I am working in San Francisco this week. On my way to our office, large screens in the lobby of one of the buildings downtown caught my eye—they were showing a vivid display of the cover of the most recent issue of _Fortune_ magazine. It was Salesforce’s headquarters, and the cover featured the company’s CEO Marc Benioff.

That’s not really a surprise—as one of the world’s most successful technology companies, Salesforce deservedly gets its share of coverage in the press. But a prominent list of company names on the cover made me pause and take notice.

Like any CEO, I’m very attuned to any mention of my customers’ businesses. And as I looked at that cover, I spotted first one customer, and then another and then another. They were listed under the headline “[The Future 50—Why These Innovative Companies Are Primed for Explosive Growth](http://fortune.com/2017/10/19/future-50-companies-intro/).”

Source: [Fortune](http://fortune.com/)

Echoing the famous Fortune 500 list, the Future 50 are the publicly-traded companies _Fortune_ considers to be the most forward-thinking and best-positioned for future market impact. When I later looked at [the full list of 50](http://fortune.com/future-50/) on _Fortune_’s website, I realized that 10 of the businesses—that’s more than a third of the software and SaaS companies listed—are SparkPost customers.

To be honest, seeing these customers recognized for the great work they’re doing confirmed what I already knew: they’re remarkable businesses. But it did strike me as meaningful to see so many customers named in a single list like this. If nothing else, it demonstrates they collectively understand the power of email to support the high-growth applications and services they’re building.

Consider just a few of the Future 50: [Zillow uses email to nurture user engagement in and outside of its app](https://www.sparkpost.com/resources/case-studies/zillow/). Workday is building email into its workforce enterprise SaaS product. Twitter relies on email notifications as a key growth surface for its service. Salesforce itself knows that email is essential throughout its marketing and CRM suites. And so many other companies in this list have a similar story.

I and my team give heartfelt congratulations to our customers and the other innovators that made this inaugural list of the Future 50. We’re also excited to help them—and all of [our customers](https://www.sparkpost.com/customers/)—grow and shape the ways we work and use information.

In a nice coincidence, the reason for my trip to San Francisco is to host a roundtable of some of our customers. I’m looking forward to congratulating those that made _Fortune_’s list in person—and also to supporting them and every one of our customers as they continue to do great things with email.

—Phillip Merrick