Top BC Tech Companies
Forecast Triple Digit Revenue Growth for 2014
Rocket
Builders Mid Year Review of the 2014 Ready to Rocket List
VANCOUVER, BC - November 5, 2014
Rocket Builders recently
gathered data to complete their yearly Mid Year Review on the companies on the
2014 Ready to Rocket ICT List and discovered high revenue growth, high full
time employment growth and over ten million dollars raised in angel and venture
capital financing.
Ready to Rocket
is an annual list of the companies in Information Communications and Technology
(ICT), Clean Tech and Life Sciences that Rocket Builders believes are most
likely to show break out growth in the coming year. This year Rocket Builders focused on companies in the Information
and Communications Technology List as these companies are at the heart of
the British Columbia innovation ecosystem and they tend to have more revenue
traction than companies in Clean
Tech or Life
Science.
Data showed early-stage
companies experiencing up to 7X growth and larger companies expecting to see
revenues grow by more than 100%. The major trends supporting the growth of the
Ready-to-Rocket companies are Cloud, Social, Mobile, Big Data, and Security.
The most successful companies are those that have translated these trends into
opportunities in a specific segment.
“There has been a lot of excitement
about start-ups in Vancouver, and this is good, but it is during the growth
phase that most value is created and there needs to be more attention to and
support for Vancouver's growth stage companies," said Rocket Builders
partner Steven Forth. "A 1 or 2% difference in month-to-month growth makes
a big difference early on.
Companies are projected to
increase growth in full time employees by 34% by the end of the year. There was a 25% decline in revenues per
employee, but this decline is likely due to the number of very successful
companies that graduated from the Ready to Rocket List and the remaining
companies are on average smaller and less mature. As large technology companies
open offices in BC there will be upward pressure on local wages as well.
Reg Nordman, managing
partner, is “constantly impressed by the resiliency of the Ready to Rocket
companies to grow steadily regardless of economic events. It is a testimony to these companies’
abilities to address real needs in strong markets.”
The Ready-to-Rocket companies
seem to have a balanced approach to metrics overall, but about half are focused
only on backward looking financial metrics. This is like driving a car by
looking in the rearview mirror. Companies have an opportunity to sharpen their
differentiation by developing metrics that are specific to their offer and that
measure the value to the customer. These are the metrics that can change future
performance.
Contact Rocket Builders (rnordman@rocketbuilders.com)
for access to more metrics.