Aha! Is Recognized as One of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500
November 15, 2018

Aha! Is Recognized as One of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500

by Brian de Haaff

2018 has been tremendous for the Aha! team. We started the company in 2013 and now have nearly 100 teammates. It is awe-inspiring to look back on our extraordinary trajectory. And today, our rapid rise has another milestone — we landed at #50 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 list.

This is an amazing acknowledgment of all that we at Aha! have accomplished together.

For more than 20 years, Deloitte has ranked the 500 fastest-growing companies in North America. The list includes public and private organizations across technology sectors. Deloitte describes the companies selected for the 2018 list as “transforming the way we do business — combining technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and rapid growth.” I believe that this assessment fits Aha! perfectly.

Today, we are fortunate to serve more than 5,000 customers and are recognized as the world’s #1 product roadmap software.

In less than five years, we have achieved a growth rate of 2,871 percent and surpassed an annual revenue run rate of more than $40 million. And in addition to making Deloitte’s list, Aha! was recently named by Inc. as the 13th fastest-growing private software company in the U.S.

Sure, those stats and recognition from industry leaders are a marker of our success. But our goals have always been bigger than a certain number of customers or revenue run rate.

I am happy to say we are continuing to make strong progress towards our vision:

We are building better software From the beginning, my co-founder Dr. Chris Waters and I wanted to help teams build software that customers loved and be happy doing it. Today, more than 200,000 users use our software to set brilliant strategy, capture customer ideas, and create visual roadmaps. Think about it: Aha! is helping product managers do their jobs better, deliver amazing experiences to the people who matter most to them — their customers.

We are rewriting a narrative We are changing how many of the world’s best-known companies innovate. But we are also modeling how to build a very different type of high-growth company — one that puts people and profit first. We self-funded the business, built a 100 percent distributed team, and hired only product management experts to work with our customers. Consider that on this year’s Fast 500 Technology list, 80 percent of the companies were backed by venture capital at some point. Our team proves that you can think differently about building a software company and that venture capital is not always needed.

Aha! is what I call grandpa-inspired — meaning that we are courageously roadmapping our own future by putting values, people, and profit first.

Being named to Deloitte’s list of fast-growing companies is an affirmation that those values are still important today and needed more than ever.

Want to be part of this adventure and change how companies innovate? Join our team.

Brian de Haaff

Brian de Haaff

Brian seeks business and wilderness adventure. He is the co-founder and CEO of Aha! — the world’s #1 product development software — and the author of the bestseller Lovability and The Startup Adventure newsletter. Brian writes and speaks about product and company growth and the journey of pursuing a meaningful life.

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