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Q: What is the fastest-growing company in history? ( No Answer,   5 Comments )
Question  
Subject: What is the fastest-growing company in history?
Category: Reference, Education and News > General Reference
Asked by: jpbischke-ga
List Price: $5.00
Posted: 22 Apr 2005 23:02 PDT
Expires: 22 May 2005 23:02 PDT
Question ID: 512990
I'm looking for an answer to a question that seems simple but of
course is probably subject to debate.  What I want to know is what is
the fastest-growing company in history.  Ideally, I want to find a
company that has grown from scratch to millions of dollars of revenue
in their first year of operations.  Or possibly one that did a small
amount of revenue in their first year and then grew tremendously in
year two.  The technical answer to my question would be the company
that booked the most revenue between the date they first booked
revenue and 365 days from that date.

And ideally I want a company that was a pure start-up rather than a
spin-off from an existing company.

I realize this one might be a bit tricky so I'll be lenient on the
answer.  Anything that falls into these general guidelines will
suffice.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
Answer  
There is no answer at this time.

Comments  
Subject: Re: What is the fastest-growing company in history?
From: dprk007-ga on 23 Apr 2005 03:49 PDT
 
Dear jpbischke
You may want to take a look at COMPAQ. I understand it was the fastest company 
to reach $1 billion sales (which it did in two years)
Of course it now no longer exists as a separate entity.
Regards
DPRK007
Subject: Re: What is the fastest-growing company in history?
From: jpbischke-ga on 23 Apr 2005 08:37 PDT
 
Cool.  I found a couple of places which confirmed that Compaq had the
highest recorded first year sales ($111 Million) in history.  Here's
one of the articles:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1218/is_n5_v124/ai_n12438651

If you want to post this an answer I'll accept it.
Subject: Re: What is the fastest-growing company in history?
From: answerfinder-ga on 23 Apr 2005 09:44 PDT
 
jpbischke-ga,
Just to let you know, dprk007-ga is not a researcher. You can tell
researchers as their names appear in blue and are underlined.
dprk007-ga is one of our regular visitors and has supplied the
information for you free. I'm sure he will appreciate the thanks you
have just given.
answerfinder-ga
Subject: Re: What is the fastest-growing company in history?
From: pinkfreud-ga on 23 Apr 2005 10:49 PDT
 
The online auction site eBay is often mentioned as the fastest-growing
company in history:

"In terms of revenue growth, eBay is the fastest-growing company of all time."

http://www.answers.com/topic/ebay

"EBay, the famous online auction house, is the fastest growing company
in history, beating the growth records of any other company during the
first eight years of its existence."

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3755/is_200410/ai_n9463981

"EBay, which is little more than nine years old, was recently dubbed
'the fastest-growing company in history' by Fortune magazine."

http://freecycle.org/archives/000345.php
Subject: Re: What is the fastest-growing company in history?
From: dprk007-ga on 24 Apr 2005 16:57 PDT
 
Dear jpbischke
It looks like my dear friend Pink has somewhat muddied the waters by
suggesting that E-Bay is the fastest growing company.
However by sticking to your own definition of the fastest growing company
(i.e. company with the greatest revenue in its first year of business)
, I still think COMPAQ is a better candidate.

Although E-bay and COMPAQ are/were both high tech companies,  the
history and timing of their business were very different. COMPAQ was
the first major cloner of the IBM pc's. In the first few years of
business , it was the only major rival to IBM itself in manufacturing
and selling cloned IBM pc's. As these were competitively priced
compared to IBM equivalents, COMPAQ had a captive market and thus
experienced explosive growth in the early years of its operation.
However new players entered the PC clone market and COMPAQ rapidly
lost its market share to a whole variety of competitors including
Hewlett Packard and Dell.
E-Bay however started off with modest revenues (although unlike many
of its .dot com rivals , it managed to turn a profit for each year it
was in business)

I believe if you compare the early year revenues of both companies
(lets say the first 3 years of both companies) , COMPAQ will exceed
E-BAY. Also as COMPAQ was around 10 years before E-BAY , you would
need to adjust COMPAQ's revenues for inflation.
 
Ultimately however, E-Bay proved to be the more successful company.
Due to the nature of its business , when it reached a critical mass,
many people would have only used E-bay as it provides a much greater
range of Buyers and Sellers compared to its competitors.

DPRK007

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