For a while, Sparkyard, a Fort Worth-based entrepreneurial networking organization, has been highlighting where the city’s startup scene falls short when compared to other Texas cities in an effort to kickstart a public-private conversation to build the ecosystem up. And its newest report shows how the city stacks up when it comes to landing companies on the Inc. 5000 list.
Looking at data from 2016 through 2019, Sparkyard found that only 49 Fort Worth-based companies found their way onto the Inc. 5000 list out of 714 other companies in the DFW area to also do so – the smallest amount of any major Texas city, and smaller than even Plano or Irving.
“Fort Worth’s lackluster representation on Inc. 5000 list is yet another metric by which our city is falling short,” the report, written by Cameron Cushman, assistant VP of innovation ecosystems at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, says.
Full disclosure: NTX Inno is a media partner of Sparkyard.
In order to land on the list, applying companies must have generated at least $2 million in revenue over a three-year period. The companies, many of which are tech startups, on last year’s Inc. 5000 list had a median growth rate of more than 165 percent.
While having 49 companies make the list put Fort Worth in the top spot among Tarrant County municipalities, with Arlington taking the No. 2 spot with 19 companies making the list. Comparatively, Dallas had 254 companies land on the Inc. 5000 list. Addison had a similar number of companies to Fort Worth make the list, with 43. As the report notes, Fort Worth should have more companies on the list since it’s the 13th largest city in the U.S.
So, why focus on the Inc. 5000 list? Many of the companies that make the list each year tend to be startups and smaller businesses, which are some of the biggest creators of new jobs.
“In a post-pandemic world, this will be an important statistic to monitor as all cities are striving for additional job growth to make up from the job losses coming out of the most recent economic downturn,” the report says. “This list is important because high-growth companies create tons of jobs… plus these companies tend to have similar characteristics such as being innovation-led… they also represent localized wealth creation as dollars invested and wages are returned to the local economy through purchases by employees.”
The report notes that it’s possible that Fort Worth’s lack of representation on the list could potentially be due to companies not wanting to disclose financial information to the publication. However, it notes that unlikely is the driving cause. In other reports, Sparkyard has noted that there is a lack of early-stage VC funding and a lack of investment diversity in the city.
Like with other reports, Sparkyard is hoping to drive public-private partnerships to help spur the local startup and innovation ecosystem, similar to the city of Fort Worth’s work with electric motor system company Linear Labs to award the company a nearly $70 million grant to create a manufacturing and R&D facility in the city. And this report comes with a few suggestions to help get more Fort Worth companies on the Inc. 5000 list and to further foster startups and small businesses in the city. Among them are creating a PR campaign to get more companies to sign up for the list and creating an incentive or award for the fastest-growing company in the city each year.
Had that happened last year, the winning company would have been energy solutions company Circle L Solar, which took the No. 176 spot on the list with more than 2,200 percent growth between 2016 and 2019.
“If we make this a goal, then we can all work together to hit it and improve our number of companies on the list,” the report says. “These companies represent the employers and job creators of the future and it is important to know who these companies are in our city and how we can help them continue their high-growth trajectory.”
