Inc. magazine published the 2016 version of their Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing US private companies over the past three years.  To qualify, firms must have at least $100,000 in revenue in 2012 and $2 million in 2015.  Firms are ranked according to their three-year growth rate.

Once again, Social123 was the fastest growing company amongst the firms covered by my newsletter.  Last year, the firm grew its revenue by $400,000 to $2.8 million.  The firm has a three-year Compound Average Growth Rate (CAGR) of 123%.  Social123 provides a database of over 300 million global contacts mined from social media which they deploy for prospecting and data enrichment.

HG Data and CB Insights also posted high growth rates (three year CAGRs of 106% and 97% respectively) that placed them towards the top of the list.  HG Data has had great success licensing their semantically mined set of technology product and vendor data to sales intelligence and predictive analytics companies while CB Insights continues to grow in the PE/VC intelligence space and launched a PE/VC sales intelligence product in 2015.

DiscoverOrg posted the most impressive numbers as it made the list for the sixth consecutive year with a 48% CAGR.  According to the tech sales intelligence firm, only 320 companies have ever made the list for six consecutive years and DiscoverOrg ranked 12^th in growth amongst them.  Furthermore, DiscoverOrg is on pace for $60 million in revenue this year which would easily place them on next year’s list.  Noting that the firm has grown revenue 10X over five years, CMO Katie Bullard described their feat as “a huge testament to our customers’ successes and the value they are realizing every day.”

DiscoverOrg recently accepted equity financing for strategic growth purposes, but much of their growth was self-funded as they carefully built out their database to 60,000 companies and their customer base to 2,000 clients.  The firm has doubled its company coverage over the past year and built its editorial staff out to 150 researchers.  Similarly, they have grown contact coverage by 89% while maintaining a 99% fill rate on emails and 96% on direct dial numbers.

Technology sales intelligence vendor RainKing also demonstrated strong growth with a 31% CAGR to $27 million.  Back in June, RainKing announced plans to add an additional sixty headcount to their sales, research, engineering, and client success departments.  This is the third year in a row that RainKing has made the list.

Intent data firm Madison Logic made the list for the second time with $45.1 million in revenue.  The growth was particularly impressive as Madison Logic spun off its Madison Logic Data division in April 2015 as Bombora.  “Madison Logic’s priority is to provide B2B marketers with the most comprehensive account based marketing solution and deliver real ROI of their efforts,” said Tom O’Regan, Madison Logic’s CEO. “Our growth is a result of all our teams — from engineering to sales — being aligned behind that priority. We could not have done it without our partners and customers who have selected Activate ABM to power their account based marketing programs.”

Zoominfo returned to the list last year after a seven year hiatus.  The firm appears to have found a successful growth strategy.  Over the years, Zoominfo pursued multiple markets including web mined biographies, sales intelligence, and executive recruitment tools only to be big footed by Google and LinkedIn.  A few years ago, Zoominfo began to gain traction in the data hygiene services space.  Over the past year, they launched Chrome and Eloqua connectors and refreshed their Salesforce integration.  They also rebranded and enhanced their sales and marketing platform as the Zoominfo Growth Acceleration Platform.  The new service helps sales and marketing teams “identify, connect, and engage with qualified prospects and replicate success.”

“Our mission is to help businesses accelerate their growth by using our data and tools,” said Zoominfo CEO Yonatan Stern.  “We use our own tools and have experienced accelerating growth together with significant profitability over the past five years.

Advertising sales intelligence vendor The List returned to the Inc. 5000 after a five-year hiatus.  The List has long been a respected database covering the national advertising and agency sector.  Late last year, the firm launched a new sales intelligence service for sales professionals who target agencies, media sales, marketing technology firms, and corporate sponsorships.  The Winmo service combines advertiser and agency search, agency relationships, creative portfolios, and sales recommendations along with prospecting, advertising-specific sales triggers from DailyVista, and an SFDC connector.

Pure Incubation made the list for the third year in the row with revenues of $9.5 million.  The Massachusetts firm provides lead generation and database services for the medical (MedData Group) and IT fields (PureB2B).  PureIncubation CEO Melissa Chang attributed the firm’ success to the launch of several PureB2B products including “marketing qualified leads, a unique integrated Account Based Marketing product, and our latest digital strategy  – a GuidesFor site network that utilizes intent data to identify in-market buyers and drive ready-to-purchase buyers to technology companies.”  Chang also noted that “we have made a number of operational enhancements to increase efficiencies, and set the industry standard for quality data delivery.”

Interestingly, not a single predictive analytics company made the list.  Several  firms were pre-revenue in March 2012 so would not have qualified this year.  Other firms may have chosen not to publish their revenue and growth rates.