Inc Magazine: Inc 500 2002
Who's Running the 500?
Like any set of people, the group of CEOs behind the 2002 Inc 500 can be broken down into stats about race, marital status, economic background, and the like. But such figures don't tell us much about what it takes to build a hypergrowth company. What qualities and factors really lead to success? To find out, we asked this year's CEOs three critical questions.
- Where Did You Learn How to Grow a Company?
- Whether they learned their craft from their families, in school, or through experience, the Inc 500 agree that entrepreneurs are made, not born.
- What Do You Do All Day?
- There's no set job description for the CEO of a fast-growth company. The leaders of the 2002 Inc 500 spend their time in a variety of ways. But no matter what they do, chances are, they do it a lot.
- Are You Rich Yet?
- Their wealth may look enormous on paper, but Inc 500 CEOs generally don't describe themselves as rich. You may disagree.
The List: America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies
The Rankings:Here they are: the fastest-growing privately held companies in America, with stats on growth, revenues, and profitability.
- The Number One Company: People Person
- The government specializes in creating employee-related red tape. The Outsource Group, America's fastest growing private company on the 2002 Inc 500 list, specializes in untangling it.
A Start-up Is Born
- Seat of the Pants
- Everyone says that before you launch a company, you've got to write a business plan. So how come so many Inc 500 CEOs skipped that sober exercise?
- Where Do Great Ideas Come From?
- To hear these Inc 500 all-stars tell it, it's not from books or market research; it's from keeping your eyes and ears open.
Best-Laid Plans
- The Ride of Your Life
- Trouble's inevitable. What do you do when a crisis hits? Take advantage of it -- and hang on tight.
- Six Ways to Outrun the Competition
- Talk about countercyclical: more than half the companies on the 2002 Inc 500 list have thrived in industries that are just puttering along. Here's how.
The Capital Gang
- The Numbers Game
- How should you fund your growing company? Just ask the Inc 500 class of 2002.
- A Little Goes a Long Way
- What difference does a hundred thou in seed capital make? The answer may surprise you.
Now Manage, Dammit
- Employment Guaranteed, for Life
- Are layoffs simply a necessary evil in today's business climate? This company's founding fathers don't think so. And they've built a culture to reflect that.
- Keeping It Flexible
- Imagine a workplace where employees decide how many days a week they'll work and how many weeks of vacation they'll take each year.
- Only Connect
- If Lief Morin had his way, nobody in his company would telecommute. Now he's fighting back with technology.
- Man vs. Machine
- Paul Estenson thinks technology is a surprising bane to an Inc 500 business. Stephen Kline couldn't disagree more. Here are their arguments.
- A Strategic Misalliance
- What happens when the ideal partnership turns into a potential ethical nightmare?
Entrepreneurial Ego
- Until You Get It Right
- Neil Johnston knew exactly what kind of entrepreneurial life he wanted -- eventually.
- My Body Is a ... Profit Center
- Lee Labrada's corpus really is his temple.
- The Question, Popped
- When you're a CEO, your life is an open book. Just ask Michael Elfenbein, whose workers are counting the days until he gets engaged.
Plus:
- A Little Down. Far From Out
- A sign of our economic times.
- Brief Profiles of 2002 Inc 500 Companies
- Unusual stories and interesting statistics about companies on the 2002 Inc 500 list.
Inc.com Only
- Benchmark Your Business
- Would you have made the list?
- Survey
- Find out if you're building an Inc 500 company.
- Capital Profiles
- Contrarian thinking -- and a little shrewd planning -- helped these 2002 Inc 500 CEOs raise funds.
