Making the Inc. 500: Four Years of Building Intridea

It started with three people and a conviction that web development could be done differently. Four years ago, we set out to build an agile, modern web development company focused on Ruby on Rails. Today, we’re nearly 50 developers, project managers, QA engineers, and innovators. And today, we found out we made the Inc. 500 list.

Inc. lists us at #335 in the top 500 fastest-growing companies in America, and places us at #33 for our industry and location. That means we’re the 33rd fastest-growing privately-held software company in the United States. Four years ago it was just three of us. Now we’re nearly 50 people, and we’re on a list that includes companies like Microsoft and Oracle.

The Rails Revolution

When we started Intridea in 2007, Rails was still relatively new. The framework had been around for a few years, but it hadn’t reached the mainstream yet. Most companies were still building on PHP or Java, and the idea of convention over configuration was still controversial. But we saw something in Rails that felt different: it was elegant, it was fast to develop with, and it had a community that was passionate about building great software.

We bet everything on Rails. We built our entire consultancy around it, we contributed to open source projects, we wrote blog posts and gave talks. We believed that Rails was the future of web development, and we wanted to be part of that future.

The bet paid off. Despite the relative infancy of the language and framework, the demand for Rails development has been extraordinarily high. Even in a declining economy, companies were looking for ways to build better software faster, and Rails was the answer. We found ourselves in the right place at the right time, but more importantly, we had built the expertise and the team to deliver.

Building the Team

Going from three people to nearly 50 isn’t just about hiring. It’s about finding people who share your vision, who care about writing good code, who want to solve interesting problems. We’ve been lucky to attract some of the best Rails developers in the world, people who are passionate about the framework and about building elegant solutions.

Our team isn’t just developers. We’ve built out project managers who understand both the technical and business sides of software development. We’ve added QA engineers who ensure quality without slowing down delivery. We’ve brought in designers who think about user experience from day one. It’s a complete team, and that’s what allows us to take on complex projects and deliver them successfully.

The Rails Community

What makes Rails special isn’t just the framework itself. It’s the community. The Rails ecosystem is made up of hearty and enterprising engineers who are continually creating open source plugins and gems, documentation, and patches. They’re ensuring that we can all have a future working with a language that we love.

If you look at the advancements that have been made in just a few short years, you’d think Rails developers don’t sleep. In fact, I’m not sure they do. The pace of innovation in the Rails community is incredible, and we’ve been proud to contribute to that. We’ve built open source tools like OmniAuth that thousands of developers use every day. We’ve written documentation, answered questions on Stack Overflow, given talks at conferences. The community has given us so much, and we’ve tried to give back.

What Made It Special

What I love about this recognition is that it validates something we’ve believed all along: that you can build a successful company by focusing on doing great work, by treating clients well, and by contributing to the community. We didn’t get here by cutting corners or by taking shortcuts. We got here by writing the best code we could, by delivering elegant solutions to our clients, and by learning everything we could in the process.

The Inc. 500 list includes some of America’s most iconic companies: Microsoft, Oracle, Zappos, Patagonia, E*Trade, Intuit. These are companies that went on to revolutionize their industries. We’re honored to share Inc. 500 status with such an elite group, and it’s humbling to think about what they’ve accomplished.

But making the list doesn’t change anything for us. Every day, we each still sit down and write the best code we can. We still deliver the most elegant solutions to our clients. We still learn everything we can in the process. We still give back to the community that we’re part of.

Making the Inc. 500 during a recession says something important about Rails and about the kind of work we do. Companies were looking for ways to build software faster and more efficiently, and Rails was the answer. The framework’s emphasis on convention over configuration, on rapid development, on developer happiness. All of that resonated with businesses that needed to move quickly.

It also says something about our approach. We’ve always believed that the best way to build a company is to focus on doing great work. We’ve never been about flashy marketing or empty promises. We’ve been about writing good code, solving real problems, and building lasting relationships with clients. That approach has worked, even when the economy was struggling.

What’s Next

Our path to growth, though rewarding and thrilling, has not been effortless. In four years we’ve worked day and night to stay on top of things and to breathe life into our vision. It’s nice to be one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in America, but it doesn’t change anything for us.

So what is next? More satisfied clients. Well-implemented web solutions. Happy engineers. More open source contributions. Our work is fun and rewarding, and that’s what it’s really all about.

We’re grateful to our talented and fiercely dedicated team, to the hundreds of clients we’ve created lasting relationships with, and to the Ruby and Rails communities. Without them, none of this would have been possible.

Four years ago, three people started a company with a conviction that web development could be done differently. Today, we’re on the Inc. 500 list. But more importantly, we’re still doing the work we love, we’re still contributing to the community, and we’re still building something that matters.