the needs of the software being designed by studying the potential users in their native work environment.

 

“The Inc. 500 award is a dream come true for every entrepreneur”, says Richard Sheridan, Menlo Innovations’ CEO.  “Our growth is the result of a great team working within a great community delivering value to our clients every day.  Just as with a child, it takes a village to nurture a young company, and Ann Arbor has been supportive in so many different ways.  We’re honored to receive this attention, but our entire community deserves the credit for our success.”  Sheridan goes on to say, “Menlo’s mission is to end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology, for the people who sponsor the projects, the people who use the software we create and for the people who do the work.  Obviously, our approach is working.  With all the talk of IT work being sent offshore, Menlo has been successful doing all of its work with a local team within our unique Menlo Software Factory™ in downtown Ann Arbor.”

 

The 2007 Inc. 500, as revealed in the September issue of Inc. magazine (on newsstands August 28 – October 2), reported aggregate revenue of $16 billion and median three-year growth of 939 percent.  Most important, the 2007 Inc. 500 companies were engines of job growth, having created more than 64,064 jobs since those companies were founded. 

 

Complete information on this year’s Inc. 500, including company profiles and a list of the fastest-growing companies that can be sorted by industry and region can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000.

 

Hottest Regions for Fastest-Growing Companies

After several years of losing ground to the Washington, D.C., area, California is flush with 81 Inc. 500 companies in 2007, up from 66 last year.  Texas is home to 38 of the fastest-growing companies (up by six), followed by Virginia with 35 (up one company from last year), and New York with 26 (down by eight companies), and Florida with 26 (up one company). 

 

Washington, D.C., is the top metropolitan area for the fifth consecutive year, with 40 of the fastest-growing companies, down slightly from 43 last year.  New York City is a close second, with 38 (down four companies from last year), followed by San Francisco with 26 (up seven companies from last year), Los Angeles with 25 (no change), and Boston with 22 (down two companies).

 

Interestingly, finance and advertising--two industries often associated with New York--contributed a quarter of California’s total. 

 

Hottest Industries for Fastest-Growing Businesses

The most notable median growth categories among Inc. magazine’s list of the 500 fastest-growing businesses is in the Environmental Services category (which grew by 1,425.4 percent on average), followed by Food & Beverage (which grew by 1336.8 percent on average), Media (which grew by 1,179 percent on average), Health (which grew by 1,105.5 percent on average), and Telecommunications (which grew by 1,056.5 percent on average). 

 

The largest business category is IT Services, with 55 Inc. 500 companies in this category.  Advertising & Marketing and Human Resources (both with 48 companies), Government Services (38 companies), and Software (37 companies) round out the top five industries ranked on the 2007 Inc. 500.

 

Industries reporting the highest total revenue from 2003 – 2006 are Health ($3.2 billion), Real Estate ($2.1 billion), Advertising & Marketing ($1.14 billion), Human Resources ($883 million), and Retail ($873.6 million).

 

Methodology

The 2007 Inc. 500 list measures revenue growth from 2003 through 2006.  To qualify, companies had to be U.S.-based and privately held, independent – not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies – as of December 31, 2006, and have had at least $200,000 in revenue in 2003, and $2 million in 2006.

 

Companies can apply for next year’s Inc. 500 and Inc. 5,000 by registering with IncBizNet, the new social network for private companies that will launch this fall on Inc.com.

 

Introducing the Inc. 5,000 – the Inc. 500, Plus 4,500 New Fast-Growing Companies

This year, Inc. expanded the Inc. 500 list tenfold, to create the first-ever Inc. 5,000, the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy – America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs.  Complete results of the Inc. 5,000 can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000, where you can scan profiles of honorees, view lists of the fastest-growing companies by industry and region, and sort the data according to your own parameters.

 

About Inc. magazine:

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, LLC., Inc. magazine (www.inc.com) is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company builders.  With a total paid circulation of 681,421, Inc. provides hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology.

 

About Menlo Innovations LLC:

Menlo designs and builds software for its customers using a design team called High-tech Anthropologists®.  Their agile software development team works side by side with their designers in a fun, high-energy space called the Menlo Software Factory™ in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Menlo’s entire team works in their Ann Arbor office because they believe proximity to each other and to their clients is critically important to maintaining the strong client relationships required to build great software successfully.

 

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