Recent growth rate: 219%

Head Office: Halifax, N.S.
CEO: Brandon Kolybaba

What’s the first thing you do in the morning and last thing you do at night?
Work and more work. I’m not very proud of it, but it’s the truth.

How did the company start?
With three St. Francis Xavier University graduates with entrepreneurial spirit and a gift for working too hard.

What has been the biggest growth factor?
Our people, without a doubt. The culture and passion they have for doing what they do so well has propelled us.

What has kept the company from growing even faster?
Access to capital. It’s a new industry with many unqualified providers, which makes for an environment where accessing the capital required to spur and sustain growth is challenging.

What’s your plan for the next five years?
We have a unique opportunity with Google’s new Google Apps solution that we believe will give us the opportunity to grow substantially over the next few years.

On whom do you rely for advice?
Trusted advisors, mentors, associates. Basically, folks who have more experience than we do and who can act as sounding boards.

What’s your next big professional move?
Google, Google, Google. They are changing our business in a significant way right now. We believe they will revolutionize collaboration and communication for SMBs and even the enterprise in a similar way to how they revolutionized the search-engine world 10 years ago.

What’s the most surprising fact on your CV?
I was once a certified PADI diving instructor.

How do you achieve work/life balance?
I don’t. It’s a problem.

How do you encourage your employees to?
I do my best to make sure they get out of the office by 5 p.m. and take off more time than I do.

What do you look for in an employee?
True passion for their work, open-mindedness, and analytical problem-solving abilities.

What’s your ideal day?
Spending time with my family. Having my three-year-old tell me all about how helicopters have important missions to complete.

What’s your next big professional move?
A new joint venture, SheepDogInc.ca.

And your guilty pleasure?
An occasional cigar.

If you weren’t doing this now, what would you like to be doing?
Five years ago, while working for a large company, I asked myself that question. That’s why I’m doing this now.