These are the 2023 Fire Awards honorees in the Ablaze category. Read about all of this year's honorees here.
Annovis Bio
Industry: biotechnology
Headquarters: Berwyn
Alzheimer’s disease is increasing among Americans. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that 6.7 million Americans 65 or older suffer from the condition, or about 11% of that population. That figure is only expected to grow, with the association estimating 12.7 million adults 65 and older will be impacted by 2050. A Berwyn biotechnology company is hoping to find a solution. In April, Annovis Bio raised $8.7 million for its primary drug candidate buntanetap, which it is developing as an experimental treatment for both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Advancing to late-stage phase 3 development, the drug has the potential to be a game changer. The ongoing developments build on the company’s continuing growth. Annovis Bio (NYSE: ANVS), founded in 2008 as QR Pharma by Maria Maccecchini, completed a $13.8 million initial public offering in January 2020 and today has a market cap of around $120 million. It holds 52 patents covering a range of neurodegenerative diseases, including three that were granted last September. Its most recent patent, granted earlier this year, is expected to confer protection for the use of buntanetap and related analogue molecules for the prevention and treatment of a number of neurodegenerative diseases associated with metal dis-homeostasis through 2040.
Boomi
Industry: software as a service
Headquarters: Chesterbrook
Boomi may be more than two decades old, but the software-as-a-service firm is proving it’s still agile and a leader in the local tech industry. Founded in 2000, Boomi is one of the region’s biggest tech successes. Known for its software that allows companies to integrate and connect data, people and applications across a business with little coding using cloud technology, the company was acquired by Francisco Partners and TPG Capital from Dell for $4 billion in 2021. Boomi’s technology is used by about 20,000 customers including Comcast Corp.’s Sky, Dropbox, Moderna and a number of universities. In December, the firm brought on industry alum Steve Lucas as CEO. Prior to Boomi, he was a top executive at software giants like Adobe, Marketo, SAP, and Salesforce. In tapping Lucas, Boomi is targeting major growth — both organically and through acquisitions. Lucas wants Boomi to be in a “consolidator position” and said the company will make acquisitions in the near future. He also wants to grow headcount from its current 1,500 and physical footprint and thinks Boomi can be a $5 billion company in the next five years. Last year, Boomi ranked at No. 2,184 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies for its three-year revenue growth of 271%.
Clinical Ink
Industry: health care software
Headquarters: Horsham
Founded in 2007, Clinical Ink landed at No. 497 on Deloitte’s most recent list of the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in North America. Its revenue from 2018 to 2021 grew 241%. The Horsham clinical trials technology company was acquired in 2020 by San Francisco-based GI Partners. It continues to innovate and earlier this year Clinical Ink announced a new continuous glucose monitoring system within its integrated digital biomarker solution, allowing for the remote collection, storage and analysis of data from a user’s sensor. Its technologies range from powering clinical trial data capture to optimizing data. The company focuses specifically on several therapeutic areas: oncology, infectious disease, immunology and neurology, specifically Parkinson’s disease. According to the company, Clinical Ink has tripled bookings, quadrupled revenue and grown its backlog 500% over the last three years.
NeuroFlow
Industry: health care
Headquarters: Philadelphia
As society continues to put a greater emphasis on mental health, NeuroFlow’s business has taken off. Founded in 2017 by CEO and Army veteran Christopher Molaro and business partner and Chief Operating Officer Adam Pardes, NeuroFlow’s headcount has soared in the past six years to more than 100 employees. The company is helping track patients’ moods, pain levels and sleep through self-assessments. Those assessments are then used to aid health care providers as they look to identify behavioral health conditions. As it continues to stake its claim in the space, NeuroFlow announced this summer that it had acquired Northern Virginia-based Capital Solution Design, which works closely with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. Pardes said that the acquisition gives the company “a massive amount of growth potential.” Its latest move comes on the heels of a $25 million growth round and relocation to a new 16,000-square-foot Center City office at 1601 Market St.
PurpleLab
Industry: health care analytics
Headquarters: Wayne
Despite a tight venture capital market, Wayne-based health care analytics firm PurpleLab raised $40 million last September. The Series B was led by Cleveland private equity firm Primus Capital, and added on to the $3 million Series A the company raised in August 2019. The Series B was also among the largest fundraises in the region last year. The company, founded in 2017 by Mark Brosso, offers a no-code analytics platform known as HealthNexus that is used by life sciences companies and other health care firms. That includes those working in clinical research, commercial pharmaceuticals, commercial medical devices, as well as health economics and outcomes research. The platform works by helping users develop real-world evidence that novel therapeutics or clinical strategies are performing and leading to cost savings. At the time of the Series B, the company said it had experienced triple-digit growth for four consecutive years and the fresh funding would enable it to continue to accelerate.
Trinity Packaging Supply
Industry: packaging
Headquarters: Voorhees, New Jersey
Trinity Packaging Supply has been among the fastest-growing private companies in the country, growing revenue 320% from 2017 to 2019, according to Philadelphia Business Journal data. That figure landed it at No. 33 on the Business Journal’s annual Soaring 76 list in 2020. Its growth trajectory of 84% landed it on Inc.’s 2023 Northeast region list of companies making an outsized impact, where it ranked No. 141. More than a packaging firm, the company’s SupplyStream technology sifts through hundreds of packaging supplier catalogues to present users with a storefront of the best prices for items like boxes, pallets, office supplies and other shipping-related goods. Trinity Packaging is projecting it will surpass $100 million in revenue by the end of 2023, a figure CEO Anthony Magaraci wants to grow tenfold to hit the $1 billion mark in the next five years. Magaraci believes that SupplyStream can be an industry disruptor, and ultimately wants to apply the technology in a number of different verticals outside of packaging supplies. The bootstrapped startup has counted heavyweights Nike, Pepsi, Home Depot, Walmart, Target and Coca-Cola among its clients.
