Irwin’s Year In Review: 2022

And just like that, another year has flown by. 2022 has certainly been a year for the books for team Irwin. In all areas of the business, we’ve seen significant growth in terms of Irwin’s product, team, and brand. 

To celebrate the past 12 months (and the year ahead), we wanted to share some stats and figures from this year that our team is most proud of. Interested in the details? Keep on reading to learn more about Irwin’s 2022 and all of our reasons to celebrate!

Top highlights include:

1. Significant Product Milestones
2. Notable Resource Releases
3. Award Recognition
4. Event Presence
5. 5-Year Milestone
6. Team Growth
7. Superb Customers

Significant Product Milestones

Over the past year, Irwin has seen tremendous product growth. We’ve focused on upgrading our core product and building new integrations to help thousands of global clients better manage their investor relations strategy.

Here are some of the highlights of our product journey in 2022. 

Irwin IQ

Irwin’s biggest product launch of 2022 is our latest innovation—Irwin IQ. 

This first-of-its-kind product development provides actionable shareholder, investor, activist and peer data from your IR website, while helping you understand your most impactful content.

Irwin IQ also helps to:

• Conduct better, more relevant outreach with prospective investors visiting your IR website.
• Integrate the most important details about visitors to your IR website into your Irwin dashboard, such as suggested people to target and contacts you've previously logged IR activities with.
• Know which content visitors are consuming, so you can understand which parts of your strategy are driving activity and better prepare your internal teams.

Irwin Calendar Integration

Irwin is the central hub for all investor relations activity, including all your interactions with prospective investors and shareholders, so having a strong integration with your Outlook or Google calendar is critical.

With this 2022 integration, you can now:

• Create the meeting in your work calendar and invite the Irwin Calendar Assistant to the meeting.
• All the data, including invitees, date, time, location, and title, will be pushed into your Irwin IRM.
• Any changes to the event will be updated in the Irwin record, helping you to cut down on manual data entry between your calendar and activity records.

New and Improved IRM

Maintaining your investor database shouldn't be a hassle. That’s why in 2022, we implemented new capabilities with an updated interface that will help investor relations professionals manage their contacts and activities better than before.

• Save time and effort with easier navigation
• Gain a higher level of insight with advanced filtering options
• Enhance the overall effectiveness of your investor relations efforts

Capital Markets Strategy Services

In Q1 of 2022, we launched Irwin’s Capital Markets Strategy Services—an exclusive offering to help our clients navigate the rapidly changing capital markets environment. 

Designed to provide valuable strategic advice to support your core IR responsibilities, our capital markets expertise now offers you a lens into how sell- and buy-side professionals assess your business and saves you time to focus on key strategic initiatives. Our strategic support services include:

• Enhanced investor targeting
• Board reporting services
• Analyst targeting 

Noteworthy Stats:

Notable Resource Releases

Here at Irwin, we understand the importance of helpful, evergreen resources to folks in the investor relations industry. That’s why in 2022, we made it a priority to deliver various forms of resources to our community.

Keep on reading to learn more about what we released this past year. 

The State of Investor Relations: Challenges, Opportunities, and Priorities for 2023

As many readers know, investor relations plays an integral part in the health and success of public companies globally—even more so in volatile markets where IR departments must manage changing investor expectations.

That’s why, in November of 2022, we released our annual State of Investor Relations report. This survey uncovers a wide range of IR trends through the lens of the IRO, management teams, and consultants. It also analyzes and highlights the opportunities and challenges that companies are facing from an investor relations perspective, including:

• The impact of the current macro environment on expectations of IR teams
• Challenges companies will face in the coming year
• The KPIs IR teams are held to
• Where IR teams plan to spend more of their time and resources in 2023

IR Jobs—Powered by Irwin

In May of 2022, Irwin was thrilled to launch ir-jobs.com—your go-to destination for all things related to careers in the investor relations space. Any visitor to the site can stay apprised of all the latest professional development news, events, and industry best practices. 

We believe that investor relations is a role unlike any other—one that marries the complexity of finance, the specificity of law, and the finesse of a good communicator. With that in mind, we know it can be challenging to find or develop talent with the IR skillset. Our goal is to connect talent to open roles while improving the discourse about a career in investor relations more broadly. 

Learn more about how we plan to continue connecting talent to open roles while improving the discourse about a career in investor relations more broadly in 2023 here. 

Guide to Investor Relations 101

In Q3 of 2022, we launched our Ultimate Guide to Investor Relations. Whether you’re just starting to devise an IR strategy, or you’re refreshing your existing one, it never hurts to reassess your processes and come up with new ways to engage investors.

In this guide, we outline best practices for engaging with current and prospective investors, analysts, and your internal team that will continue to be applicable in 2023.

State of the IRO

Behind every great company on Wall Street stands an unsung hero, the Investor Relations Officer, or IRO. And while many people view the CEO to be the face of the company, the business’ relationship with the investment community is often carefully managed and maintained by the elusive IRO.

In recent years the role and responsibility of the IRO has changed, and the expectations placed upon them has become increasingly sophisticated. That's why in August of 2022, we released our State of the IRO report. 

Readers can now learn more about how the profession has evolved, and what makes the IRO an integral part of their investor relations strategy.

Award Recognition

While self-celebration is important, we’re thrilled—and incredibly grateful—to be able to reflect on the external recognition Irwin has received over the course of 2022. 

We are the proud recipients of the following awards and recognitions of achievements (in no specific order):

Ranked No. 13 on LinkedIn Top Startups 2022

LinkedIn’s 5th annual Top Startups list (released in September of 2022) is the resource to find the startups to pay attention to. Irwin is incredibly proud to be among the 15 Canadian companies that are rising to the challenges of the moment and continuing to innovate and gain attention in 2022, ranking no. 13 on the list. 

Named One of Canada's Companies-to-Watch in Deloitte's Technology Fast 50TM Program

In 2022, Irwin received a Companies-to-Watch award as part of the 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 50TM program. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the award recognizes emerging companies based on their revenue growth percentage.

Ranked Top 3 on the 2022 List of Best Workplaces™ in Canada

The Irwin team is incredibly proud to be recognized as number three on this year's 2022 Best Workplaces™ in Canada—Organizations with Under 50 Employees List. The 2022 Best Workplaces™ in Canada competition is employee-driven and represents multiple industries and sizes of organizations. 75% of each organization's score is based on confidential employee feedback, from the globally recognized Trust Index® Survey. Irwin scored an exceptional 98%.

Named to Inc.’s Inaugural Power Partner Awards

This year, Irwin was recognized by Inc. Business Media in the inaugural Power Partner Awards, honouring B2B organizations across the globe that have proven track records supporting other companies grow. All 252 companies on this year's list received top marks from clients for being instrumental in helping leaders navigate the dynamic world of business.

Recognized on the 2022 Best Workplaces™ In Ontario

In 2022, Irwin was recognized by Great Place to Work on its 2022 Best Workplaces™ in Ontario list. This award is based on direct feedback from Irwin employees that were surveyed by Great Place to Work®. 

Ranked No. 25 on The Globe and Mail's Fourth-Annual Ranking of Canada's Top Growing Companies

Back in Q3 of this year, Irwin was included in the 2022 Report on Business ranking of Canada's Top Growing Companies for the second year in a row. Canada's Top Growing Companies ranks Canadian businesses on three-year revenue growth, and Irwin earned its spot at No. 25 with three-year growth of 1684%.

Designated as an Approved Professional Development Unit Provider by NIRI

In the final months of 2022, we were thrilled to announce our newest collaboration with NIRI: The Association for Investor Relations as an officially Approved Professional Development Unit (PDU) Provider. 

This partnership will bring the programming and education initiatives of both our organizations closer together in 2023, and will allow NIRI Investor Relations Charter (IRC) holders to earn PDUs at select Irwin educational events.  

G2 Reports 

Throughout 2022, Irwin was recognized by G2 in their quarterly reports, awarding Irwin with the following badges:

Event Presence

Over the last 12 months, Irwin sponsored, participated in, planned, and led 45 events across North America. Most notably, we were proud to be one of NIRI’s platinum sponsors this year as its annual conference returned for the first time since 2019.

Let’s break our event presence down a bit further, shall we?

As we head into 2023, we look forward to partnering with organizations to develop events that promote the growth of world-class education, networking, and product and service discovery. 

PS: Keep up with where Irwin will be in 2023 (and all other top IR news) on our LinkedIn.

5-Year Milestone

In 2022, Irwin hit a significant milestone—we turned five years old! 

From partnering with  our first client to securing a USD $20M Series A financing deal, Irwin has come a long way in five years. Thank you to our clients, employees, partners and investors for your consistent trust and support that has contributed to our continued success. 

Looking back as we move forward, our executive team David Whyte, Mark Fasken, and Brad Robertson put their heads together to reflect on the most important truths they’ve learned while building a thriving business together. 

Learn more about the five lessons Irwin’s executive team has learned over the last five years.

Team Growth

None of these accomplishments would’ve been possible without the help of every single employee on team Irwin—which only continues to grow. Over the past 12 months, we saw 51 new hires (!) across all departments, including Product, Engineering, Sales, Finance and Operations, Marketing, Customer Success, and Research. 

We’re also incredibly proud to announce that Irwin put forward nine internal promotions for pre-existing Irwin team members. It’s important to our co-founders—David Whyte (CEO) and Mark Fasken (COO)—to promote from within while allowing the wider team opportunities to grow within Irwin. And we will continue to do so moving into 2023 and beyond.  

As one of Canada’s Top-Growing companies, Irwin provides ample opportunities to supercharge your career growth, and build exceptional relationships while doing amazing work. 

Check out our open job opportunities today. 

Superb Customers

Forces that drive the innovation economy—such as access to capital, a government that encourages and supports entrepreneurship, along with founders and employees motivated to drive change—are often discussed and popularized.

However, another equally important (yet often overlooked) factor is the willingness of buyers to take a leap of faith and partner with smaller, up-and-coming companies that are working hard to drive true innovation.

Thank you to every client for your strong support and for putting your trust and faith in us. You are the driving force behind innovation. In return, we promise to continue to listen, be more agile and forward-thinking, and always put your interests first. Without you, Irwin wouldn’t have the opportunities that we do to drive progress in our industry. 

What’s Next in 2023? 

As you can tell, Irwin has seen a lot of growth this year. So what’s next for 2023? We have a lot planned on the product side, with new features and integrations, a focus on building out our technical teams, an even busier year for events and partnerships, exciting key hires, and hopefully, more togetherness than ever.