Pete Maldonado, 37

Peter Maldonado does lots of things fast. There’s his walk, more like a purposeful jog. There’s his rapid-fire speech, particularly when he’s excited about something. (That’s pretty much always, when talking about his business, Naples-based healthy meat snacks company Chomps.) And then there’s the zippy, white Jaguar F-Type R he drives, packed with 550 horsepower.

More proof of speed: Chomps. Revenues have grown at the company — it’s under the LLC We Are The Chompians — anywhere from twofold to tenfold each year since it was founded in 2012. More recently, sales have roughly doubled in each of the past four years. It did $21 million in 2018, and Maldonado projects $37 million to $40 million in 2019.

Chomps started from what Maldonado and a business partner, Rashid Ali, thought was an unmet need: simple, healthy snacks with high-quality, sustainably sourced proteins for people on the go. Maldonado had been a personal trainer, works out regularly and had a business that sold frozen healthy meals to gyms, so he saw the need every day. Even so, Chomps started at home, what Maldonado thought would be a side hustle or maybe a small, hyper-niche enterprise.