Adam Wagner, left, and Robert Harbeson
Three-Year Avg. Annual Growth: 54.1%
Headquarters: 104 Congress St., Suite 203, Portsmouth
Product/Service: Architecture, interiors and planning design services
Partners: Robert Harbeson and Adam Wagner
Founded: 2016
Total Number of Employees: 33
Website: marketsquarearchitects.com
Adam Wagner previously worked at two firms that each made the Inc. 5000 list. Now he, and his business partner Robert Harbeson, lead a firm that made the Inc. 5,000 list of the fastest growing companies in America for 2021.
Market Square Architects, with offices in Portsmouth and Austin, Texas, is licensed to practice in 24 states and takes on a range of projects. “We do everything except public K-12 schools and prisons, Wagner says.
The partners met while working for another architecture firm. “There was a lot of synergy between us. We saw value in what each of us did,” says Wagner. Both were 40 when they decided to start their own firm. “This was our midlife crisis,” Wagner jokes.
Harbeson says they knew they wanted to take on diverse projects and be resilient to the natural ebbs and flows of the market. “When COVID hit, we had a pretty good head of steam coming into it,” he says.
Then demand for single family homes picked up in 2020. Harbeson says, “That uptick offset the hesitancy of some of our larger commercial projects.” Not only did the firm not have to lose any employees, but it also added to its staff.
The firm’s ability to take on projects nationwide also fueled growth, which typically comes through referrals. “We’ve done projects as far west at Arizona and as far south as Florida and up and down the eastern seaboard,” Wagner says. When business picked up in Texas, the partners decided to buy a business there.
“When we started, we thought long term, someday, we would like to have multiple offices. We thought it would take 10 to 15 years, no three,” says Harbeson.