CertifID Ranks No. 193 in the 2023 Inc. 5000

As a parent, I’m often surprised by how different my two kids are. The tricks I picked up during my three year old’s early years are now often proving, inconveniently, powerless with my eight month old. That’s because they’re individuals. Their personalities, likes, and dislikes are unique to each. The same is true for companies. 

When you’re leading a SaaS (software-as-a-service) tech company, you get a lot of advice. Every founder has a story for how they tackled their market fit alignment, beat their competition, or scaled customer retention. Yet as we share these stories, we know that what works for one of us may not work for all of us.

Today, I’m beyond excited to share that CertifID has become part of the exclusive Inc. 5000 club for the first time! See below how we stack up in key categories. We are the:

• #193 fastest-growing private company in the U.S.
• #23 fastest-growing in the software category
• #24 fastest-growing in Texas
• #7 fastest-growing in the Austin metro area

We accomplished this by staying true to who we are and why we started the company. My co-founder Tom Cronkright turned what could have been a singular brush with real estate wire fraud into a lifelong journey to help others. That core mission provides an invaluable sense of purpose to each of our employees at CertifID. It’s our growth with purpose that has made us so unique. 

As a new member of the community of Inc. 5000 entrepreneurs, I want to help inspire others to follow their own path rather than conventional wisdom. Below are some examples of how we do so at CertifID.

1. Mission is everything.

If you asked anyone from our teams why they are at CertifID, you’ll hear a common theme of “to help people,” or “to protect our customers’ money” or “to do something that matters.” In short - we all feel a sense of purpose when we show up to work every day. 

We’ve kept that at the forefront of how we nurture talent, develop fraud prevention products, provide essential victim services, and stay true to our educational approach to our sales and marketing efforts. We know that we’re not just providing our customers with software - we’re providing them with tools to defend their businesses and protect the peace of mind of their employees and customers. We know how precious this opportunity is, and we treat it with respect and responsibility. 

2. Growth doesn’t have to come at all costs.

Startups, especially ones with venture capital (VC) investment, are often operating under the mantra to “just grow - whatever it takes.” That hasn’t been our mindset at CertifID.

We could hire more sales people to cold call potential customers. We could send gift cards just to take a meeting. We could drop prices to gain or retain customers more rapidly. But we know deep down that investing in security is something that a customer must care about with their mindset and their budgets. Aggressive promotional or pricing tactics wouldn’t serve them or us well in the long run. 

The economic challenges of the past year has shown that to be true unfortunately with many startups. Short-term growth strategies can often result in challenges in the longer-term. We’ve defined a growth strategy that’s right-sized for our market, customers, and team - and that’s enabled us to be able to steer the business more intentionally. 

3. Follow the money, right?

Yes, but not in the way you’d expect. It’s not the VC money we’re following. It’s our customers’ money. Because cybercriminals are chasing it and it’s our job to keep it protected. 

In fact, the market we’re in has historically been underserved. Despite significant sums of money flowing through real estate transactions in the U.S. annually, and lack of consistent regulations or consumer protections -- there has been a surprising lack of new tech investment. That’s why this market has become such a hot target for fraud, and why our company has established such an outsized leadership position. 

Rather than chasing the trends, we got to work on solving the underserved needs of our core customers as robustly as possible. This has proven to be a win-win for them and for us.

By no means do we have all the answers here at CertifID on how to balance the ever-evolving market conditions, consumer and tech trends, and internal culture – but I know that throughout it all we’ll do it our way. Congratulations to the other winners of the 2023 Inc. 5000 awards and I’m looking forward to continuing our trajectory here at CertifID.