South Florida Tech HubSouth Florida Tech Hub

By Nikki Cabus

394 Florida companies make the 2022 Inc. 5000 list; South Florida strong with 171

Read Time 3 Minutes

The popular Inc. 5000 list of Fastest Growing Private Companies across the United States is out for 2022 — and the state of Florida is looking pretty strong.

From healthcare to education to marketing and construction, Florida’s top companies represented a multitude of industries. Over a 3-year span from 2018 – 2021, Florida companies had a 239% median growth, $18.8 billion in total revenue, and 36, 540 jobs added.

Two Florida companies made the overall Top 10 List: HighKey at #5 and Homethreads at #8. HighKey is a food & beverage company based in Orlando with 41,585% growth and Homethreads is a retail company based in Boca Raton with 25,851% growth.

This year, Inc. 5000 also listed the Top 10 diverse leaders of 2022 and Florida had two honorable mentions: HighKey once again and Zimba & PLUS ULTRA, a consumer products company based out of Boca Raton. Zimba & PLUS ULTRA was also listed in the Top Women Leaders category.

Through a 3-year period of uncertainty and change, these companies have shown a resiliency and level of innovation like no other. Of the 394 Florida-based companies, 61 were newly founded and an impressive 85 were repeat honorees.

Below are the Top 10 Florida-based companies, South Florida-based companies, and how they compare on a national level.

 

TOP 10 Fastest Growing Companies in FLORIDA:

  • #5 – HighKey (Orlando) – Food & Beverage – 41,585% growth
  • #8 – Homethreads (Boca Raton) – Retail – 25,851% growth
  • #35 – Zimba & PLUS ULTRA (Boca Raton) – Consumer Products – 9,349% growth
  • #47 – The Snow Agency (Miami) – Advertising & Marketing – 6,953% growth
  • #48 – OneRail (Orlando) – Software – 6,879% growth
  • #50 – KITRUM (Clearwater) – IT Services – 6,799% growth
  • #58 – AMA Consulting Group (Winter Park) – Government & Services – 6,218% growth
  • #59 – 365 LOGISTICS (Ft. Lauderdale) – Logistics & Transportation – 6,093% growth
  • #67 – Poseidon Management of Florida Get Staffed Up (Miami) – Human Resources – 5,807% growth
  • #68 – Octillion (Boynton Beach) – Media – 5,793% growth

 

Top 10 Fastest Growing Companies in SOUTH FLORIDA (Miami Metro Region):

  • #8 – Homethreads (Boca Raton) – Retail – 25,851% growth
  • #35 – Zimba & PLUS ULTRA (Boca Raton) – Consumer Products – 9,349% growth
  • #47 – The Snow Agency (Miami) – Advertising & Marketing – 6,953% growth
  • #59 – 365 LOGISTICS (Ft. Lauderdale) – Logistics & Transportation – 6,093% growth
  • #67 – Poseidon Management of Florida Get Staffed Up (Miami) – Human Resources – 5,807% growth
  • #68 – Octillion (Boynton Beach) – Media – 5,793% growth
  • #99 – HCM Unlocked (Boca Raton) – Human Resources – 4,385% growth
  • #100 – Performance Golf (Ft. Lauderdale) – Sports -4,323% growth
  • #122 – Stylecraft (Boca Raton) – Manufacturing – 3,733% growth
  • #139 – Air Pros (Hollywood) – Consumer Services – 3,392% growth

 

Interesting Stats:

  • Of the overall 394 Florida-based companies, almost 45% were from South Florida with 171 represented.
  • Of the Top 10 Florida-based companies, 60% were based in South Florida.
  • Of the Top 10 South Florida based companies, 20% were from Miami-Dade county, 30% from Broward county, and 50% from Palm Beach county.

 

Here’s a shoutout to some of our South Florida Tech Hub members who made the 2022 list:

  • #618 – ShipMonk (Ft. Lauderdale) – Logistics & Transportation – 1,025% growth (5 year repeat)
  • #697 – Sloane Staffing (Palm Beach Gardens) – Business Products & Services – 897% growth
  • #886 – Salesmsg (Delray Beach) – Software – 718% growth
  • #998 – PlanHub (West Palm Beach) – Construction – 654% growth (2 year repeat)
  • #1306 – Social Mobile (Hollywood) – Business Products & Services – 498% growth
  • #1740 – CloudHesive (Ft. Lauderdale) – Business Products & Services – 353% growth (4 year repeat)
  • #2016 – Gravity IT Resources (Ft. Lauderdale) – Human Resources – 299% growth (4 year repeat)
  • #2345 – PeakActivity (Boynton Beach) – Business Products & Services – 250% growth (3 year repeat)
  • #2359 – TechStrong Group (Boca Raton) – Media – 248% growth (3 year repeat)
  • #2990 – Dedicated IT (Lake Park) – IT Services – 181% growth (3 year repeat)
  • #3301 – The SilverLogic (Boca Raton) – Software – 180% growth (3 year repeat)
  • #3917 – Digital Resource (West Palm Beach) – Advertising & Marketing – 125% growth (5 year repeat)
  • #4435 – ModMed (Boca Raton) – IT Services – 100% growth (7 year repeat honoree!!)

 

To learn more about the 2022 Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies, visit https://www.inc.com/inc5000/2022

By Riley Kaminer

Member Spotlight | Dedicated IT

Read Time 3 Minutes

Business: Providing trusted IT support and technology solutions, with a focus on the healthcare industry.

Established in its current form: 2016

HQ: Lake Park, FL

Employees: 90

Website: DedicatedIT.com

 

Gartner forecasts that worldwide IT spending will increase upwards of 5% this year, coming in at a projected total of $4.5 trillion. Healthcare providers in particular are expected to increase their spending by approximately the same amount, growing to $136 billion. 

Dedicated IT is far from your typical managed service provider. The Lake Park-based company focuses on serving healthcare providers, both locally and nationally. 

Dedicated IT is very active in South Florida, working with some of our high-profile medical practices such as MD Now Urgent Care, the Cleveland Clinic in Vero, and United Surgical Partners International. The company is also experiencing significant growth, having grown its revenue by 10x since 2016.

Chris Burns, Dedicated IT’s Managing Partner & CXO, broke down some of the trends that have led to the growth of the healthcare IT market.

For one, the pandemic has pushed healthcare providers to embrace digital technologies like telemedicine. Burns described these providers’ decisions to take go digital as akin to ripping off the proverbial band aid. “A lot of people who were not ready to make a move to a digital system or do what was required to make remote work possible were really forced to make those decisions.”

Burns explained how evolving expectations in a post-pandemic world required healthcare providers to rethink their business processes, such as allowing staff to work from home and enabling doctors to see patients remotely.

Another major trend Burns highlighted is cybersecurity. Ransomware alone is expected to cost businesses $20 billion globally, with the average breach costing $4.37 million according to IBM research.

Burns explained to South Florida Tech Hub that cybersecurity insurance, which has historically been one of the most popular ways to mitigate cybersecurity risk, is now a less viable option. “Cybersecurity insurance carriers are no longer writing policies anymore to cover near the amount that they used to. They require all kinds of new criteria and process changes – all of which has become a burden on the practice.”

Dedicated IT takes pride in helping its customers protect themselves and their data while they scale their digital transformation efforts. Their key differentiator? According to CEO Aaron Underhill, it’s their specialization that shines through: “We know them. We’re not just an IT company that can fix their issues. We understand their business and the problems they encounter.”

Underhill gave the example of their healthcare specialty. Because they have upwards of 30 orthopaedic clients, the Dedicated IT team knows exactly the software and hardware necessary to drive their business goals.

Burns added that Dedicated IT’s data-driven approach makes them stand out. “Our customers like to see benchmarking data that shows clients where they stand against their peers. It’s hard to argue against data when we can bring accuracy like that to the table.”

Are you a healthcare provider looking for help managing your IT systems? Learn more about Dedicated IT’s services on their website.

By Nancy Dahlberg

Member Spotlight | Dedicated IT

Read Time 4 Minutes

Business: IT services for companies

HQ: Palm Beach Gardens; second office in Melbourne, Fla.

CEOAdam Steinhoff

COO: Aaron Underhill

Year founded: 2002

Employees: 50

Website: www.dedicatedit.com

 

Just before Thanksgiving, Dedicated IT employees gathered for a holiday luncheon and afterward took a company picture. CEO and founder Adam Steinhoff looks at the photo and gets a little emotional.

“There are a lot of stories in that photo, people getting married, people having kids, getting promoted, buying houses. Our company is making them better tomorrow than today. We are of the size now where we can focus on employee development. It’s neat to see the number of mouths that are fed as a result of this little dream I had almost 20 years ago now.”

There is a lot to celebrate in 2019.

Dedicated IT, a managed service provider or MSP based in Palm Beach Gardens, will close this year with 50 employees, nearly double the number it had in early 2018. GrowFL, a statewide economic development agency that supports the growth of second-stage companies, recently honored Dedicated IT  as one of the 50 Florida Companies to Watch.

“We have been growing revenue about 40 percent, which is a pretty good place to be, We’ve been told recently we are the No. 2 Cisco Meraki dealer in Florida and in the top 1% of the Microsoft partners in the Southeast. We were recently invited to Microsoft headquarters to meet with them,” said Steinhoff, who is an officer on the board of Palm Beach Tech Association.

The company also is acquiring a VOIP telephone company. “The goal is to offer our clients one more piece of the technology puzzle as a one-stop shop… We will be bringing on not only a new technology but a really solid team that thinks like us, and our clients will be very well served because of it.” The acquisition of T5 Telecom, based in Michigan, is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

BREAKING OUT

Dedicated IT would seem to be in a crowded space – providing IT services to companies – but the last couple of years the company focused hard on differentiation. Steinhoff and the team were inspired by the book Blue Ocean Strategy to swim upstream from the pack.

While much of the MSP industry supports companies with 10 to 50 employees, Dedicated IT focuses on companies with 150 to 1,500 employees. These companies have very different needs than smaller companies. They likely have IT departments but need a new set of eyes to assess and resolve complex pain points and implement solutions alongside the departments.

“We are co-managing the IT with them now,” Steinhoff said, adding that the strategy has been a boon for Dedicated IT, especially with healthcare companies. “We are now competing at a national level rather than a regional or local level.”

About three months ago, the company freshened and sharpened its core values. “We use them to make sure the people who want to work for Dedicated IT are going to embody what it is that makes us who we are at the core. It’s the secret sauce of Dedicated IT. It’s the thing that really makes us us.” Steinhoff says. Those values steer all hiring decisions.

The core values are: “We attack challenge with action and innovation. We deliver results and are obsessed with excellence. We value partnership over profit. We encourage people to have fun and let their hair down.”

Even more importantly, DedicatedIT doubled down on its mission statement: “We help people and organizations be better tomorrow than today.”

That mission statement empowers everyone to make the right decision, not a short-term fix but a solution with long-term impact. “It’s a comfortable place to be as a business owner to be able have your entire organization making decisions the same way you would. When you have 10 or 15 employees, you can be involved in everything, but not at 50. By having this really solid foundation, it empowers them to do the right thing and stay on mission.”

FACING CHALLENGES

To be sure, it is challenging to double the company in a short time. It means putting systems and processes in place and adding middle managers that weren’t there before. Scaling the company to this next level took a couple years of laying the groundwork.

As the breakout year comes to a close, Steinhoff, an avid reader, recommends to entrepreneurs three of the books he read in 2019 that helped him with current challenges.

Measure What Matters looks at breaking goals down to milestones and how best to measure those milestones. Necessary Endings talks about why some relationships need to be ended, whether they are partners, clients, employees or whatever, in a way that doesn’t burn bridges.

It’s Your Ship, an older book, is about a commander who had the worst ship in the Navy and ultimately turned it around. He did this by getting everyone on the ship to not only own their particular jobs but to take ownership in the entire ship’s performance by cross-training in various roles and learning to work as a cohesive team. “It helped me to understand how to foster teamwork and to understand how to be a better leader,” Steinhoff said.

By Nancy Dahlberg

Dedicated IT and PeakActivity named Florida Companies to Watch

Read Time 4 Minutes

Dedicated IT and PeakActivity were selected from more than 500 nominations as premier Florida companies expected to see significant growth over the next several years.

Grow FL Executive Director, Tom O’Neal

The tech companies, both based in Palm Beach County, were named to Florida Companies to Watch, a statewide program honoring 50 top companies. Their management teams, competitive market positions and strong community involvement were among factors that put the companies in contention for the award.

“These stand-out companies are all led by entrepreneurs and have demonstrated their capacity and intent to grow,” said Dr. Tom O’Neal, executive director of GrowFL, a statewide economic development organization focused on second-stage companies.  “They also all have critical intellectual property or a niche position that gives them a competitive edge in their markets.”

Dedicated IT Founder & CEO, Adam Steinhoff

Dedicated IT, based in Palm Beach Gardens and founded by Adam Steinhoff, is an IT services company specializing in serving small and mid-sized businesses to enterprises. It focuses on select industries, in order to make its sales and marketing efforts as impactful as possible while bringing deeper knowledge and more efficiency to clients it services. In the past year, the company has aggressively expanded its sales and marketing efforts beyond Florida.

Dedicated IT was founded in 2002, and it would be easy to rest on its laurels. Not Dedicated IT. In the past year, the company launched a sales and internship program in partnership with UCF. It has centralized its service desk, allowing for better training when on boarding new employees, resulting in work efficiencies and “all while improving our customer service,” said Steinhoff. The company has also decided to partner with just a core group of vendors to increase efficiencies and improve service. “Because of this, we have been nationally recognized by Microsoft and Cisco as staple vendors who are going viral with our growth.”

Today, Dedicated IT has 39 employees, with plans to add 19 through acquisitions and another 12 in the next year. During the hiring process, Dedicated IT looks for specific values in candidates – optimism, relentlessness, charisma, passion and a thirst for growth.

Revenues increased by 30% in the past year and the company has clients in 48 states. Dedicated IT’s goal, said Steinhoff, is to be generating $100 million in revenue by 2025.

PeakActivity Founder & CEO, Manish Hirapara

PeakActivity is a technology solutions firm that partners with enterprises to drive digital results, said Scott Townsend, vice president of PeakActivity. Founded in early 2016 and based in Boyton Beach, PeakActivity has 75 employees and its CEO is Manish Hirapara.

Clients include City Furniture, Total Wine and More and Johnson Controls. PeakActivity is taking the furniture retailer off of its legacy e-commerce platform and putting it onto a next generation e-commerce system built by PeakActivity. The team built out Total Wine and More’s technology innovation center in Boynton Beach and now is helping the company develop mobile and cloud solutions for their customers. For Johnson Controls, which was previously all B2B, “we put together an e-commerce strategy for them and we provided a team of e-commerce experts. We have started building all their direct-to-consumer websites globally,” Townsend said.

PeakActivity closed 2017 with 7 employees and $1 million in revenue. In 2018 it surpassed $5 million in revenue with approximately 40 team members. “We are currently on pace to exceed $8 million and grow to over 75 team members in 2019,” Townsend said.

“We developed and are about to deploy a next-generation e-commerce platform solution as well as a mobile app solution. We are building out some pretty cool technologies and we are continuing to on-board great clients,” Townsend said.

Palm Beach Tech President & CEO, Joe Russo

“We were proud to nominate Dedicated IT and PeakActivity, both of which have grown their high quality teams exponentially over the past years here in the Palm Beaches,” said Joe Russo, President and CEO of Palm Beach Tech Association.

The 50 companies named the 2019 Florida Companies to Watch generated nearly $1 billion in revenue and added over 900 jobs between 2015 and 2018. Together, the companies project a 35 percent increase in revenue and 37 percent increase in job growth in 2019 compared to 2018.

 “This list recognizes second-stage Florida companies with passionate leaders who are making a difference in growing and diversifying our economy,” said Jennifer Barrows, GrowFL Chairman of the GrowFL Advisory Board and Business Development Executive with WithumSmith+Brown, PC.  Second-stage companies are defined as those with 6 to 150 full-time employees and between $750,000 and $100 million in annual revenue, she said.

Dedicated IT, PeakActivity and the other companies named to the list will be officially recognized November 14, 2019 at a special ceremony at the Hard Rock Live in Orlando. Florida Companies to Watch is a statewide program managed by economic development organization GrowFL, in association with the Edward Lowe Foundation.  

By Nancy Dahlberg

Membership Spotlight | Dedicated IT

Read Time 3 Minutes

Business: IT services for companies.
HQ: Palm Beach Gardens; second office in Melbourne, Fla.
CEO: Adam Steinhoff
Employees: 28

 

Adam Steinhoff once tried working for someone else. It lasted a year.

“It became very apparent that I am a much better entrepreneur than an employee,” he quipped.

That one-year stint as a senior network engineer was 17 years ago, and since then, Steinhoff has built his own tech company, Dedicated IT, into a strong employer and tech player in Palm Beach County.

Dedicated IT, based in Palm Beach Gardens, is an IT services company specializing in serving mid-sized companies. “Businesses with 100 to 500 employees do business with Dedicated IT because we are the best at turning around poorly performing IT departments and/or other IT services companies who are dropping the ball,” said Steinhoff, founder and CEO, during an interview in the hammock chairs at Palm Beach Tech, where he is vice chair of the board of directors.

Like Dedicated IT, Steinhoff was officially made in Palm Beach County. A geek all his life, Steinhoff started fixing other people’s computers as a teen. “My parents drove me to friends’ houses to fix their computers, and I would have to call them afterward to pick me up.”

Steinhoff attended college, but dropped out quickly because “everything they were teaching was obsolete.” Instead he acquired relevant certifications: Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, NetApp, Nimble and others. That knowledge was supplemented with real-world experience – “many years of hard-learned and often expensive lessons,” he said.

Fast forward to today and Steinhoff hasn’t changed: “A lot of people tinker on cars and stuff – I like to tinker on businesses.”

Today, Dedicated IT has 28 employees and Steinhoff has plans to add 20 this year. Revenues have doubled in the past year, and the company has 167 clients in 40 states and three countries, Israel, France and the UK. In 2016, Dedicated IT merged with Medical IT Solutions in Melbourne, where it now has its second office.

“They are in high-growth mode typically, and they are frustrated and tired of technology problems. The guy they hired early on in the company isn’t cutting it any longer. That’s when we get the call.”

One of Steinhoff’s keys to success is “being cool with not being the smartest person in my company,” he said. “I have built a pretty successful company in Palm Beach County by hooking my buggy up to smart people.”

During the hiring process, Dedicated IT looks for all of these specific values in candidates – optimism, relentlessness, charisma, passion and a thirst for growth, Steinhoff said.

Dedicated IT offers its employees unlimited vacation and no-questions- asked family personal leave, he said. “We work hard but have fun.”

Steinhoff advises aspiring entrepreneurs to subscribe to Audible and ask every person they respect what books they should be reading.

What books inspired Steinhoff? “How to Win Friends and Influence People is the bible of charisma. Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone gave you permission to be obsessive about what you are passionate about. Traction by Gino Wickman is good for companies that are closing in one the million dollar revenue mark and are trying to turn a big little business into a little big business.”

Dedicated IT’s goal for 2018 is to spend more time with its best clients to figure out how its service can be even better, Steinhoff said. Within five years, Steinhoff hopes to have 20 national accounts with offices in 10 states or more and annual revenue of at least $20 million.

By Nikki Cabus

#MadeInPBC | Adam Steinhoff, Founder @ Dedicated IT

Read Time 3 Minutes

 #MadeInPBC Spotlights are a weekly series of the Palm Beach Tech Association, featuring accomplished entrepreneurs in the Palm Beaches.

This week we feature Adam Steinhoff, Founder & CEO of Dedicated IT, a Palm Beach Gardens Information Technology Company providing premium IT network support, hosting and consulting to businesses with 10 to 500 employees.

What is your business?

Dedicated IT is one of the fastest growing, most capable, full service technology companies in Florida. Our goal is to change the perspective that people have about IT companies and the people who work for them. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we do take what we do for our clients very seriously.

Who are your clien ts?

Dedicated IT’s clients are businesses who have had it up to “here” with IT companies. They are looking for a company who will under promise, and over deliver. They are interested in, not only fixing immediate problems, but in thinking outside the box for the strategic advantage that properly designed and implemented technology can bring them.

Dedicated IT’s clients range from law offices with seven staff members to medical facilities with hundreds of employees.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?

10-15 years ago, when Dedicated IT was in its infancy, this story should have been about me; about being an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember and about what inspired me to be one.

However, Dedicated IT is much bigger than me at this point; It’s about our clients who trust us with one of their most important assets: their data and the systems that store it; It’s about our employees who bend over backwards for those clients; It’s about the partners who have chosen to align themselves with Dedicated IT; It’s about the infectious culture here and that fact that people are drawn to it. It’s so NOT about Adam Steinhoff.

What’s your favorite part about what you do?

I am blessed to be the curator of an organization that attracts, employs, respects, challenges, encourages and grows people. I really feel good about enabling people to be their best and then allowing them to tackle hard problems for our clients.

Fun Facts?

Adam Steinhoff, Dedicated IT’s CEO is known to bounce down the hallway on Bounce Boots (there may even be a video of it on the Dedicated IT Facebook page).

Dedicated IT has an office in Palm Beach Gardens, Melbourne and will be in Orlando by year’s end.

Since January 2017, our team has worked over 15,500 service requests for our clients with an average response time of 4 hours 22 minutes, and an average resolution time of 11 hours 17 minutes. Of those, 397 were classified as urgent, and had an average response time of 1 hour, 18 minutes, and were resolved on average 11 hours and 3 minutes later. Oh, and 98% of the time, our clients said we were “awesome”. Only 1% said “not good” when surveyed after we wrapped up a service request.

 Why the Palm Beaches?

I feel like my answer should sound like it was written by “Visit Palm Beach,” but the fact of the matter is that I was born here. I went to school in Palm Beach County, I met my wife in Palm Beach County, We had our kids in Palm Beach County. Even as Dedicated IT expands into other markets throughout Florida, Palm Beach will always be stitched into its DNA.

How has Palm Beach Tech helped you?

Palm Beach Tech has helped me and Dedicated IT in two distinct ways:

  • Palm Beach Tech has helped us connect with the most prominent technology leaders in Palm Beach County.
  • It has provided me a place to serve and make an impact in a field in which I love.
394 Florida companies make the 2022 Inc. 5000 list; South Florida strong with 171
Member Spotlight | Dedicated IT
Member Spotlight | Dedicated IT
Dedicated IT and PeakActivity named Florida Companies to Watch
Membership Spotlight | Dedicated IT
#MadeInPBC | Adam Steinhoff, Founder @ Dedicated IT