Contently Included on Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Companies List for Second Consecutive Year

Exactly one year ago, I published a post about Contently making the 2015 Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies. Today, we learned that we ranked number 508 on the 2016 Inc. 5000 list. This year’s list was very competitive, with an average growth rate of 433 percent, and we’re extremely proud to be included for consecutive years.

A lot has happened at Contently since Inc.’s last list:

• We acquired a company and enhanced our technology.
• We brought on top executives and expanded our global offices.
• We won awards for the Contently platform, our content, and our company culture.
• We published “Content Methodology: A Best Practices Report,” a summary of what we’ve learned about content marketing from six years in the industry.
• We signed and renewed contracts with 20 percent of the Fortune 500, and have the pleasure of working with the most innovative companies in the world.
• We more than doubled the business again, growing annual revenue from seven to eight figures.

As Contently’s CEO, it’s my job to look at all the granular metrics that measure our successes and failures as a company. Over the past three years—the timeframe measured by the 2016 Inc. 5000 list—our revenue grew by 749 percent.

Our business intelligence team will be the first to remind me that there isn’t a single magic metric that shows if we’re succeeding. But even if it’s not magic, consistent year-over-year revenue growth is about as close as you can get. Our inclusion on the Inc. 5000 represents the collective work of our entire company, and 749 percent tells me that the work we’ve been doing is amazing.

I’m not writing to brag about myself or my co-founders. (Though I’ll certainly send this to my mom—hi, Mom!) Every time our customer success team has a 10 p.m. call with an international client, our design team finishes all of their daily work while also producing an award-winning print magazine, our services team helps connect creatives with clients across the world, our sales executives travel for 10 days straight, and our product team works overtime to get a new feature launched, they’re doing what it takes to help us build a great company. For that, we’re eternally grateful.

But there is so much more that we can, and will, do. As Contently has grown, so has the content marketing industry. There is more opportunity for growth than we ever could have predicted when we started. And we’re going to continue focusing on the success of our customers by providing them with the smartest technology and the best team on the planet.

Maintaining growth is not easy. As we continue to track so many metrics to ensure that we’re making the right decisions for our company and our customers, we’ll be working toward our return on the 2017 Inc. 5000 list.