Resilient ecosystems still experience challenges, whether they face pollution, climate change or just the introduction of a new species. But what makes them successful is their ability to endure and adapt to the new world around them.
Resilient teams are strong for the same reasons — when changes come, they know how to adjust and even thrive.
Built In spoke with tech leaders from seven growing companies to hear what makes their products, business strategies and teams resilient to change and prepared for growth.
Featured Companies
iManage develops an intelligent, cloud-enabled, secure knowledge work platform.
Which metric or milestone best captures strength this year — and why is it credible?
The clearest signal of strength for iManage this year is sustained net revenue retention driven by multi-solution adoption. We’re not just retaining customers. We’re expanding our footprint across knowledge management, governance, security and now AI-enabled workflows. What makes this credible is how deeply we’re embedded in customers’ most critical work. Once firms and corporate legal teams standardize on iManage as the system of record, expansion becomes a structural advantage, not a one-time upsell.
How is iManage building resiliency into its tech and business plans?
“The clearest signal of strength for iManage this year is sustained net revenue retention driven by multi-solution adoption. We’re not just retaining customers. We’re expanding our footprint across knowledge management, governance, security and now AI-enabled workflows.”
— Lindsey Meyl, Vice President of Revenue Operations
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
We’re strongest in legal and regulated industries where knowledge integrity, security and governance are non-negotiable. Our platform is purpose-built for how legal and professional work actually happens, which gives us a structural advantage over horizontal tools. The proof shows up in International Legal Technology Association’s latest research demonstrating continued iManage share growth across law firms and corporate legal teams, reinforced by global standardization wins in regulated industries. That leadership position matters. We typically compete from strength, displacing legacy and horizontal platforms with a platform purpose-built for legal and knowledge-centric work.
What expansion bet excites you — and which leading indicator will you watch?
The most exciting expansion for iManage is extending from system of record to system of intelligence through embedded AI. Because we already sit at the center of high-value knowledge and workflows, AI is not an add-on. It’s an acceleration layer across matters, deals and enterprise knowledge reuse.
The leading indicator I watch is AI pipeline creation within the installed base — specifically, the percentage of strategic accounts actively evaluating or expanding into AI-enabled solutions. For sales professionals, that signals real expansion capacity. When AI becomes part of executive conversations and roadmap planning inside existing accounts, it creates larger, multi-year growth opportunities rather than incremental feature adoption.
Fluent is a commerce media solutions provider that connects brands with engaged consumers.
Which metric or milestone best captures strength this year — and why is it credible?
Commerce Media Solutions is growing 121 percent year-over-year. It’s now 40 percent of our consolidated revenue, sitting at an $85 million annualized run rate. The reason I trust that number is it’s not a one-quarter spike — we’ve been compounding in that segment for three years running, on top of 200-plus million first-party consumer profiles. From my engineering side, the fact that we’ve scaled into that growth without the platform buckling is its own validation.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
We’re reaching high-intent consumers at moments most ad tech just can’t, checkout, loyalty, post-purchase, through exclusive placements with major retailers, sporting goods brands, lifestyle portfolios. The results speak for themselves: triple-digit conversion lifts, 40 percent plus revenue-per-transaction gains for enterprise partners.
How is Fluent building resiliency into its tech and business plans?
“We’re reaching high-intent consumers at moments most adtech just can’t, checkout, loyalty, post-purchase, through exclusive placements with major retailers, sporting goods brands, lifestyle portfolios. The results speak for themselves: triple-digit conversion lifts, 40 percent plus revenue-per-transaction gains for enterprise partners.”
— Dan Duling, VP Technology and Engineering
The other thing I’d point to is our identity resolution layer. It’s built on first-party data, privacy-first from the ground up. With third-party signals disappearing across the industry, that’s a moat that gets wider over time.
What expansion bet excites you — and which leading indicator will you watch?
Honestly, two things are converging. We have a partnership unlocking post-purchase monetization across a major e-commerce platform — 700 percent merchant growth already. And separately, a data intelligence collaboration that’s bringing enterprise-grade infrastructure and secure data sharing into our stack. The indicator I’m watching closest is commerce media as a percentage of total revenue. If that keeps climbing toward majority share, it tells me we’ve built something structurally durable under a high-growth market, not just a hot quarter.
Halter is on a mission to unlock more productive and sustainable farming and ranching by enabling farmers and ranchers to remotely shift, virtually fence and proactively monitor their cows’ health and behavior.
Which metric or milestone best captures strength this year — and why is it credible?
At Halter, we measure ourselves on impact times and reach. We already know the impact is real. We’ve seen it in the results our customers report: reduced labour requirements, increased stocking rates and improved grazing outcomes across the board. The product works. Ranchers and farmers are seeing meaningful, measurable change.
This year, the defining metric is reach, or collars on cows. The more collars deployed, the more real-world impact we create. It’s a simple metric, but a powerful one.
That focus on reach is driving how we build the company. We’re scaling our sales team to bring Halter to more ranches, while continuing to grow our product team so we can keep learning, iterating and building what matters most. Every new deployment gives us deeper insight, stronger product-market fit and greater momentum.
Impact isn’t hypothetical at Halter, it’s proven. Now we’re scaling it.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
We’re strongest where it matters most: with our customers. Halter shows up in person. We spend time on ranches, in the field and side by side with the people using our product every day. That proximity isn’t just about service, it’s how we build better technology. It allows us to have honest, unfiltered conversations and ensure we’re solving real problems that make a meaningful difference on the ranch.
How is Halter building resiliency into its tech and business plans?
“We’re strongest where it matters most: with our customers. Halter shows up in person. We spend time on ranches, in the field and side by side with the people using our product every day. That proximity isn’t just about service, it’s how we build better technology. It allows us to have honest, unfiltered conversations and ensure we’re solving real problems that make a meaningful difference on the ranch.”
— Ben Sweney, Head of Engineering
Our competitive strength shows up in something simple but powerful: the number of ranches that know our team members by name. During in-field visits, our customer support representatives are frequently called out personally for the problems they’ve solved and the confidence they’ve built.
In an industry built on relationships and reputation, that trust is a serious advantage.
What expansion bet excites you — and which leading indicator will you watch?
There’s a lot in motion right now and while we can’t share everything just yet, what’s most exciting is how Halter is packaging nearly a decade of learnings from New Zealand and applying them globally. We’re not experimenting from scratch, we’re taking a product that has proven impact and scaling it thoughtfully across new markets.
All ranchers, no matter the geography, share the same core jobs to be done. The opportunity is in delivering that value consistently, at scale and adapting intelligently to local conditions without losing what makes Halter powerful.
The leading indicator we’re watching closely is adoption in new regions; how quickly ranchers see value, integrate Halter into daily operations and expand usage across their operations. Early engagement, deployment velocity and repeat expansion tell us whether we’re truly adding value.
Rain’s technology makes it easy for companies — from fast-growing startups to global fintechs — to integrate stablecoins into their products, platforms and payment flows.
Which metric or milestone best captures strength this year — and why is it credible?
Total Payment Volume offers the clearest view of Rain’s strength — the total value of transactions powered by our platform globally. At the end of 2025, our technology had processed over $3 billion worth of purchases. We also tripled to 200-plus customers last year and their cardholders used Rain-issued credentials to make purchases in 170-plus countries. This combination of scale and geographic reach demonstrates product–market fit for our onchain payment platform.
Investor conviction mirrors the data. We announced a $24.5 million Series A in March 2025, a $58 million Series B in August 2025 and a $250 million Series C in January 2026. All rounds were led by world-class institutional investors.
Taken all together, these signals indicate that stablecoin-powered spend is moving from experimentation to real-world utility. Rain is well positioned to continue leading the revolution.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
Many stablecoin infrastructure companies focus on improving cross-border movement. Rain supports that use case, but the payment flow is only complete when value is spendable by the recipient. Our advantage is converting stablecoin value into everyday purchasing power through an end-to-end card issuing and payments stack.
As a Visa Principal Member, we enable partners to launch cards that work wherever Visa is accepted, without assembling multiple vendors. This delivers faster time to market, simpler operations, unified risk and compliance and consistent settlement across regions.
The proof is in production. Customers use Rain to build and scale programs for diverse needs: dollar accounts for the underbanked, international dollar cards for globally mobile users, crypto-linked spend and government benefits disbursements. Collectively, these programs have processed billions of dollars at merchants in 170-plus countries, demonstrating production-grade utility at the point of sale.
How is Rain building resiliency into its tech and business plans?
“The proof is in production. Customers use Rain to build and scale programs for diverse needs: dollar accounts for the underbanked, international dollar cards for globally mobile users, crypto-linked spend and government benefits disbursements. Collectively, these programs have processed billions of dollars at merchants in 170-plus countries, demonstrating production-grade utility at the point of sale.”
— Nick Pinto, Head of GTM
What expansion bet excites you — and which leading indicator will you watch?
Our key expansion bet is enterprise customers. These large, incumbent brands are moving from pilots to production and need stablecoin solutions that lower unit costs, accelerate launches and meet compliance obligations across regions. Rain provides a single integration that enables multi-market coverage and modular capabilities, including rewards via our acquisition of Uptop and on/offramps and cross-chain support via our acquisition of Fern.
As we expand with enterprise customers, progress will be measured by TPV, with particular attention to TPV from enterprise programs. Focusing on TPV ensures we partner with teams prepared to launch and scale production deployments, not just run experimental pilots.
Qualtrics is an information tech company whose platform serves as a single system of record for companies to track all experience data, managing customer, product, employee and brand experiences.
Which metric or milestone best captures strength this year — and why is it credible?
A defining milestone for us this year is our strategic $6.75 billion investment to acquire Press Ganey Forsta. This move is highly credible because it isn't just about scale; it’s about depth, specifically within the mission-critical healthcare sector. By integrating one of the world’s largest patient experience datasets with our AI-driven platform, we are moving beyond generic surveys to specialized, high-value analytics. For a candidate, this shows that Qualtrics is making massive, long-term bets on regulated industries that require stability and specialized expertise. It shows we have the capital and the vision to own the most valuable feedback loops in the market. This acquisition gives us a clear runway to define the next era of ‘Intent Tech’ where we orchestrate real-time business outcomes.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
Our greatest competitive advantage is our status as the ‘system of action’ for the world’s most iconic brands, a claim backed by our fourth consecutive year being named a leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Voice of the Customer Platforms. While competitors often focus on simple survey delivery, we differentiate through completeness of vision and ability to execute, specifically in how we handle massive, unstructured data sets across digital, physical and contact center channels. For a prospective employee, the proof is our position at the forefront of the category: We don’t just lead the category, we created it and our specialized Experience Agents are now setting the pace for how generative AI actually solves business problems. This scale ensures that when you build or sell at Qualtrics, your work impacts the global standard for how humans interact with brands.
How is Qualtrics building resiliency into its tech and business plans?
“While competitors often focus on simple survey delivery, we differentiate through completeness of vision and ability to execute, specifically in how we handle massive, unstructured data sets across digital, physical and contact center channels. For a prospective employee, the proof is our position at the forefront of the category: We don’t just lead the category, we created it… This scale ensures that when you build or sell at Qualtrics, your work impacts the global standard for how humans interact with brands.”
— Aswin Saravanan, VP Finance
What expansion bet excites you — and which leading indicator will you watch?
Our most compelling expansion bet is the move into agentic research and autonomous action, shifting from a tool that reports insights to one that independently executes them. By deploying Qualtrics Experience Agents, our platform has the capability to not only detect customer friction but to autonomously resolve it in real time — for instance, by flagging a potential churn risk and initiating a personalized recovery workflow without human intervention. The leading indicator I’m watching is the adoption rate of specialized AI capabilities across our enterprise accounts, which has already tripled over the past year. We aren't just looking at how many surveys are sent, but at how many ‘automated resolutions’ occur within our platform, as this directly measures our transition into an essential operational utility. For a senior hire, this represents the chance to work on the frontier of AI where the technology is the core engine driving multi-billion dollar business outcomes.
Identity Digital is an internet infrastructure company that makes sure web addresses work seamlessly.
Which metric or milestone best captures strength this year — and why is it credible?
The metric that best captures our strength is our operational efficiency. We achieved healthy revenue growth in 2025, but equally impressive is that a large portion of every new dollar of revenue dropped straight to our bottom line. This sustainable growth model creates stability for our business, value for our stakeholders and resources to pursue new opportunities for growth.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
Our competitive strength rests on our registry infrastructure and global reach. We own and operate the world’s largest portfolio of nearly 300 Top Level Domains, alternative web address extensions such as .info, .pro and .live, which means we run a significant portion of the internet’s addressing system.
How is Identity Digital building resiliency into its tech and business plans?
“Our competitive strength rests on our registry infrastructure and global reach. We own and operate the world’s largest portfolio of nearly 300 Top Level Domains, alternative web address extensions such as .info, .pro and .live, which means we run a significant portion of the internet’s addressing system.”
— Donald McClure, Chief Financial Officer
The proof? For over 20 years, we have operated the infrastructure that powers .org, one of the internet's foundational and most trusted domains. We run .au, a major national security asset, for Australia. And in 2025, we won the contract for .ai, now one of the most valuable extensions in the world. When top-level domain registries need reliable management of their internet infrastructure, they come to us.
What expansion bet excites you — and which leading indicator will you watch?
I am most excited about the 2026 application round for new domain extensions, the first expansion since 2012. Identity Digital views that next round as an opportunity to expand our business, including through powering the infrastructure for other applicants and selling new domain extensions through our name.com registrar.
The leading indicator I’m watching is search volume for alternative domain extensions. The attention around this expansion round will drive awareness for alternative domain extensions, increasing demand for the extensions we already own, even before new top-level domains start to go live.
Metropolis Technologies, Inc. is an artificial intelligence company whose computer vision platform enables checkout-free payment experiences for the real world.
Which metric or milestone best captures strength this year — and why is it credible?
One of the clearest indicators of strength for us has been the continued expansion of the Metropolis platform — in terms of member and location growth and the system’s performance across an increasing range of real-world environments. We’re now adding north of a million new members each month, programmatically onboarding more than a thousand new locations this year and launching new use cases and services this half; 2026 will be a year of ongoing evolution.
In addition to growth, we also measure strength through the efficacy of our technology as it is deployed into new physical-world contexts. Each new environment introduces novel operational, behavioral and technical variables. The system’s ability to maintain performance, reliability and user experience consistency across those conditions is a critical proof point. Our members are no longer signing up for a single transaction; they are increasingly engaging with Metropolis across multiple locations, use cases and services. Those patterns of repeat usage and cross-context engagement provide a far more meaningful signal of platform durability than isolated activity metrics.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
Competitively, we are strongest where authentication and re-authentication, access and payments intersect. Our everyday experiences are filled with moments of friction — entering or exiting a parking facility, swiping a credit card and entering your ZIP code to activate a fuel dispenser, scanning a QR code to check into a loyalty program in the drive-thru, presenting an ID at a hotel. Individually these interactions feel minor, but collectively they represent a persistent layer of inefficiency. Because we unify recognition, identity and payments, we’re able to remove friction in ways that are difficult to replicate through point solutions.
How is Metropolis Technologies building resiliency into its tech and business plans?
“Competitively, we are strongest where authentication and re-authentication, access and payments intersect… Because we unify recognition, identity and payments, we’re able to remove friction in ways that are difficult to replicate through point solutions.”
— Zach Matthews, Vice President, Head of Corporate Strategy and Global Business Development
More broadly, strength for us is driven by the compounding effects of network scale, platform leverage and consistent system performance across an expanding set of objects (vehicles, people), environments and geographies. The metrics I look for are growth within a B2B customer’s portfolio, cross-platform engagement within our member base and NPS across services. We are consistently capturing more share and both consumers and customers are pleased with the experience and performance we deliver.
What expansion bet excites you — and which leading indicator will you watch?
At Metropolis, my role centers on navigating uncertainty and partnering across teams to make decisions that strengthen and evolve the platform. We operate in a fast-moving, complex ecosystem where many opportunities lack clear precedent, which makes the work especially compelling. Strategy here is less about predicting outcomes and more about building structured ways to move through ambiguity. In a typical month, we might assess a new vertical, pressure-test a partnership model, or evaluate international expansion paths. The questions are rarely binary; they’re probabilistic, interconnected and shaped by technical, economic and operational constraints. We stay disciplined about where we play, focusing on extending core primitives into new environments where each deployment compounds value and resilience.
We’re especially excited about expanding recognition and identity infrastructure into real world settings where access, authentication, movement and transactions converge. These moves unlock new experiences while reinforcing the platform itself. If you enjoy complex systems, first-principles thinking and high-agency environments, this is a uniquely dynamic place to build a career.
