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PUBLISHED JULY, 2024
1. eHawk Solutions, 1st Year
Growth: 2,327.18%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 775.73%
Gross Revenue 2023: $5,062,656
Gross Revenue 2020: $208,582
Full-time employees: 48
OK, we get it: The smartphone changed almost everything. But criminal justice? Believe it: Bart Cooper and the team at eHawk Solutions have demonstrated that with the right pre-smart phone experience and the visionary application of tech tools, powerful transformation can be applied to any corner of society. And that’s precisely what the company has done on its journey to becoming the region’s fastest growing company: No. 1 on the 2024 Corporate Report 100. “Our founding team had decades of experience in criminal justice,” Cooper says. “I’d personally sat through well over 150,000 court hearings and saw a system plagued by inefficiencies and outdated technology. The ubiquity of the smartphone gave us the opportunity to develop a new, more modern approach to sharing information between parties in the criminal justice system.” The situation in Ferguson, Mo., back in 2014, Cooper says, “was that lightbulb moment. Literally everyone on the scene was utilizing their smartphone to share information with the world. It just made complete sense that the same device could be utilized to share information throughout the criminal-justice system.” But how? “We weren’t tech founders trying to build a solution for an industry,” says Cooper. “We were industry guys with no real technical chops. Our first product didn’t work. Our second attempt was a bit better but still had serious limitations. However, we realized that the market would embrace our type of solution if it were built in a scalable way.” They hired new developers and started over, leading RePath, which launched in 2019 and has yielded a more than 50 percent increase in compliance with conditions of release, the company declares. That has produced a 90 percent cost reduction compared to traditional solutions, and a dazzling 99 percent cost savings relative to incarceration, all while making caseworkers four times more efficient. “Our experience early on was that development always took longer and cost more than expected,” Cooper says. “It wasn’t easy. We primarily sell to government agencies that generally have long procurement cycles and are slow to change. We launched our current product, RePath, in St. Louis County where Ferguson is located. While they were interested in what we had to offer, the county still required us to go through an RFP process to give the product away. After six months, the county said that RePath had transformed how they manage their pretrial population. They started paying for RePath and encouraged the Missouri legislature to pursue a statewide program.” The company also landed a provincial contract in Canada, creating critical mass to market elsewhere. Since then, “we’ve grown steadily since 2021,” Cooper says. “When we were a lesser-known commodity, we had to rely more or recruiters to hire for key positions. More recently, we’ve had consistent success finding local talent through LinkedIn and referrals. People seem drawn to the mission of truly improving our criminal justice system. And there is a lot of talent in the metro area.”
2. Kilo Charlie Aviation, 1st Year
Growth: 1,453.75%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 484.58%
Gross Revenue 2023: $8,375,357.38
Gross Revenue 2020: $539,040.45
Full-time employees: 51
The year 2020 was eminently forgettable for most companies, but while the world cowered—and air traffic plunged globally, a veteran commercial and corporate pilot named Robert Renfro teamed with Andrew Konicek to create what they envisioned as the finest flight school on Earth. Vision alone wouldn’t do it: They needed to amass the best certified flight instructors, the best-qualified aircraft mechanics, and an experienced support crew. Mission accomplished. Now providing instruction in all levels of flight training, Kilo Charlie Aviation is attracting would-be pilots from around the world, looking to attain a private pilot license, obtain their instrument rating, become certified flight instructors, and learn about flight at all levels. The difference, they say, is an ethos: Instill flight knowledge in students at every level, and help them experience the thrill of flight and the potential they have to make this a career. “Regardless of your professional background and the rest of your life commitments—family, friends, profession— the ability to fly can only make it better,” the founders say.
3. Third Avenue Events, 1st Year
Growth: 1,323.36%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 441.12%
Gross Revenue 2023: $6,107,604.00
Gross Revenue 2020: $429,099.00
Full-time employees: 2
The world of event planning is fertile ground for David-and-Goliath confrontations. In founding Third Avenue Events, Kristin Hems and Annie Rector armed their sling with “tenacity and an unrelenting belief that we would succeed,” Hems says. That, and more than 20 years of combined experience they brought, would help them compete with Fortune 500 players. They embraced three main principles/pillars: transparency in planning, becoming an extension of your team and superior customer service. “While those may not seem like ground-breaking principles, taking a look at your business and being able to say to the client ‘I’ve been in your shoes, sat in your seat’ allows us to explain the ways we can help them, identify with their pain points, and show them the immediate value, cost savings, and excellent customer service we can bring.” Success in their field means “stopping, listening, and really hearing a person or client and finding a way to go the extra mile,” Hems says. “It could be as simple as remembering someone’s coffee order or as big as replacing their broken luggage so they can go home.
4. Lula Smarter Property Maintenance, 1st Year
Growth: 1,105.82%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 368.61%
Gross Revenue 2023: $14,835,790.00
Gross Revenue 2020: $1,230,345.00
Full-time employees: 45
Steller business success doesn’t always require an original vision; if you see a model working somewhere else and can apply your own expertise in a new setting, you have a chance for something special. That’s just what Bo Lais has produced with his team at Lula Smarter Property Maintenance, founded in 2016 as a services app for homeowners, providing on-demand access to vetted contractors. It was, Lais says, “similar to an Uber-for-home-services model.” They identified a significant service gap in the rental-housing industry, and set out to give property managers and real-estate investors a more efficient maintenance solution. “We pivoted to focus on rental properties, leveraging our contractor network to create a tech-enabled maintenance platform.” Lais says. “Our key innovations included a platform for property managers and investors to quickly access a network of contractors, real-time tracking and streamlining of maintenance tasks, and a tech-driven approach to improve tenant experiences and eliminate inefficiencies. This shift al-lowed us to transform property maintenance, leading to significant growth.
5. Propio Language Services, 12th Year
Growth: 751.21%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 250.40%
Gross Revenue 2023: $125,039,523.00
Gross Revenue 2020: $14,689,555.00
Full-time employees: 16
After last year’s No. 7 finish, the translation-service team at Propio Language Services jumps two spots in this year’s CR100. Marco Assis started as CFO in 2017, allowing him to bone up on what he saw as “the large gap between what clients were getting vs. what I believed the clients should be receiving” before assuming ownership and CEO duties in 2019. That time “gave me the confidence to immerse myself in this journey to transform the company and ultimately our industry and health care.” One key was aligning the company around a vision: Eliminating every-day obstacles of communication to leverage advanced technology as a compass every day, he says. Early challenges included short staffing, which led to a lack of departmental structure, and low brand visibility. But, he says, with a high-performing team, “we all put our heads together and implemented the necessary rigor and discipline we needed over time to achieve the results we wanted. At times we had to focus on the fundamentals of our business, but, very quickly, we were able to switch to the accelerated growth of our company.
6. TFL, 5th Year
Growth: 694.65%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 231.55%
Gross Revenue 2023: $201,056,316.00
Gross Revenue 2020: $25,301,274.00
Full-time employees: 138
Upon its founding in 2004 as Tickets for Less, what is now TFL represents the evolution of a digital platform. It started as secondary ticket-resale platform, but as the online competition in that space exploded, it morphed from selling Chiefs, Royals and regional college sports tickets into a specialist in technology solutions and ticketing-partnerships. Today, its one of the fastest-growing event-distribution companies in North America, and it attributes it success to delivering an easy-ticket-buying experience to sports fans, concert and theater-goers and others. It also helps, in the context of CR100, that the baseline year of 2020 saw a crushing decrease in live-venue attendance around the nation. The company’s technology solutions address client needs to manage ticket inventory, help rights-holders maximize revenue and connects fans to live events with no hidden service fees at checkout. Based in Overland Park, with locations in Omaha, St. Louis and Tuscaloosa, Ala., the company is led by CEO Dan Rouen.
7. Conexon, 5th Year
Growth: 671.94%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 223.98%
Gross Revenue 2023: $239,040,447.00
Gross Revenue 2020: $30,966,249.00
Full-time employees: 828
Ladies and gentlemen, herewith we present a new chapter in Corporate Report 100 history: Conexon. It’s the first company in the 39-year history of this storied competition to log five consecutive Top 10 finishes. Randy Klindt’s team does it again, and this time, in an even more impressive fasion. Not only has this cycle produced overall growth of nearly 672 percent since 2020, that four-year percentage has nearly doubled from last year alone. Impressive stuff for a company that works with rural electric cooperatives to bring fiber connections to homes in small, far-flung communities, providing end-to-end broadband deployment and operations support. Building on that success, its Conexon Connect operating unit has been the primary driver of growth for the company since launching in late 2021 and currently can provide fiber broadband service to more than 100,000 locations in rural communities in six states, and it continues to expand rapidly
8. Advanced Medical Resources, 1st Year
Growth: 494.46%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 164.82%
Gross Revenue 2023: $4,327,448.00
Gross Revenue 2020: $727,960.00
Full-time employees: 3
It’s no stretch to say that people around the world breathe easier thanks to Advanced Medical Resources. This Leawood-based company, led by Craig Meyer, provides sleep apnea patients with the CPAP technology and accessory programming needed to manage their respiratory challenges. And the potential for growth in that space is staggering: the American Medical Association estimates that nearly 10 percent of the nation’s population is afflicted with that malady— 30 million overall—but only 6 million cases have been diagnosed. In addition to warrantied CPAP machines complete with heated humidifiers, the company’s Resvent systems include power supply, filters, hoses, and other amenities, but the treatment regimen doesn’t stop with the hardware. One challenge with getting people to adhere to the recommended usage protocols is AMR’s ResAssist, a compliance platform that helps manage each patient’s sleep data collected by the CPAP machine itself, with patients and their physicians able to directly access those metrics.
9. Cohort Digital, 1st Year
Growth: 437.97%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 145.99%
Gross Revenue 2023: $1,493,916.00
Gross Revenue 2020: $277,695.00
Full-time employees: 6
Seizing the opportunity when her employer closed in 2020, Alissa Menke drew on a decade of experience with that Topeka advertising agency to tap some of its recently-available talent and a ready list of corporate clients for cohort.digital, her vision for a marketing firm that would focus on digital ad strategy, placement, optimization and reporting. “We were very fortunate that all of the clients we were working with at jhP wanted to continue their campaigns with us at cohort,” she says. Leveraging the power of a growing Zoom-meeting world, “helped our clients transition to the idea of us not having a formal brick-and-mortar space,” Menke says. “I would say our biggest challenge was figuring out how to go after new business when all of the traditional networking and speaking events were put on hold. Ultimately, we leaned into thought leadership and a direct mail campaign that helped generate leads, but we’ve been fortunate to also have a steady stream of referrals and opportunities with folks that know us from previous work.”
10. Generator Studio, 5th Year
Growth: 418.65%
Average Annual Growth Rate: 139.55%
Gross Revenue 2023: $9,250,042.00
Gross Revenue 2020: $1,783,497.00
Full-time employees: 28
This Kansas City architecture and interior design firm, founded by Tom Proebstle and Mike Kress, specializes in sports venues, lifestyle, workplace, non-profit and residential projects. You can see the work by their team of nearly 30 designers first-hand at Starlight Theatre or CPKS Stadium, home of the Kansas City Current, and the St. Louis Blues practice rink in Maryland Heights, Mo., or the Ice Pavilion at the Kansas City Ice Center in Shawnee. The firm’s design touches are also found in retail and multi-purpose projects around the country, including Grand Place in the former Kansas City Star building Downtown, the renovations of Corinth Square and Red Bridge shopping centers in Prairie Village and south Kansas City, high-end homes and apartment units across the region, and office headquarters for companies like Dickinson Financial Corp. and Houlihan’s Restaurant Group. Growth, says brand storyteller Bailey Conklin, is the natural result of “creating a collaborative, fun, and rewarding place to work—we’ve created a professional services company that delivers extraordinary care and service to our clients.”
