This year’s GrowFL Awards was held at the beautiful Hard Rock LIVE Universal CityWalk in Orlando, Florida. For it’s 11th annual “Florida Companies To Watch,” GrowFL honored 50 Florida companies for their outstanding leadership, culture and overall growth.
The annual awards event honors impressive second-stage companies from throughout the state for developing valuable products and services, creating quality jobs, enriching communities, and broadening new industries throughout Florida.
Second-stage companies are often the forgotten ones as they are no longer mentioned in new startup company news and aren’t yet one of the big dogs at the enterprise level. Although, these companies are the ‘backbone of Florida’s economy’ bringing the largest amount of new revenue flow, creating new job creation, and ability to diversify our economy. Second-stage companies account for approximately 10% of the companies within the state, but generate more than 30% of the jobs.
Honoree, Social Mobile
When the annual GrowFL Awards companies are chosen “they receive statewide recognition which can further their growth potential, because they are more likely to be noticed by other companies in the state (as well as those outside the state and in other countries), as they compete for investor capital,” reads a recent TaxWatch report.
To qualify for the award, companies must be headquartered in Florida and have between 6 and 150 and revenue between $750,000 and $100 million in 2020. Companies were judged on a number of criteria including growth in number of employees; impact of the business in the job market; increase in sales and/or unit volume; current and past financial reports; innovativeness of the product or service; response to adversity; and contributions to aid community-oriented projects.
Honoree, I.T. Solutions of South Florida
“This group of Honorees represents 20 counties, 20 different industries and almost 50% of them are women, veteran or minority-owned. They have demonstrated notable growth and have the courage and tenacity it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
Despite the challenges thrown their way and pivoting through a pandemic, these companies embody the unshakeable resiliency of Florida’s entrepreneurs,” said Lisa McIntosh, GrowFL Florida Companies to Watch Chair and founder of C-E-Optimal Advisors.
If projections hold, these companies will have generated $1.7 billion in revenue and added more than 1,500 employees over the last five years — a 263% increase in revenue and a 206% increase in jobs since 2017.
past and present GrowFL Award honorees and South Florida Tech Hub member companies
Below is the list of the 13 South Florida companies honored at this year’s 11th Annual GrowFL Florida Companies to Watch Awards:
Biller Genie (Miami) | Biorep Technologies (Miami) | Body Armor Direct (Broward) | Decimal Engineering (Broward) | GRUBBRR (Palm Beach) | Honorlock (Palm Beach) | I.T. Solutions of South Florida (Palm Beach) | John Bell Construction (Miami) | Red Banyan (Broward) | Social Mobile (Miami) | Top Score Writing (Palm Beach) | Trembly Law Firm (Miami) | Wrecking Ball (Broward)
Congrats to all of this year’s GrowFL “Companies To Watch!”