Woohoo! :-)
We're all Smileys over here about being on the Inc. 5000 list by Inc. Magazine with a rank of 1982!
If you don’t keep up with Inc. Magazine, then you may not realize it's an exclusive list of America’s fastest-growing private companies from more than 6 Million private companies.
I know - right! And we were ranked 1982 fastest-growing company! But anyway, we’ll do an official press release later with our stats and stuff, but I wanted to loop you guys in on the behind the scenes.
Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but as you probably know, we’re a small company with 25 employees, and most of us are less than 35 years old.
So a couple days ago while we are all huddled around Ed (our under 35, President and co-founder) while he unpacked our Inc. Magazine announcement kit, we couldn’t help get all silly about guessing our rank. I mean, it was like Bob Barker, Price is Right, sort of stuff over here. We got the whiteboard out and polled everyone in the office one-by-one to make their best guess at our rank. People were one-upping and one-lessing each other - it was ridiculous!
Side note, the winner is promised a dinner with Ed - hey free food, who doesn’t one-up for that?!
In true fun we had guesses that crossed the entire spectrum from the most optimistic guesses from Chad and Eric with guesses of 8 and 12 respectively to the most reserved, playing-it-safe, guess from Lisa at 5000 right on the dot! So, with a bit of negotiating rank guesses and tracking whom guessed what, we began to read the letter from the Inc. Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief to discover our placement in the list.
Apparently Inc. Magazine started publishing the Inc. 500 list in 1982. Interesting. Our rank is also 1982, interesting. And most of us youngsters happen to have fond childhood memories from 1982 very very interesting!
So we quickly dove into Pop Culture History.
Did you know in 1982:
- The Smiley emoticon :-) is born as a suggestion by a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University.
- Michael Jackson released the Thriller album.
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial hit the big screen.
- Shows like Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider were impressing boys and men alike.
- And while Inc. Magazine release the first Inc. 500 list, Times Magazine announces man of the year is THE COMPUTER.
Wow! Wasn’t 1982 great?! :-)
If you’re still reading, thanks! And we hope you’ll share our good times on the new achievement. It’s worked out nicely as a capstone on this year’s company timeline.
Oh, and since we split guesses into two teams, David’s guess of 1824 and Aaron’s guess of 1932 makes them both winners of the free dinner with Ed!