NGA.NET 

Smart50 rank: 29
Revenue: $7.56 million
Growth: 44.75%
Founders: Mike Giuffrida, 39; Will Spensley (deceased)
Based: Victoria
Employees: 42
Industry: Information technology
Website: www.nga.net

Recruitment software company NGA.NET was one of the pioneers of the SAAS (software as a service) market in Australia, and its internet-based recruitment system that handles the processing of candidate applications is a proven winner with corporate and government customers.

In the past two years, average annual revenue growth has been 44.75% and revenue hit $7.55 million in 2007-08. Last financial year revenue was $4.88 million.

But it wasn't always like this. Co-founder Mike Giuffrida (pictured) admits that selling the benefits of NGA's product was extremely difficult initially.

"In the early days NGA.NET were missionaries for ‘e-recruitment' and spent a lot of time knocking on doors spreading the good word! We had to create the market before we could generate any revenue from the market."

Guiffrida says that spending big dollars on marketing helped to spread the message but did not actually result in sales - nothing was as powerful as referrals and word-of-mouth. "At the end of the day, someone has to buy, use and vouch for your solution for it to catch on. From the time you get out there with a novel solution, you should always allow about three years before you start generating consistent revenue results."

The company's next challenge is global expansion. Its latest product offering is available in most languages and designed to suit a global marketplace and the goal in the 2008-09 year is to build sales in the international market place, either directly or via global distribution partners. "Some early wins will produce success we will aggressively build on."