Six Philly-area companies on Forbes' 'America's Most Promising Companies'

Tom Paine

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Forbes Magazine recently published a list of what it calls America's Most Promising Companies, its "third annual ranking of high-growth, privately-held companies with under $250 million in annual revenue."

Six Philly-area companies are among the 100 included:

CardCash (#14), East Windsor, NJ; Revenue: $56 million, Employees: 55. Resells giftcards online. Raised $6 million from Guggenheim Partners in November 2013.

SevOne (#33), Wilmington, DE; Revenue: $40 million, Employees: 256. Network monitoring software and appliances. Raised more than $150 million from Bain Capital and Osage Ventures.

Petplan (#46), Philadelphia; Revenue: $53 million, Employees: 105. Sells veterinary insurance to pet owners. Raised $2.6 million from angel investors in 2008. Vernon Hill, founder and former CEO of Commerce Bank, serves as the company’s Chairman.

Solve Media (#48), New York/Philadelphia; Revenue: $13 million, Employees: 42. Replaces
"CAPTCHAs" with advertising slogans. Has raised $16.7 million from First Round Capital, New Atlantic Ventures, AOL Ventures and others.

Prepay Nation (#52), Berwyn; Revenue: $110 million, Employees: 10. Helps immigrants and expats transfer small amounts of money across international borders via mobile phones.

LiquidHub (#67), Wayne; Revenue: $115 million, Employees: 1400. IT consulting company that helps clients with systems integration. Has raised $22 million from PPM American Capital Partners, New Spring Capital and Credit Suisse, among others.

Forbes, in discussing its selection process, says "The final assessment is based on growth (both in sales and hiring), quality of management team and investors, margins, market size and key partnerships. Then we spoke to each company to make sure we didn’t miss anything."

Any ranking of private companies, without a definitive market-derived value, is going to involve a certain degree of subjectivity.

I don't know much about CardCash or Prepay Nation. I would guess that they do considerable outsourcing to achieve so much revenue with so few employees.