The Big Four are the four largest professional services networks in the world: Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), KPMG, and PwC. They are the four largest global accounting networks as measured by revenue. The four are often grouped because they are comparable in size relative to the rest of the market, both in terms of revenue and workforce; they are considered equal in their ability to provide a wide scope of professional services to their clients; and, among those looking to start a career in professional services, particularly accounting, they are considered equally attractive networks to work in, because of the frequency with which these firms engage with Fortune 500 companies.
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
Venture capital is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, commonly referred to as Deloitte, is a British multinational professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of professionals in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting firms along with EY, KPMG and PwC.
The Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Awards are run and moderated by international professional services group Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. They recognize the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in regions around the world. Winners include both public and private companies.
Adyen is a Dutch payment company with the status of an acquiring bank that allows businesses to accept e-commerce, mobile, and point-of-sale payments. It is listed on the stock exchange Euronext Amsterdam.
Xero is a New Zealand–based technology company that provides cloud-based accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses. The company has offices in New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Xero's products are based on the software-as-a-service model and sold by subscription, based on the type and number of entities managed by the subscriber. The products are used in over 180 countries.
Canva is an Australian global multi-national graphic design platform that is used to create social media graphics and presentations.
Tradeshift is a cloud based business network and platform for supply chain payments, marketplaces, and apps. Its 2018 round of funding, led by Goldman Sachs, raised US$250 million at a valuation of $1.1 billion, giving the company unicorn status. Tradeshift is Headquartered in San Francisco, California. Tradeshift serves 300 companies and has reprocessed over $1Trillion USD through transactions.
ServiceNow, Inc. is an American software company based in Santa Clara, California that develops a cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Founded in 2003 by Fred Luddy, ServiceNow is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the Russell 1000 Index and S&P 500 Index. In 2018, Forbes magazine named it number one on its list of the world's most innovative companies.
Daniel Conrad Engel is an American CEO and entrepreneur who has worked in the e-commerce and software industries since 1997. Engel led customer acquisition at Picasa, Google, FastSpring, GoToMeeting and GoToMyPC. In 2020, Engel founded Santa Barbara Venture Partners, a venture capital investment fund. He graduated from Tulane University in 1998 with a major in finance and is a past member of Young Presidents' Organization. Engel sits on multiple boards of directors and advisers to tech companies. Since 2018, he has served as board member on a range of local nonprofits that address the critical issue of homelessness. Engel lives in Santa Barbara, California with his two children and his wife, Emily, an environmental activist, art historian, and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Diligent Corporation, known as Diligent, is a software as a service company that enables groups to share and collaborate information for board meetings. Headquartered in New York City, and incorporated in Delaware, the company has offices in Galway, Ireland; London, UK; Washington, D.C.; Munich, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; Hong Kong; Bangalore, India; Sydney and Vancouver.
Financial technology is an industry composed of companies that use technology to offer financial services. These companies operate in insurance, asset management and payment, and numerous other industries. FinTech has emerged as a relatively new industry in India in past few years. The Indian market has witnessed massive investments in various sectors adopting FinTech, which has been driven partly by the robust and effective government reforms that are pushing the country towards a digital economy. It has also been aided by the growing internet and smartphone penetration, leading to the adoption of digital technologies and rise of FinTech in the country
Dataiku is an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning company which was founded in 2013. In December 2019, Dataiku announced that CapitalG—the late-stage growth venture capital fund financed by Alphabet Inc.—joined Dataiku as an investor and that it had achieved unicorn status. As of 2021, Dataiku is valued at $4.6 billion. Dataiku currently employs more than 1,000 people worldwide between offices in New York, Denver, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Munich, Frankfurt, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, and Dubai.
Veritas Technologies LLC. is an American international data management company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company has its origins in Tolerant Systems, founded in 1983 and later renamed Veritas Software. It specializes in storage management software including the first commercial journaling file system, VxFS, VxVM, VCS, the personal/small office backup software Backup Exec and the enterprise backup software, NetBackup. Veritas Record Now was an early CD recording software.
Solium Capital, now known as Shareworks by Morgan Stanley, is a subscription-software (SaaS) company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It is best known for Shareworks, software used by public and private companies to manage their employee stock options and/or cap tables. It also does 409A valuations. The company has ~3,000 clients and has offices in Canada, the United States, the UK, Europe and Australia. Morgan Stanley announced a definitive agreement to acquire Solium in February 2019 for approximately CAD$1.1 billion, a 40% premium over the recent trading price.
Byju's is an Indian multinational educational technology company, headquartered in Bangalore. It was founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath. As of Sept 2023, Byju's was valued at $5.1 billion. As of April 2023, the company claims to have over 150 million registered students.
Rubrik is a cloud data management and data security company based in Palo Alto, California, United States, founded in December 2013.
ApplyBoard is a Canadian educational technology company founded in 2015 in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It offers an "artificial intelligence-enabled recruitment platform" that helps international students apply for post-secondary studies abroad. In 2019, Deloitte recognized ApplyBoard as one of Canada's fastest-growing tech company.
