Turning down jobs helped Venus Quates’ business grow.
In 2016, she started LaunchTech, an IT modernization and support, missions and operations support, education and training and technology resale company. But it was in 2018 that her Buffalo-based company really took off.
LaunchTech’s revenue has grown 5,682% over the last three years, making it the 66th fastest growing private company in the U.S., according to Inc.’s annual rankings.
Quates attributes much of that growth to narrowing the focus starting in 2018 to customers with at least 10,000 employees in four key industries: financial services, health care, space sector and public sector. That meant she turned down jobs with smaller companies.
“It was in the ‘no’ that we grew," she said. "The floodgates opened as soon as I made up in my mind that we were going after the big fish.”
For Quates, growing her business also meant not limiting her sights on Buffalo area clients and talent.
A main target market has always been the federal government, leading her to open a Washington D.C. office and, earlier this year, one in Huntsville, Alabama.
Even prior to the pandemic, her team of 20 was working remotely.
“You don’t have to be in the same place to run a successful company,” she said. “I think people are more open to that now. I had to hire who knew how to get things done, but I needed to hire the right people.”
She also downsized LaunchTech’s Buffalo office during the pandemic from a Tri-Main Center location to John James Audubon Parkway in Amherst, which opened earlier this year. Though financially she didn’t have to opt for smaller space, there were a lot of unknowns surrounding the pandemic and she wanted to focus on building her company elsewhere, which led her to Huntsville a few months ago.
LaunchTech has more growth in the works and though the Buffalo market isn’t her main focus, the business is taking on more jobs in Western New York and will lead to its local team growing from four to 14 by the fall, she said.
As a woman, minority and service-disabled veteran president and CEO, Quates has had people second-guess what she does and that she’s the owner of her company. So she's especially proud of being the highest-ranking Buffalo company on Inc.’s fastest growing companies.
“Nobody can take this away from us,” she said. “We earned this. A lot of sweat and tears through it all, a lot of naysayers.”
Quates in turn tries to regularly give back to encourage women of color in the STEM field. For example, she’s sponsoring 10 girls of color – four from Western New York – to go to camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.
“I want to be the person I needed when I was the only one and I started my business and people didn’t think I was capable,” she said. “Don’t ever underestimate people that you have no idea what they’re capable of."
