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Inc. today announced its first annual Best-Led Companies list, an exciting 12-point measure of management excellence across the middle market — a select, data-driven list of the very strongest U.S. firms with revenue of $50 million to $2 billion. This novel program is the first Inc. recognition list to honor both public and private companies.
The final list recognizes 250 companies that are agile enough to maneuver but also big enough to have a broad impact. These companies employ 35 million people, about one of four U.S. workers. All 250 have a successful track record with leadership teams that spur solid performance, create value, penetrate markets, engage with customers, and more.
To be considered for the list, each company had to fill out an application answering questions about its performance, executive team, and leadership. Applicants were then analyzed via an algorithm that identified the very best companies according to their leadership teams’ superlative accomplishments in four key areas: performance and value creation; market penetration and customer engagement; talent; and leadership team.
“This inaugural list of companies represents the remarkable midsized companies, both public and private, often founder led, that are at the vanguard of reinventing American business,” says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. magazine. “With their leadership, all business will benefit from an exciting, competitive future full of possibilities.”
“Being recognized by Inc. as one of the best-led companies of 2021 on their inaugural list is certainly an honor,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4. “KnowBe4’s leadership team is a deep bench full of top professionals in their respective areas who truly believe in leading and enabling their teams to do their absolute best work. Our leadership principles that we live by at KnowBe4 are practice radical transparency, manage by objectives and key results and maintain an unparalleled corporate culture.”
After years of hard work and preparation, in April 2021, KnowBe4 became a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ. This was a huge milestone in the history of the organization, which was established in 2010. KnowBe4 is unlike other security awareness training providers because we take a new-school approach to training by making it interactive and engaging on a continuous basis.
KnowBe4 is consistently highly ranked on Google (4.5 out of 5), TrustRadius (9.3 out of 10) G2 (4.7 out of 5), Gartner (4.7 out of 5) and other credible review sites. Also, the organization wins a plethora of awards for its unique company culture, strong and transparent leadership and overwhelmingly positive workplace environment.
To compile the list, Inc. evaluated private and public U.S.-based companies with a 2020 revenue of $50 million to $2 billion or a valuation of $50 million to $10 billion using a proprietary 12-point measure of management excellence generated with input from partners at Pitchbook and Shango Labs.
The November issue of Inc. magazine is available online now at https://www.inc.com/magazine and will be on newsstands beginning November 9, 2021.
About Inc.
The world’s most trusted business-media brand, Inc., offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community they need to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across various channels, including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 allows the founders of the best businesses to engage with an exclusive community of their peers and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit www.inc.com.
About KnowBe4
KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 41,000 organizations around the globe. Founded by IT and data security specialist, Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness about ransomware, CEO fraud, and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to awareness training on security. Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist and KnowBe4's Chief Hacking Officer, helped design the KnowBe4 training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Tens of thousands of organizations rely on KnowBe4 to mobilize their end users as their last line of defense.
