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Ranking revealed! Big data wins big at CBJ's Fast 50 awards

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Perhaps there’s a clue to how Glew ended up at the top of the Charlotte Business Journal’s Fast 50 ranking this year in the fact that the company had literally no employee in Charlotte they could send to the awards dinner Thursday.

The entire staff is in Islamorada in the Florida Keys for Glew’s annual planning retreat.

Founder Michael Vadini found out the company he and son Carmen founded in 2014 won when his daughter Adeline Elliot — who accepted the award for the company — called him to get his reaction for CBJ.

“We came in first, congratulations!” she said when he picked up his cell phone.

[Fast 50: The inside stories of how the Charlotte region’s fastest-growing companies got there]

The top spot — with a gaudy 381% growth rate from 2016 through 2018 — was claimed in Glew’s first year on the list.

His reaction? “It’s typical of SAS companies,” he told her, referring to software as a service. “You don’t grow fast initially. It’s like a hockey stick — you work and work and work and work. You don’t see the growth initially and then, boom! You’re there.”

Glew may have been a first-timer, but a lot of the 50 companies in the ranking were not. Check out the full ranking as well as scenes from the awards event here.

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