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(Photo courtesy of Formstack)
Revenue growth FY 2017 to 2019: 151%
2019 revenue: $33.0 million
Better focus: Formstack CEO Chris Byers said his company “probably stepped into our stride a little bit more” in the last year as it helped other companies reimagine their world of work. “Each one of us have all kinds of things that prevent us every day from actually getting the real work done that we’re supposed to be getting done—some manual process or busywork we have to do for someone. The more we can help people use our products to reimagine how they go about their day-to-day … the more they can save time and money and keep focused on what they need to be focused on.”
Buying up: Formstack helps customers build online forms and automate workflow. In the past 24 months, the company has made five acquisitions, Byers said. The most recent was an e-signature business, which allows the firm to quicken the pace of providing price quotes and business proposals. “That’s been an exceptional addition to our platform from a customer’s perspective,” Byers said.
New clients: Among Formstack’s newest users is DoorDash, the meal-delivery service, which is using a Formstack form to sign up new restaurants, and the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, which added a form to process small-business loans during the pandemic.
Into the future: Formstack, which describes itself as a “remote-first workplace,” has been allowing employees to work at home—wherever home might be—since 2012. Byers said lately he has been coaching businesses on how to adapt to the work-at-home world. “There are some basics about remote work that all of us can convert to pretty rapidly. It’s collaboration that becomes more difficult, and you need good digital systems to communicate and find ways to source ideas.”
Recommended reading: Byers suggests the book “Range” by David Epstein, the subtitle of which is, “Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.” The book talks about the need to be agile. “We don’t know what’s ahead, we can’t predict the economy, we can’t predict what’s going to happen,” Byers said. “Allowing people to run a lot more experiments and also put plans together that are month-long instead of year-long are some important characteristics we need to help our workforce.”•
Check out more of IBJ’s ranking of Indy’s fastest-growing companies.
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