Among the 221 Chicago-based companies featured on this year's Inc. 5000 list, Songfinch ranked highest at No. 11.
The Chicago startup with a platform that aims to expand the definition of who can make money in the music industry raised a $17 million Series A funding round in 2022 and has grown nearly 24,000% in the past three years, according to Inc.
The company launched in 2016 and secured a pre-seed raise of about $750,000, but by January 2020 had $30,000 left and no staff. It wasn't until the startup found its product-market fit that things really took off, according to co-founder Scott Kitun.
Songfinch connects its users with songwriters who turn their customers' personal stories or feelings into unique, professional-quality songs, thereby creating a "middle class" for musicians. But at the beginning, "no one wanted a custom song," Kitun told Chicago Inno.
"We wanted to figure out how do people want to use this, how do they use it and what can we do to help them use it in different ways," Kitun said. "I think we changed how 300,000 people interact with music."
Songfinch went from $5.5 million in revenue in 2021 to almost $36 million last year, and is on track to do $75 million in 2023.
"Our expectations are to continue to grow — obviously not 25,000%, but continue to grow," Kitun said.
Today, Songfinch has 70 full-time employees and is looking at improving its platform with personalized chatbots and generative artificial intelligence tools, which he thinks are going to further change the music industry.
"What you see and what I see and hear will likely be different — maybe not tomorrow, but in five years. You're going to listen to songs and it's going to have elements of you in it because AI has made changes like that," Kitun said.
More Chicago companies on the Inc. 5000
The 2023 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2019 to 2022.
Marc Nolan, which opened a new shop in the West Loop in October, finished No. 280 on this list, with three-year revenue growth of 2,007%, thanks in part to the success of the Aiden, a $160 combat boot that debuted in September 2020 that accounted for 14% of the company's sales in 2021.
Median growth from 2019–2022 for the 221 Chicago-metro based companies featured on the list was 207% with $14.1 billion in total revenue last year. That's an increase from last year, when 203 Chicago-based companies were featured. Chicagoland companies added nearly 25,000 jobs to the market, according to Inc.
For life coaching startup Ama La Vida, No. 1,489 on the list, Chicago's tech ecosystem has been a great fit.
"We've tapped into so many different resources, from being part of 1871's accelerator program for female founders to doing work in partnership with General Assembly," co-founder and CEO Nicole Wood told Chicago Inno. "We don't fit the typical kind of startup profile: We're not VC-funded. We're not in the Bay Area. We're here in the neighborhood in Chicago and are real people paving our own way to success."
