Top 100 women: hardest hit in past years, tech firms show sharpest upturn.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: Illustration

The birth of her second child in 2000 prompted Nidhi Saxena to quit her full-time IT job at EchoStar Communications and launch her own consulting firm. She wanted to spend more time at home, and the volume of business at first was modest enough for her to spend three years as a one-woman company.

But as Saxena's 5- and 7-year-old kids have grown, so has her third offspring--DatamanUSA. The IT consulting and software-design firm posted the most dramatic revenue increase of any company in ColoradoBiz magazine's annual ranking of the state's top 100 women-owned firms, with revenues of $1.2 million last year representing a 443 percent increase over 2003.

So much for that stay-at-home business.

DatamanUSA now boasts 23 employees, with offices in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Denver. Saxena, an Oracle-certified project manager in financial applications, forecasts revenues of $3 million for her firm in 2005 and expects to hire another 20 employees this year.

A turning point for her company, she says, came in late 2002 when it earned preferred-vendor status from the State of Colorado and began garnering assignments from the state. In 2003, she opened her first office outside her home, choosing Cheyenne because of the low cost of infrastructure.

A year later she opened an office in Denver. Today much of the company's IT consulting work is in the public sector, with clients such as the City and County of Denver, the State of Texas and more than a dozen other states and municipalities.

Saxena, 35, came to the U.S. from India in 1996 with her husband, Gyan Saxena, both of them on work-permit visas for IT-related jobs. They plan to apply for U.S. citizenship.

Building anything from scratch is not easy, Nidhi Saxena says. "There were ups and downs. There were moments when I was like, 'Why am I doing this? Because you have to put in a lot of thinking when you do your own business. It's not like you go to work from 9 to 5 and you go home. In business you have to keep thinking continuously all 24 hours how to grow it."

Dataman USA isn't alone among fast-growing tech companies owned by women. Four of the five biggest growers on this year's top 100 list are in the tech sector. Connect: The Knowledge Network, an IT consultant based in Littleton, improved revenues by 149 percent last year; Portable Computer Systems Inc. of Golden improved 96 percent; and Colorado Springs engineering firm Boecore Inc. improved 90 percent. The only non-tech firm among the top five fastest growers is Englewood-based Marketing Solutions & Results, which also posted a 90-percent revenue increase.

Maureen Clarry, CEO and founder of Connect: The Knowledge Network Corp., has seen ups and downs in the tech sector during the 13 years she's headed her own company, and perhaps that's why she sounds more pleased than surprised that Connect more than doubled revenues in 2004, with sales of $10.7 million.

"Sometimes the technology sector is the fastest declining and the fastest growing," Clarry says. "2000-2001 was the down period. I think now there's been a pent-up demand to get a lot of work done that hadn't been done when people were in kind of a conservative holding pattern. There's just more demand for the kind of services that we offer."

Tech-service providers like Clarry's made dramatic moves upward in this year's women's ranking, and, overall, 27 newcomers made the top 100 but companies at the very top of the rankings didn't budge. Ralph Schomp Automotive, McClain Finlon Advertising and Andavo Travel occupied the top three spots in the rankings for the sixth straight year.

TOP 100 WOMAN-OWNED COMPANIES Ranked by revenues '04 Gross '03 2005 2004 Revenue Revenue Rank Rank Company (000's) (000's) % Change 1 1 Ralph Schomp Automotive Inc. $205,330 $191,755 7% 2 2 McClain Finlon Advertising 101,000 82,000 23% Inc. 3 3 Andavo Travel 60,000 57,000 5% 4 6 Polk Majestic Travel Group 51,000 40,500 26% 5 7 PRACO Ltd. 35,576 31,432 13% 6 11 Craters & Freighters 28,866 25,895 11% Franchise Co. 7 17 Portable Computer Systems 24,500 12,500 96% Inc. 8 10 Nexus Corp. 24,000 25,600 -6% 8 13 EON Office Products 24,000 22,000 9% 10 14 Thayer Media Inc. 23,500 18,500 27% 11 9 Micro Analysis & Design 20,100 28,700 -30% 12 8 DSP Builders Inc. 20,000 29,000 -31% 13 16 Slifer Designs Inc. 16,859 13,897 21% 14 21 Highland Management Inc. 15,200 12,250 24% 15 23 PrimeSource Staffing LLC 15,000 12,000 25% 16 15 Travel Connections Inc. 14,500 14,300 1% 17 24 United Banks of Colorado 13,668 11,637 17% Inc. 18 29 ETI Professionals Inc. 12,820 9,940 29% 19 25 Mile Hi Tours Inc. 11,974 11,244 6% 20 27 Sounds True Inc. 11,100 10,500 6% 21 50 Connect: The Knowledge 10,700 4,300 149% Network Corp. 22 30 Leopard Communications Inc. 10,262 8,609 19% 23 34 Frontier Business Products 9,700 8,400 15% 24 40 Pride Electric Co. 8,667 5,983 45% 25 32 O'Brien Advertising 8,600 8,100 6% 26 35 Excel Personnel Inc. 8,400 7,700 9% 27 36 Community Interiors Inc. 7,783 7,005 11% 28 52 Gunther Douglas Inc. 6,624 3,670 80% 29 37 Optimum Management Systems 6,500 6,100 7% LLC 30 37 Destra Consulting Group LLC 6,200 6,100 2% 31 85 Lighthouse Financial LLC & 6,125 4,910 25% Financial Network 32 59 Boecore Inc. 6,000 3,154 90% 33 62 Imaging Sytems LLC 5,805 3,450 68% 34 42 Nest Fresh Eggs Inc. 5,500 5,600 -2% 35 46 LT Environmental Inc. 5,400 5,500 -2% 36 Arcadia Consulting Inc. 5,000 4,400 14% 36 Clientsolv Technologies 5,000 3,000 67% 36 58 J.C. Brooks & Co. Inc. 5,000 3,200 56% 39 47 Baker Interiors Inc. 4,850 4,800 1% 40 51 Burlstone Inc. 4,719 3,906 21% 41 54 Alumni Consulting Group Int. 4,400 3,530 25% Inc. 42 Design Lines Inc. 4,382 6,225 -30% 43 55 Work Options Group 4,000 2,500 60% 44 67 ANKO Metal Services Inc. 3,800 3,100 23% 45 56 Alta Milla Electric Corp. 3,561 3,332 7% 46 59 Via Travel 3,200 3,200 0% 47 Canino's Sausage Co. Inc. 3,000 3,000 0% 48 57 Schenkein 2,845 3,283 -13% 49 91 Blue Spruce Design & 2,700 1,600 69% Construction 50 77 In Touch Today Corp. 2,623 1,665 58% 51 68 Routt County Auto Parts & 2,594 2,426 7% Supply Inc. 52 66 Tallgrass Inc. 2,561 2,381 8% 53 70 Orion Registrar Inc. 2,508 2,229 13% 54 75 Integrated Cleaning Services 2,500 2,000 25% Inc. 55 72 CTSi 2,350 2,200 7% 56 63 J.F. Options Inc. 2,331 2,516 -7% 57 Tendercare Inc. 2,329 2,312 1% 58 87 Marketing Solutions & 2,255 1,185 90% Results LLC 59 82 HR Search Firm 2,190 1,486 47% 60 Pascoe...