Las Vegas Review-Journal - Business

"Most companies are not growing so just to be on a growth footing is remarkable," said Mike Hofman, executive editor of Inc. "The academic term for these companies is 'gazelles,' which means they've grown 20 percent a year for five years. They're in the top 1 percent of all companies. They're the elite of the private-company world, living on cash flow and turning human imagination, creativity and hard work into money."

The Inc. 500 is based on the percentage of growth in revenue companies experienced from 2003 to 2006.

Rather than feeding primarily on growth in local tourism and construction, the Las Vegas businesses that have made the biggest revenue leaps in recent years have capitalized on national trends favoring technology, growth in the health care and finance sectors and corporate diversification, Hofman said.

Three of the area companies on the Inc. 500 -- WorldDoc, SellingSource.com and Zappos.com -- conduct business primarily through the Internet and other forms of information technology.

WorldDoc has lassoed soaring interest in consumer-driven health care and health-cost containment to boost the number of medical patients with access to its wellness-management Web site from 200,000 in 2003 to more than 1 million today.

A demand for software to prevent identity theft and fraud in online banking propelled revenue at software and server company SellingSource.com nearly 1,500 percent from 2003 to 2006, and driven the staff roster from 25 employees in 2003 to 450 workers now.

And Silver State Helicopters started out training pilots and working with the police, but has since added "higher-margin specialty services" in arenas such as agriculture and firefighting, Hofman said. A nimble Zappos.com is also constantly tweaking the lineup of shoes, handbags and accessories it sells online.

"We see a lot of reinvention on this list, a lot of companies with the ability to constantly find new products to offer to broader groups of customers," Hofman said.

SellingSource.com has kept the product -- and sales -- pipeline flowing via two avenues: It's acquired about a dozen businesses with complementary platforms or services, and it's assembled a software-development staff of 65 from around the country so that it can quickly design custom programs for banking clients. SellingSource, which posted more than $75 million in revenue in 2006, offers banks, credit-card companies and lenders services ranging from lead generation to server collocation.

Glenn McKay, president and chief operating officer of SellingSource, credited his company's revenue gains to acquisitions, growth in the financial field and high-tech savvy.

"We have a very good understanding of the technology behind the Internet and how to use it as a marketing tool," McKay said. "We know how to make our customers successful with the Internet."

WorldDoc is deploying the Internet to help patients and doctors form partnerships to improve health through preventive care. The company, which 14 board-certified Las Vegas doctors founded in 2000, markets its services mostly to managed-care insurers and to self-insured operations such as banks, hospitals and mining companies. Through WorldDoc's Web site, physicians and their charges can coordinate efforts to manage health conditions and indicators such as blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes.

WorldDoc hired its first salespeople less than a year ago, so the company's revenue through 2006 surged on word-of-mouth alone, said Rahul Singal, WorldDoc's president and chief executive officer.

"We started demonstrating that we could improve customers' health and save clients money because people aren't getting hospitalized as often," Singal said. "As we showed clients that we could help them better use their health-care dollars, they started referring us to other organizations."

Nor does Zappos.com have a sales team.

The Henderson e-tailer invests what it would have spent in marketing on customer service instead, splurging on buyer- friendly perks such as free overnight and return shipping, a one-year return policy and 24-7 operations at warehouses and call centers. The customer who orders shoes and finds them on her doorstep the next day is likelier to recommend Zappos.com to her friends, said Tony Hsieh, the company's chief executive officer.

Nearly 30 other local businesses also earned recognition from Inc. In addition to the Inc. 500, the magazine also published its first Inc. 5,000, which consists of the 500 fastest growers, plus 4,500 other quickly expanding businesses. Including the four companies in the top 500, Southern Nevada had 31 entrants on the Inc. 5,000. Printers, advertising agencies, payroll-service companies, property managers, banks, construction companies and retailers are among the local enterprises that ranked on the list.

Many of the companies on the Inc. 500 can look forward to sustained brisk growth. Global corporations including Microsoft, Oracle, E*Trade, Intuit, Timberland, Patagonia and Qualcomm all appeared on the Inc. 500 in their early days as small private companies, and some of the local businesses on the list are already attracting the attention of venture capitalists and private-equity firms.

Singal said several private-equity companies have asked WorldDoc's executives if they'd be interested in moving the business as it grows. But Singal said the company will stay put in Southern Nevada as it works toward its goal of 10 million patient-customers by 2010.

It's easy to convince prospective corporate customers to visit Las Vegas and meet with WorldDoc officials, and the labor pool is relatively deep, Singal said.

And though it's hard for SellingSource.com to find local software developers -- the company's 65 software developers were recruited from outside the market, McKay said -- the company's executives said they're committed to the area. SellingSource.com moved to Las Vegas from Southern California to be near a couple of major clients based here, and company officials decided the area's business climate is ideal for the company.

"It's a bigger challenge to bring people in than it would be if we were in another part of the country," McKay said. "But we show people the benefits of living in Las Vegas, and we put together information packages for them when they're looking at neighborhoods and schools. We help them understand that Las Vegas is a great place to live. It's not just the Strip. If they're the right people and we educate them properly, they make the move."