LEHI — Utah customer interaction platform Podium once again earned its way on to the annual Inc. 5000 list of the country’s fastest-growing companies with an astounding three-year revenue growth rate of 5,392%.
Podium’s ranking of No. 52 on Inc.’s 2019 list released Wednesday is down a bit from its 2018 spot at No. 13, but the company has continued a stellar business expansion rate since launching in 2014.
Podium CEO Eric Rea said the company’s success is intrinsically connected with how well the product meets the needs of clients.
“This award is a testament to how our products are resonating with our clients and helping owners of local businesses connect with their customers better — and how much we’re growing as a result,” Rea said in a statement. “We’re especially excited to be so high on the list for the second year running because it shows sustained growth. Being ranked on growth percentage means we’re partially competing against our past success, and this proves we’re up to the task.”
Podium’s stat sheet, like its revenue growth, reflects how widely the platform is being adopted by offline business that recognize the need for online and digital connections with customers. The company reports it now has over 40,000 business clients and is mediating some 14 million customer interactions every month. Also, its platform has been used by nearly 1 in every 4 U.S. cellphone users.
The company has also attracted investment from some of the heaviest hitters in the U.S. venture capital realm. Those include Silicon Valley’s Institutional Venture Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Accel, Summit Partners, Y Combinator and others.
Podium President Adam Edmunds told the Deseret News that company leaders and their growing staff (which now exceeds 600) are always about maintaining a “heads-down” commitment to the work at hand, but are collectively appreciative of the outside recognition.
“Getting into the top 100 of the Inc. 5000 is really hard to do once,” Edmunds said. “Doing it two times ... that’s even more difficult.”
Edmunds said the Podium platform, which enables offline businesses to manage and maintain digital communications with customers as well as keep an eye on their online reputations and reviews, just works “really, really well and solves problems for small- to mid-size businesses.”
“The primary job that we have with our customers is to make an evolving and increasingly complex world super simple, for both sides of a transaction,” Edmunds said. “We stay very focused on creating a high quality, very modern experience for our end users.”
According to the publication, the 2019 Inc. 5000 achieved a three-year average growth of 454%, and a median rate of 157%. The Inc. 5000’s aggregate revenue was $237.7 billion in 2018, accounting for 1,216,308 jobs over the past three years.
Inc. Editor-in-Chief James Ledbetter noted while the companies on this year’s list have wildly disparate business models, they all share some critical underlying tenets.
“The companies on this year’s Inc. 5000 have followed so many different paths to success,” Ledbetter said in a statement. “There’s no single course you can follow or investment you can take that will guarantee this kind of spectacular growth. But what they have in common is persistence and seizing opportunities.”