Fast 500

Every year, and for almost three decades now, Deloitte provides a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America — the Deloitte Technology Fast 500.

In order to be eligible for the Technology Fast 500, companies must own proprietary intellectual property or technology that is sold to customers in products that contribute to a majority of the company’s operating revenues. In addition, companies must have base-year operating revenues of at least US$50K, and current year operating revenues of at least US$5M.

For the 2022 award, the base year was 2018 and the current year was 2021. 61% of the winners were in software & services and 24% of the US winners were located in the Silicon Valley.

To our surprise — given that all Fabrica Ventures’ portfolio startups are already sizeable (all unicorns) and “old” (average age of almost 10 years) — 3 out 26 made the 2022 Technology Fast 500 list.

BigID – Platform for data security, compliance, privacy, and governance — Ranking #21 — 7,242% revenue growth from 2018 to 2021 – Valuation: $1.3B – Amount raised: $215M — Year founded: 2016 – Main investors: Bessemer, Advent, Salesforce, Splunk, SAP, ServiceNow, MongoDB

Consensys – Blockchain platform — Ranking #136 – 1,070% revenue growth from 2018 to 2021 – Valuation: $7.1B — Amount raised: $733M – Year founded: 2014 – Main investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Microsoft, Temasek, Samsung, AT&T, JPMorgan Chase, MasterCard, UBS, HSBC

Sysdig – DevOps platform to run containers –Ranking #297 – 487% revenue growth from 2018 to 2021 – Valuation: $2.5B — Amount raised: $740M — Year founded: 2013 — Main investors: Accel, Insight Partners, Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs, Guggenheim Partners, Permira

Conclusion

Revenue growth is the single most important driver for VC investment.

Fabrica Ventures always looks for high-growth startups in markets with strong tailwinds.

“One of the lessons your management has learned – and, unfortunately, sometimes re-learned – is the importance of being in businesses where tailwinds prevail rather than headwinds” – Warren Buffett