abhilashcho

I researched over 200,000+ companies with headcount between 50 and 5000 to find the fastest growing companies in the 2024 Q1.

I tracked the QoQ headcount growth of all these companies to identify the fastest growing ones.

Interestingly, 3 of the Top 10 companies are from India. Krutrim, which builds foundational GenAI models and is the latest venture by Ola's founder Bhavish Agarwal, is at the top.

Here are the Top 10 Fastest Growing Companies right now and and their founders:

1. Krutrim - Founded by Bhavish Aggarwal, the company is building a regional language based chatbot, which could be the South Asian subcontinent’s answer to ChatGPT.

2. Zauvijek - Co-founded by Priyanka Pandey and Animesh Pandey, the AI-powered SaaS company offers products for automating back office tasks like accounting, billing, customer support, etc.

3. DataAnnotation - Founded by Edwin C., the company is a gig based marketplace for remote AI contract jobs.

4. Car Dealership Guy - Founded by Yossi J Levi, the internet's viral auto market commentator, the company provides insights into the car market and economy.

5. Figure - Founded by Brett Adcock, the AI robotics company is building the world's first commercial autonomous humanoid robot.

6. NAO - Co-founded by Philipp Nowakowski, Robin Binder and Amel Hasanovic, the co-investment platform gives access to investment opportunities, such as private equity, venture capital, etc to the public.

7. Unified Mentor - Co-founded by Paras Grover and Sanket Patil, the edtech platform provides skill based certification programs in technology, data, and marketing.

8. Alpha Capital Group - Founded by George Kohler, the proprietary trading firm provides a platform for users to learn prop trading.

9. Joinrs Italia - Co-founded by Gabriele Giugliano, Martina Mattone, Nicolo Bardi and Stefano Antonelli, Joinrs (formerly Tutored) is an AI based job board for university students and new graduates.

10. Savvy Games Group - Led by Brian Ward, the games and esports company invests in the gaming sector through its subsidiary companies.

The level of talent that Musk has been able to cultivate at his companies is immense. Many of them, who have risen to executive levels, have left to build their own ventures. These ventures have now collectively raised a staggering $40+ Billion.

Sweden based Northvolt, which is a battery developer and manufacturer, specializing in lithium-ion technology for electric vehicles, sits on top of the cartel with over $13.8B in funding.

Other unicorns from the group include Lucid Motors, Redwood Materials, Aurora and Proterra.

All the founders have been involved in either a founding role or C-suite level positions.

Edit: here is the full post where I dive into impact of these companies https://goldenpineapple.substack.com/p/the-tesla-mafia-40bn-raised-10-countries

I was looking at few of the growing bootstrapped SaaS businesses and saw that some of them are growing about 30% YoY and profitable.

Given that AI is making builders more productive, for building a SaaS, is VC funding even required?

Edit: source of the data https://goldenpineapple.substack.com/p/the-fastest-growing-bootstrapped

Right now, the world is seeing two big wars: one is happening between Russia and Ukraine, and the other is between Israel and militant groups of Hamas and Hezbollah.

In the middle of all this, startups and companies are innovating and building next generation weapons and defense systems.

Of all the Defense and Space manufacturing companies across the world, 117 of them grew in headcount over the last 1 year.

About 60% of the growing companies in Defense and Space industry are based in USA. Followed by India at 10%.

Just did a study on Y Combinator's portfolio to identify the fastest-growing US-based startups as well as categories, based on headcount growth, in 2023.

Universe of companies: All YC portfolio companies that have raised more than $5m in funding and have more than 10 employees. A total of about 350 companies.

Fastest growing industries by median headcount growth:

  - Aviation & Aerospace 6.80%

  - Medical Device 6.21%

  - Biotechnology 5.85%

  - Transportation/Trucking 5.40%

  - Insurance 4.84%

Fastest growing categories by median headcount growth:

  - Recruiting 9%

  - Supply Chain Management 8.12%

  - Productivity Tools 8.05%

  - Aerospace 6.83%

  - Biotechnology 6.80%

AI, Data, and Robots: The top startups in the industries above are leveraging AI, data and robots to improve processes in specific industries.

Top Growth Companies: Deel (global HR and payroll), Epsilon3 (software tools for space and manufacturing), and AssemblyAI (AWS for AI and ML) lead in headcount growth.