Homegrown success: Hampton Roads Inc. 5000 firms

It may go without saying that a company called TheBestReputation might lean into the name it built for itself as it considers success.

TheBestReputation CEO and co-founder Chris Hinman also credits his team’s hard work for helping land the Williamsburg-based digital marketing, public relations and online reputation management firm at No. 201 on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s 5,000 fastest-growing privately held companies.

This year, 277 Virginia companies made the Inc. 5000 list, including 22 businesses headquartered in Hampton Roads. Of those 22 companies, 11 also appeared on Inc.’s 2024 list.

With 1,934% three-year growth, TheBestReputation is the top-ranking company from the Hampton Roads region on this year’s Inc. 5000 list, and it also ranked fifth among all Virginia companies on the 2025 list.

“I think it’s a testament to the hard work and to the type of online reputation that we’ve built, not only for ourselves, but for our clients,” Hinman says.

Hinman and his wife, TheBestReputation President Casi Hinman, worked as independent contractors for another online reputation management firm before forming their company in 2021. “I knew that we could design something from the ground up and do a whole lot better,” he says.

Now, the company, a first timer on the Inc. 5000, has its own proprietary system for developing leads, and works with about 70 companies across the globe. With about 15 employees and a little more than $2 million in revenue, Hinman hopes to double the company’s revenue and employees in the next year. “We’ve grown our business over 50% just in the last, say, 90 days alone,” he says.

Another Hampton Roads company, Suffolk-based Reed Integration, jumped from No. 1,961 in 2024 to No. 898 on this year’s Inc. 5000, posting 471% growth. The company focuses on systems engineering, analysis, management and training and has grown to 50 employees in 13 states. Founder and CEO Becky Reed says the company that bears her name has experienced a “unique twist” in recent years, with its training side blending with its analysis arm.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of the company’s trainings were conducted in-person, Reed says. Being forced to pivot to virtual during the pandemic led the company to its current growth. Reed Integration’s work is about 80% to 90% government contracts, with some commercial customers.

“We do some human performance analysis that factors into the training side for developing e-learning and distance learning,” she says. “We are now getting into immersive learning with virtual reality. We’re converting some of our courses to virtual reality. The training has taken a really, really cool jump into the technology side.”

That includes developing a wide range of trainings, including in operational readiness for the Coast Guard as well as work with the Air Force in areas like sexual harassment prevention.

In Virginia Beach, Vierra Construction and Development ranked No. 1,704 on Inc’s 2025 list, marking 256% three-year growth. CEO and President Ross Vierra served as a surface warfare officer in the Navy before pushing a broom as he learned the general contracting trade from the ground up. In 2011, he bought what became Axis Global Enterprises in 2021, rebranding the company to bear his name.

“It was really great because now my friends and family and everybody say, ‘Oh, I see you’re doing a project over here,” Vierra says. “Well, we’ve always been doing a project over there, but now you recognize the name.”

The real estate development, construction and integrated security company has done projects for the federal government, completed design-build work for restaurants, built secure storage facilities and hotels, and is a partner in the $130 million Trilogy at Olde Hampton multifamily project under development in Hampton, among other work. Trilogy is planned to include hundreds of apartments, town-homes and 6,000 square feet of retail. Vierra Construction was also the general contractor on the new eight-story Nautilus Observation Tower at Owl’s Creek Landing in Virginia Beach, which includes the longest steel slide in the United States.

“It’s neat to see where we’ve come from and where we’re continuing to grow and build our vision as well as our clients’,” Vierra says.