Techopia

Rewind tops Ottawa firms on Globe and Mail’s fastest-growing companies list

September 25, 2020
3:26 PM
ET

Organizations: D-Squared Construction, Kettleman’s Bagel Co., Lightenco, Rewind.io, Shopify, WorldReach Software

People: Mike Potter

A startup launched five years ago as a backup platform for Shopify merchants is making a name for itself in its own right as the only Ottawa company to crack the top 50 in the Globe and Mail’s second annual ranking of the country’s fastest-growing firms.

Rewind – which makes a backup solution for e-commerce stores – came in at No. 49 on the newspaper’s list of Canada’s 400 top-growing companies in 2020 with three-year revenue growth of 1,113 per cent.

Founded in 2015 to specifically cater to stores on the Shopify platform, Rewind has seen its growth trajectory mirror that of its much larger e-commerce software cousin. The company has boosted its headcount from about 30 employees at the start of the year to 40 today and serves more than 10,000 customers.

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“There’s no doubt that aligning with them has been a key pillar of our growth,” Rewind CEO Mike Potter told OBJ late last year.

Rewind prefers to maintain a low profile, but that hasn’t stopped it from getting noticed. OBJ named the company one of Ottawa’s tech firms to watch in 2020, and it seems to be living up to the hype.

“We don’t scream it from the top of the rooftops, but we’re always just focused on, ‘OK, let’s execute on this business. Let’s keep building a great company in Ottawa,’” Potter said.

Rewind was one of 19 firms from the National Capital Region to make the list, up from 16 local companies in its inaugural edition a year ago. Coming in second among local pace-setters was WorldReach Software, which placed 119th on the list with three-year growth of 404 per cent.

Not surprisingly, tech firms dominated the contingent of locally based companies. But the list also included such diverse Ottawa entries as high-efficiency lighting equipment supplier Lightenco, which came in at No. 185 with three-year growth of 233 per cent, Kettleman’s Bagel Co. (No. 290, 122 per cent) and D-Squared Construction, which is making its second straight appearance (No. 352, 85 per cent).

Shopify – Ottawa’s second-best performer in the 2019 list – did not appear in this year’s rankings, which rely on companies to voluntarily submit applications with supporting financial documents.

Here is the full list of Ottawa-Gatineau firms on the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business ranking of Canada’s top-growing companies: