How We Created This Year’s List

Setting out to identify the most promising industries for starting a business in the coming year, a team of Inc.com reporters and freelancers scoped out data from three private research companies and researched independently (which included all sorts of standard reporting procedures, including but not limited to: phoning reality-show agents, interviewing used-car-salesmen wannabees, and getting a haircut at at the country’s best barbershop). The data we compiled, compared, and contrasted came from Sageworks Inc. , which does past and current financial analysis of privately held companies, AnythingResearch.com , which provides industry market research analysis, reports, and publications, and IBISWorld , which provides detailed past industry growth percentages, revenue forecasts for the next five years, employment growth, profit margin averages, and industry competition ratings

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How We Created This Year’s List