| The billion-dollar private company you've never heard of |
| | Good morning,
Perhaps, at some point in the past year, you’ve seen the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker--a mapping and data visualization program that’s been viewed by 2 trillion people and counting.
Johns Hopkins is just one of some 350,000 organizations around the globe that use innovative mapping and data-visualization software created by a company called Esri. Founded by Jack Dangermond in Redlands, California, in 1969, Esri now employs 4,500 people around the world. It’s one of America's biggest--yet least-known--private companies, and it has a fascinating story.
Esri has never taken outside funding, has never undergone employee layoffs, and has grown slowly and steadily for the past 52 years. "My parents never borrowed money either, and that was really important in their life. It was their philosophy to keep their agreements," Dangermond says on this week’s episode of Inc.’s What I Know podcast. "Growing up with that kind of philosophy--they were Dutch immigrants and poor--they were very, very careful. So we were very conservative. We still are that way, frankly."
Listen to the podcast episode to learn how Dangermond used lessons from his family’s tiny business to build a billion-dollar software empire. And check out more coverage of Esri from the Inc. archives: |
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