Close watchers of the GeekWire 200 will notice some big changes this month, with several Pacific Northwest companies surging higher on the index.
Bellevue-based K2, an enterprise software maker that earlier this year raised more than $100 million in financing, jumped 18 spots to land in the 8th spot on the GeekWire 200.
And Edifecs, a fast-growing company that develops software for the healthcare industry, leapt a whopping 34 places to #9. Interestingly, Edifecs is the only bootstrapped company in the top 10, so special kudos to Sunny Singh, who started the Bellevue company in his garage.
DocuSign remains the top company on the list, followed by Redfin, Avalara, Apptio and Portland-based Act-On Software. Other big movers this month include Chef (#16); Winshuttle (#17) and ExtraHop Networks (#29).
What caused the big jumps? A change in how we collect company data from LinkedIn.
Quick background: The GeekWire 200 relies on LinkedIn data for employee counts, a key piece of data that we use to formulate the list. We previously used a LinkedIn API that provided an approximate range of employees at each company, such as 51-200, or 201-500, and so on. But the challenge with ranges so big was that a company with 215 employees would get the same employee score in our algorithm as one with 430 employees.
Recently, LinkedIn stopped making that API available to third parties. So we decided to collect the LinkedIn data manually* for both the GeekWire 200 and the larger Startup List. And with that change, we chose to collect the more precise number of people who currently associate their LinkedIn profiles with a particular company. The count is still approximate, but we think the new approach will make the GeekWire 200 more accurate and representative of the top privately-held companies in the region.
GEEKWIRE 200: Click here to see the full index for July
We’ll also continue to track social media followings and inbound Web links to help determine the ranking. But employee counts remain the most heavily-weighted component of the list, because our goal is to track the companies that are growing from small garage-style startups into 600-person tech titans.
The GeekWire 200 —presented by our partners at EY — is derived from our broader list of more than 900 Pacific Northwest tech startups.
Even with the new improvements, the new list is not a perfect ranking by any means. But we think it helps provide a better understanding of the startup landscape.
To make sure your startup is eligible for inclusion in the GeekWire 200, first make sure it’s included in the broader Startup List. If so, there’s no need to submit it separately for the GeekWire 200. If your Pacific Northwest startup isn’t among the companies on that larger list, you can submit it for inclusion here, and our algorithm will crunch the numbers to see if your company makes next month’s GeekWire 200. (Please, no service providers, marketing agencies, etc.)
Thanks to everyone for checking out this month’s ranking. And, just a reminder, if you value resources like these, be sure to check out our list and map of tech companies with Seattle engineering outposts as well as our list of startup incubators, co-working spaces and accelerators in the region.
* A big thanks to our great summer interns Michael Sherman and Eli Etzioni for leading the data collection project.
