Auckland-based Voyager Internet has been named the fastest-growing Kiwi company in this year's Deloitte Fast 50 index.
The business-focused internet and phone provider has grown at almost 1400 percent over the last three years, and unlike many booming tech start-ups, is actually turning a profit.
Three-year-old Voyager is run by 38-year-old Seeby Woodhouse, who founded internet provider Orcon as a teenager before selling it for almost $25 million. He says Voyager's revenue has gone from $500,000 to $12 million in a short space of time.
"I put in a little bit of money when the company first started to get the ball rolling, but I haven't put in any money for over two years," he said on Firstline this morning.
"It's self-sustaining, profitable and we're going for it."
The company's point of difference is that they offer a wider range of services than most telecommunications providers.
"Oftentimes internet companies do fixed line, mobile, broadband, that kind of thing, or they do domain names, email-hosting, clouds – so there's sort of a divide between the two groups. Voyager does everything," says Mr Woodhouse.
"In terms of our broadband revenue, 80 percent of our revenue's actually wholesale – we sell to about a third of the other ISPs in New Zealand in some form or another."
Fast 50 leader Bill Hale says this year's list is dominated by companies using technology to "disrupt" the old way of doing business.
"We've got businesses like I Love Ugly, a really exciting, young fashion retail brand that really uses online technology to deliver things," he says. "We've also got Vend in at number four, a cloud-based software provider. We've got a financial services business in there, Pie Funds Management, that uses technology well, and also 2 Cheap Cars, an online car sales business."
The list is based purely on revenue growth, and doesn't take into account whether a company is actually profitable.
"Growth is wonderful, but it also has to be sustainable," says Mr Hale, "otherwise you end up with a lot of capital being injected into these businesses, and unless they're growing a brand that maybe a larger, bigger fish wants to come and gobble up, then ultimately you're going to run out of money."
With 1391 percent revenue growth since last year, Mr Woodhouse doesn't expect Voyager to top the Fast 50 again.
"Maintaining huge growth gets harder and harder as you get bigger, but I'm going to try."
Deloitte Fast 50 top 10:
1. Voyager Internet 1391.43 percent
2. 2 Cheap Cars 1293.87 percent
3. Pie Funds Management 1269.04 percent
4. Vend 1097.74 percent
5. I Love Ugly 1086.68 percent
6. Touchcast 804.98 percent
7. Partners Life 761.89 percent
8. Mad Group 722.97 percent
9. Sush Mobile 666.92 percent
10. LeapThought NZ 480.12 percent
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source: newshub archive
