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Nothing like a beautiful, still
summery-evening at Sequoia in
Georgetown on Tuesday to take in
the river breezes and salute the 50
fastest growing companies in
Maryland and
Virginia.
Deloitte, now the largest
consulting firm in DC, together with
WilmerHale,
NASDAQ, and
SmartCEO magazine, hosted the
swank event during which over 350 guests nibbled
on Thai chicken satay and
chit-chatted about their respective companies’
quadruple-digit growth.
Deloitte regional Managing
Partner Gary Tabach and colleague
Greg Pellegrino flank
Crosshill Financial Group’s Stephen
Graham. Gary told us that winners are
invited to ring the opening bell
at the NASDAQ exchange on a date
this fall. (That’s a lot better than ringing the
closing bell, don’t you think—what if it’s a bad
session?) Fast 50 winners were selected based on
percentage revenue growth over five
years from 2002 to 2006.
40,000%
growth sounds like the stuff of fantasy,
but it’s reality for SkyBitz.
Bob Blair and John Tagawa of the
Sterling-based, systems security
company ranked #1 in Virginia
growth.
This year’s Maryland
winner, V-Empower, Inc’s Amir
Malik, left, with LanceSoft’s
Ajit Walker, CSI Engineering’s Arjun
Banarjee, and LanceSoft’s Neelu
Modali on the deck overlooking the
Kennedy Center. Amir tells us V
Empower, started in the States in ‘01, has not
only expanded to India but this year broke into
China. He’s been busy traveling for the IT
security company – this year he’s been to
England, Dubai, India, China, Pakistan,
Kazakhstan, and
Kyrgyzstan. More impressive is
that he knew how to spell all the countries' names
for us.
We didn’t even have to tell
this group to get in close and smile like they’re
a happy family – modeling agencies, you owe us a
referral fee. MWR Consulting’s Theresa
Blaner and Sarah St. Clair,
Visicu’s Robert Pepper, Smart CFO Magazine’s Jaime
Nespor-Park, and UBS’ Ritchie
Park. Jaime and Ritchie are still in the
throes of newlywed bliss; they
were married this summer in Ellicott City,
MD.
Center for
Innovative Technology president
Pete Jobse, left, with
Tresys’ Frank Mayer and
Craig Sutherland. Pete spent the
summer in Assateague Island in
search of “loggable waves” – in
case you didn’t know, that’s longboarder
surf-speak for a good ride. Craig has
become a soccer-dad now that he’s
coaching 5-year-olds in the art of control
dribbling and
ball-shielding; he admits it’s
more in the category of “herding cats.”
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