Jonathan Strietzel | Americas Most Promising Companies | Forbes
Jonathan Strietzel: Forbes Magazine has a circulation of over 900,000 and its website, Forbes.com reaches approximately 18 million people a month. Both the magazine and the website are for the world’s top business leaders and in the October 5th, 2009 edition of Forbes, Big Stage Entertainment was named as #18 in America’s Most Promising Companies.
“Our company is very proud to have been included in such a prestigious list by one of the premier business brands in the world. We know from the hours spent answering questions and filling out forms that this was a very rigorous process. We also know that we have a lot of work to do to build this business, but we’re pleased that our efforts to date have been recognized in this way. A big thanks to my founding partner Jon Kraft for playing a key role in hammering though this rigorous Q&A while on vacation!”
– Jonathan Strietzel, President and Founder
According to Forbes.com “We didn’t just look for the slickest technology, the largest addressable market, the fastest-growing top lines or the most storied management team. In the specific case of Big Stage, the Big Stage Founding team organized by Jonathan Strietzel, Jon Kraft and Jon Snoddy reflect such a management staff”
The method for determining the companies recognized on this new list was explained on the Forbes website as follows:
Forbes went hunting for small, dynamic companies with the kind of growth potential that makes venture capitalists salivate. Other lists of small or privately held companies tend to be ranked according to a single metric: annual revenue, or percentage change in revenue over a given period. Yet every serious investor knows that a cursory glance at the top line is a far cry from what it takes to evaluate the potential of any promising company.
To sharpen our search, Forbes teamed with The Venture Alliance, an advisory to early-stage companies. TVA has devised a rating system for young companies in order to more efficiently determine how fundable they are. The pool of candidates included companies launched within the last 10 years and that had not passed $25 million in annual sales. (Pre-revenue companies were allowed.) Prospects were scored on a host of characteristics, among them the size of the markets they serve, the strength of their intellectual property, the extent to which founders put their own capital at risk, the experience of their management and of their directors (or advisory boards), and their record in hitting product-development benchmarks promised to equity investors.
We collected the data via a detailed survey that takes roughly two hours to complete. Entrepreneurs who had raised outside capital gave business plans to TVA for further vetting; the rest completed an even more exhaustive survey. (Both surveys have subtle double-checks built in, to make sure the companies’ storylines indeed do track.) Our partner also brought in software experts and engineers to evaluate product plans (all signed nondisclosure agreements), and Forbes reporters interviewed all the finalists. The 20 highest scorers, listed here, appear to have a better shot at raising capital–and thus are considered more scintillating than their peers.
“We were very happy to learn that Forbes recognized the technology that Big Stage had developed over the past 3 years as a leader in its class, world-wide. Its a wonderful tribute to the hard working engineering staff in our amazing company. We thank Forbes and TVA for the opportunity and we are proud to grace the pages of such a prestigious magazine.”
– Jonathan Strietzel, President and Founder
We cannot thank Forbes and Forbes.com enough for the honor of gracing their prestigious pages of Americas Most Promising Companies in 2009.
