Linode has been around since 2003 and only made the list for the first time in 2011, which happens to be right after several years of massive growth in the indu

Linode has been around since 2003 and only made the list for the first time in 2011, which happens to be right after several years of massive growth in the industry. It seems quite plausible that they would legitimately make the Inc 500 list. Another way to approximate their number of customers would be by IP address assignments: http://bgp.he.net/search?search[search]=linode&commit=Search http://bgp.he.net/search?search[search]=linode&commit=Se... I count 176,640 IPv4 addresses, and that's only direct allocations - their older customers are still using IP addresses owned by Linode's datacenter vendors (SoftLayer, HE, etc.). If what you say is true, I have no doubt that some companies fake it to get on the Inc 500 list, but given the facts about Linode it seems fairly unlikely that they faked it, and quite possible that they could be spending millions on infrastructure upgrades.