In just nine days, over a thousand of Boston's hottest innovators will come together to celebrate at 50 on Fire. Read on to learn more about the finalists in our new Professional Services category who represent the organizations and individuals helping to build Boston businesses. Check them out below and get your tickets to the Dec. 3 event where we'll announce this year's winners.
Al Browne, Cooley LLP:
Browne is a partner in the Cooley Business department and head's up the Firm's Boston office
Named "Massachusetts Super Lawyer" by Boston Magazine every year since 2008
Led DraftKings through $300M Series D funding in July and the expansion of their partnership with the MLB to make DraftKings the league's "Official Daily Fantasy Game" in 2014
Buildium:
Buildium provides cloud software solutions for property managers and community associations; the company currently has 12,500 active customers, managing more than 750K residential apartment units in 46 countries
A new partnership with TransUnion in April allowed Buildium to further expand solutions to include tenant screening
Revenue has grown 90% YOY
Christine Perkett:
Perkett is the CEO and Founder of SeeDepth, a PR Analytics platform aimed at turning PR from a cost center to a profit center
SeeDepth launched its first product in 2014 and has already doubled its customer base within the year
Named a “Top 100 Must Follow Marketing Mind” by Forbes, the “Best Communications, IR and PR Executive” by the American Business Awards, and a “Top 50 Social Media Influencer on Twitter” by Cisio
Sandy Kreis, Drafted:
Kreis is the Chief Commercial Officer at Drafted, which launched out of stealth mode in May and quickly raised $2.5M in seed funding
As a visiting professor at Tufts University, Kreis is educating the next generation of innovation leaders through her "Innovation Entrepreneurship and Startups" course focused on the skills needed to build a successful innovation cluster
EverQuote:
An online insurance marketplace to help consumers find insurance providers based on their criteria
EverQuote receives more than 3M site visitors a month, which is more than thee total month Google searches for "auto insurance"
Named to the Inc. 5000 two years in a row
Founders Workbench:
Founders Workbench is a fee, online resource from Goodwin Procter to help entrepreneurs with legal and organizational challenges
They were the first movers in the growing "freemium" legal resources market
Gradifi:
Gradifi is addressing the $1.3T student debt market with their platform to make paying off student debt an employee-employer joint effort, similar to a 401k
PricewaterhouseCoopers signed on as the first customer this fall and there are 100 other businesses on the waiting list
Help Scout:
Since graduating Techstars Boston in 2011, Help Scout has kept a relatively low profile while building a profitable business of providing web-based help desks to thousands of customers across 60+ countries
Raised $6M in March
HourlyNerd:
HourlyNerd is an online marketplace connecting businesses with consultants who hold an MBA from a top 40 program
Raised $7.8M in February
Founders were named to Inc.'s 30 Under 30 list this year
Jeremy Grossman, CBRE/Grossman Retail Advisors:
Senior Vice President/Principal at CBRE/Grossman Retail Advisors
Grossman is behind the Mario Batali Babbo restaurant deal at the newly developed Fan Pier, PAUL Bakery, Pret A Manager and many more
KLR Accounting:
One of the largest firms in New England, KLR is a full service accounting and business consulting firm providing assurance, tax, business consulting and wealth management
Merged with Freshman & Ferraro in January to expand offerings to international tax services
This fall the firm combined several local offices into a central, new 12,000 square foot space in the Financial District
Megan Driscoll, PharmaLogics Recruiting:
Driscoll is President and CEO of PharmaLogics Recruiting, an agency specializing in providing a low cost recruiting model and industry expertise for the bio-pharmaceutical industry
PharmaLogics was named to the Inc. 5000 list for the second year in a row and Driscoll is among one of only 146 female CEOs to make the list in both 2014 and 2015
Nancy Cremins & Lynne Z. Riquelme, Gesmer Updegrove:
Cremins is a Partner and Riquelme is the Director of Client Engagement at Gesmer Updegrove
Both are considered thought leaders in Boston on the topic of women's entrepreneurship have been both widely published and made several public speaking engagements
Cremins is one of the co-founders of SheStarts, an organization to support female entrepreneurs, with which Riquelme is also involved
Needham & Co.:
Needham & Co. is a nationally recognized investment banking and asset management firm
The firm advised EMC on the Dell takeover this fall for $67B, representing the biggest tech buy on record
Steve Snyder, Gesmer Updegrove:
Snyder is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Gesmer and is affectionately known as "Uncle Steve" in the Tech community for his mentoring, teaching and coaching efforts; these efforts have also helped to establish Gesmer as a law firm of choice for young companies
Co-host of a twice-monthly networking event series connecting tech entrepreneurs with service providers to enrich the tech ecosystem
Treeline, Inc.:
Treeline is a recruiting agency focussed on helping companies build top sales teams
2015 was a year of growth: both company size and web traffic nearly doubled
Named a finalist in the Innovation of the Year-Business Services category in The 2015 American Business Awards
Workable:
Workable operates a cloud-based recruiting platform to help small to medium sized companies manage the recruiting process
Raised $27M in September
Announced a new partnership with Portfolium as of July to facilitate on-campus recruiting