The thing with a company like Gartner isn't that they're explicitly biasing their results based on how much you pay them but the whole game is rigged in general against small companies unless they've made a real name for themselves outside of the big analyst channels.

- If they're not Gartner clients, the relevant analyst may just not be very familiar with them. There are a zillion little software companies out there, many of which do a crap job of explaining what they do and what their unique value is. (Go to a big tradeshow sometime and talk to booth staff.)

- Gartner's MQ requirements are very biased towards their enterprise clients. They want customer references and have a very detailed questionnaire that may not align very well with what a small software company can respond to and, yes, is a big time sink to even try.

- Gartner does some other reports that highlight what they consider innovative small companies or up and comers but generally speaking none of those are going to be in the upper right of an MQ.