It's become something of an honour to be included in one of Fast Track's annual league tables, which rank Britain's top private companies. This year's Tech Track 100 ranked the fastest-growing private tech companies based on sales growth over the latest three years. Here, we speak to two of them about fast growth, weathering the downturn and what excites them about the UK's technology sector

Basic instinct

Who: Luke Ashworth, founder, Netbasic
What: Develops financial comparison website portals
Sales: £9.6m in 2007
Tech Track 100 ranking: 3

"The key thing about achieving that level of growth is picking your fights. If you've done a bit of work on something that doesn't work, be prepared to give it up and move on. If we hadn't done that we would have been swamped. I don't think you can achieve fast growth if you consistently sit within confines that you've put for yourself. We've almost given up writing business plans.

It doesn't take a mathematician to work out what's going on in loans at the moment—it's a horrible place to be. But we relaunched www.accepted.co.uk. I wasn't prepared to sit and wait. You can either say, 'OK, I'll give this up' or you can reinvent yourself and improve. If I'm honest I did it completely the wrong way round.

I came up with some ideas that could make us money first. Now that I've built up my staff (to 14) we can really work on our great product. Netbasic used to be a bit like 'Luke Ltd'. The guys didn't have any power or responsibility. Now, it's about turning it into a proper company. If these guys have learned in a downturn then when it's good they should really know what they're doing. It's exciting when you see guys you've trained and brought up coming up with solutions that, if you're honest, you could never have done.

We track everything to the nth degree. We never take blind alleys or gamble. We have the advantage that we're small, so if we want to test something and it's a couple of grand, we won't sit around and talk about it too much. We can decide to do something and act on it very quickly.
Our main focus is on redevelopment. For me it's not that technology's particularly exciting, it's more about building and creating something. In technology it has to be innovative and therefore it's fast growing. That adds a bit more excitement."

Master of three

Who: Martin Port, managing director, Masternaut Three X
What: Logistics software developer
Sales: £22m in 2007
Tech Track 100 ranking: 43

"We're the market leader in the UK and have grown because we have the best solution [the firm provides technology that helps companies plan routes, track vehicles and communicate with mobile workers]. It's intuitive and provides the customer with maximum return on investment. That's fundamental. We had the best month ever in September—our business thrives because in hard times we save companies' money.

We've also got a fantastic group of people. There's very little churn in the business; we employ about 210 people and they've grown up here. You tend to find the best technical support people work in petrol stations. I've found three there—they work hard in those conditions and believe me, they've got the right skills to work here—they just need to be given the opportunity.

We continually invest around the customer requirement. And we use our own technology. We evangelise better because we use it, believe in it and sell it better. Technology is taking over our growth. We won't have to recruit more people because we use the technology. The technology companies doing well are those that are clear about what they're selling. Their statements are clear. They add real value."