2020 Dallas 100 Award Ceremony

Clavis Capital Partners, a private investment firm with deep experience investing in, operating and growing U.S.-based industrial businesses, is the fastest-growing entrepreneurial company in the Dallas area, according to the SMU Cox School of Business’s Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship. The Institute’s annual Dallas 100, a celebration of the fastest-growing, privately-held businesses in the Dallas area, revealed the area’s top entrepreneurial companies in rank order from 100 to one in a virtual ceremony Thursday, Feb. 18. The event marks the Caruth Institute’s 30th Dallas 100 awards ceremony. It was live-streamed this year because of COVID-19. The online presentation was facilitated by business-to-business media provider MarketScale, one of this year’s Dallas 100 honorees.

The Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship ranks the area’s top 100 entrepreneurial companies based on percentage growth and absolute dollar growth over the previous three years, emphasizing their economic contributions to the Dallas area economy. In this year’s Dallas 100 ranking calculation, Clavis Capital Partners exceeded 1,000% growth over the last 3 years, well beyond the collective average growth of this year’s 100 companies, which totaled average growth of 106%. This year’s Dallas 100 companies basically doubled sales from 2017 to 2019, according to the Caruth Institute’s calculations. Factoring all 100 companies together, this year’s 100 companies generated over $6 billion in revenue over the past three years.

“Moreover, this year’s 100 companies created almost 6,000 jobs between them—about 600 jobs per company,” said Simon Mak, executive director of the Caruth Institute of Entrepreneurship. “Quite simply, these entrepreneurial companies are growth engines for DFW, creating thousands of jobs and pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into our economy year after year. That’s exactly why we started this annual event 30 years ago: to call attention to the critical impact the entrepreneurial spirit makes on the Dallas economy.”

The Caruth Institute, working with the accounting firm BKD, LLP examined sales from hundreds of companies for 2017 to 2019, the last year for which complete data is available. The winners represent Dallas and 14 surrounding cities. This year’s Dallas 100 program sponsors, in alphabetical order, are: BKD, LLP; Cushman & Wakefield; Dallas Business Journal; Executive Press; KRLD 1080 News Radio; Mass Mutual DFW; and Texas Capital Bank.

The Caruth Institute is planning to resume holding a traditional event to honor its 2021 Dallas 100 winners in November 2021, assuming COVID-19 protocols allow for a large-scale in-person gathering.

The top 10 fastest-growing DFW companies in 2020 were given special recognition at the event: No.1) Clavis Capital Partners, an investment firm that focuses on manufacturers of industrial products; No.2) Scout & Cellar, a direct-to-consumer producer of wine-based beverages; No.3) Provident General Contractors, a project management firm specializing in multifamily and commercial construction; No.4) Tek Leaders Inc, business intelligence solutions provider; No.5) The Crowther Group, general contractor in retail, healthcare and education; No.6) Cloud Ingenuity, providers of multi-cloud, cyber security network modernization; No.7) Lurin, real estate firm in the manufacturing sector; No.8) Compass Datacenters, providers of custom, move-in ready data centers; No.9) GridLiance, independent electricity transmission; and No.10) Improving, software development, technology management consulting and training services.

A complete list of all SMU Cox Dallas 100 companies for 2020, listed from one to 100, follows: