Management is, without doubt, the single most important factor in the long-term success of any company. Competition abounds in every industry, but as BB said there are two types of people, "the quick and the dead". If this analogy is to be extended to companies, the successful and the failures, the main difference between those that prosper and those that fail in a competitive environment, is the quality of the management and the people at the top. Entrepreneurs who have a history of being winners, generally continue to be winners and they inspire employees around them.

Financially, we select a company if it has an aggressive and expansion-oriented business plan, coupled with access to capital to be able to execute the business plan. Generally, successful and sustained growth means a profitable investment for risk-oriented investors.

Most investors often overlook and frequently misunderstand the relevance of market cap, by simply looking at the price of a stock and deciding if there is upside potential. A market cap analysis permits an investor to understand his/her ownership in a company. It is determined by multiplying the number of shares the company has issued to shareholders by the price of the stock.

For example, if Jagnotes.Com Inc has 12,300,000 shares issued and the stock is trading at $14.56 (closing price on Friday, April 9, 1999), the market is telling us that company is worth $179,118,750 (12.3M multiplied by share price). If you were to purchase this stock at $14.56, you are buying a small percentage of the company at a $179 million valuation. Unfortunately, we often see investors purchasing low priced stocks in companies that have issued huge numbers of shares. Our focus is to identify companies whose value of the underlying business is high, relative to the total market capitalization.

Sometimes, success will happen almost instantaneously, in other cases, it may take months to experience success , while some may take years or even fail completely. Please, understand one thing, every company that is profiled will have a certain level of risk. If you do not understand the unique relationship between risk and reward, do not invest in these types of companies. However, once the level of risk in an investment opportunity is reduced, the tremendous upside potential can be gone as well. Not always the case, as recently manifested in Yogen Fruz at $2.35 per share, Baan at $6.94, Saville Systems $5.25

We will only profile companies that have the highest potential for success relative to the perceived risk, but there are no guarantees.

If someone gives us a stock tip, the minimum we expect, is to tell us why he/she thinks the stock would appreciate in price and this is very important. So many of us dump stocks at the slightest hint of crises because in most cases we never did any due diligence or found out why we bought the stock with our over-taxed left-overs.