community
The Inner City 100
100 street-smart companies.
1. Mosaica Education
7,695%
84.4 million
1,327
Mosaica operates charter schools in eight states and the District of Columbia. Click here to read the full profile.
2. Intercosmos Media Group
5,252%
15.2 million
59
A group of Louisiana entrepreneurs launched Intercosmos in 1999 to offer free Web hosting. Revenue at first came from advertising; in 2000 Intercosmos was able to start charging for domain names. The company works with the city to employ four public-school interns a year, training them in customer support. Many of those students are later hired full-time.
3. Tech Valley Communications
4,280%
10.3 million
50
Albany, N.Y.
The late-'90s telecom bust actually helped Kevin O'Connor get his phone company off the ground. Trolling on eBay, he found $50,000 routers for $5,000. Tech Valley now uses that equipment to provide phone and high-speed Internet services to a customer base that is mostly commercial.
4. 180s
3,643%
44.7 million
98
Employees at 180s (No. 1 on last year's Inner City 100) not only make ear warmers, gloves, and sunglasses, they mentor freshmen and sophomores at an inner city high school. While the high school's dropout rate hovers at 60%, 99% of the students in the program have gone on to graduate.
5. The Piston Group
3,107%
227.7 million
370
Vinnie Johnson started this auto-parts company after a National Basketball Association career. Click here to read the full profile.
6. Global Technology Resources
2,570%
17.7 million
21
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Web-Only Exclusives
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Kwame Kilpatrick, the optimistic mayor of Detroit and winner of this year's ICIC Mayoral Leadership Award, believes the Motor City is becoming a hotbed of entrepreneurship, despite what others say. - 2005 Inner City Almanac
Why do companies locate in the inner city? What was the average valuation of companies on the 2005 list? And what contributed most to their growth over the past five years? Discover answers to these questions and more in this collection of interesting facts and statistics about the companies that made the 2005 Inner City 100 list. - 2005 Inner City 100 Hall of Fame
Three companies will appear on the Inner City 100 for the fifth time out of the seven years that the list has been in existence. Here are this year's inductees into the Inner City Hall of Fame.
