The Waterloo community can claim the three fastest-growing tech companies in Canada, according to a new ranking from Deloitte.

ApplyBoard, Intellijoint Surgical and Auvik Networks top the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list, which ranks companies by revenue-growth percentage over their last four years of operation. Each company had a revenue growth of more than 7,900% over that period, with ApplyBoard topping the list at 12,526%.

In total, seven companies with a presence in Waterloo made this list, accounting for 14% of the fastest growing tech businesses in Canada. This includes two additional Waterloo-based companies, Smile.io and Vidyard, as well as two companies with operations in our community, Tulip and Ecopia.AI.

Here are the companies headquartered in Waterloo:

ApplyBoard (Ranked #1; 12,526% growth)

The world’s largest platform for international student recruitment to Canada and the United States, ApplyBoard has grown by leaps and bounds over the last year and now employs more than 200 people. In just a few years they’ve partnered with 1,200+ schools and helped 65,000+ students.

Intellijoint Surgical (Ranked #2; 10,247% growth)

Innovators in the medtech space, Intellijoint Surgical is the creator of intellijoint HIP, a product that makes hip replacement surgeries more accurate. The product is now approved for use in Canada, the United States and the European Union, and has helped with thousands of surgeries around the world. The company’s founder, Armen Bakirtzian, also made headlines recently by founding Canada’s first industry-led hub for medtech startups.

Auvik Networks (Ranked #3; 7,914% growth)

Focused on helping IT managed service providers (MSP) do their jobs, Auvik Networks is a venture-backed company making software that's changing the way IT networks are managed. Auvik Networks offers cloud-based software that reduces the complexity of managing a network to simple, automated steps.

Smile.io (Ranked #28; 552% growth)

The world’s largest reward program provider, Smile.io has 50+ million participating members, hosts more than 25,000 active rewards programs and partners with 100 agencies around the globe. In addition to their Waterloo headquarters, Smile.io has remote teams in Europe, Asia and South America.

Vidyard (Ranked #39; 442% growth)

Committed to helping businesses succeed through the power of video, Vidyard is a video platform with applications in marketing, sales, customer service, employee training and corporate communications. Global leaders like Honeywell, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision and Marketo are already customers, along with thousands of companies worldwide.

What has made Waterloo such a fixture on this list?

For starters, they all share a common thread, with founders who graduated from the world-renowned University of Waterloo. In fact, this is a common thread across tech businesses in Canada – a recent Impact Centre study noted that 18.6% of all founders in Canada are UWaterloo alumni. These companies have also leveraged the community’s excellent tech support ecosystem, with most companies having participated in either Velocity (Vidyard, ApplyBoard) or Accelerator Centre (ApplyBoard, Intellijoint, Smile.io) programs.

Update: We have now learned that 11 companies with operations in Waterloo make an appearance on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 for North America list, including Igloo Software, eSentire, Geotab, Delphix, Axonify, Vidyard, Insticator, Tulip, Auvik Networks, Ecopia.AI and Arctic Wolf.

Do you want to learn more about Waterloo’s dynamic tech ecosystem? Contact our team. We can provide you with useful data, connections in the community and more.

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