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No. 21
Revenue growth FY 2021 to 2023: 91.2%
2023 revenue: $12.5 million
CEO and co-founder Chase Flashman credits alignment among his team members for the success of his company, which makes the Fast 25 for the third year in a row. “We went through an extensive process and exercises to pull who we are as people and who we want to be,” he says. “And it was amazing.” The company lives by its core values, he says. Take job candidates, for instance. Some hires have lacked industry experience but reflect the core values. As another example, a big neon sign on the conference room wall says “commitment to winning.” “And I will tell you, if we’re not winning, I can feel it, like I mean a physical pain, because we’re not doing right by the customer.”
Secret clientele: ShipSigma is a technology firm that reduces costs for high-volume shippers through invoice audits, contract negotiations, and insights and data analytics. Among its clients, Flashman says, are many Fortune 500 companies. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at ShipSigma’s website. The company doesn’t want shipping companies like FedEx or UPS to know whom ShipSigma is working with, so as not to tip its hand on pricing negotiations.
Waste of space: Shipping costs is one area of savings that ShipSigma identifies for its clients. Packaging costs now is another, Flashman says. How best can you decrease packaging to increase efficiency? The savings opportunity is evident to anyone who frequently gets packages delivered. Companies, for instance, use a 20-by-20-by-20-inch box to ship a few pens or a pair of gloves. “You’re shipping air.”
PC load letter: “Just like technology giveth,” Flashman says, “technology taketh away.” He bemoans the inevitable need for a technology company to update its technology stack. You want increased automations. You want to remove redundancies. You want more insights, more efficiency. But while you’re implementing the new platform, you’re still relying on the old. “So to have two systems going on at once, it’s almost like you’re running two different companies at times,” he says. “You sunset one of the systems to move from a legacy to a new technology stack like this. I think sometimes you’d be lucky to have any growth at all.”•
Check out more of IBJ’s ranking of Indy’s fastest-growing companies.
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