Development Research http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/ on-line resources en Copyright 2012 Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:12:28 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Foundation Info
  • AScribe Newswire gives America's nonprofit and public sector organizations direct, immediate access to mainstream national media.
  • California Charities database; California's Office of the Attorney General Registrar of Charitable Trusts. If you're having trouble finding a California foundation through Guidestar or other searches, this can sometimes help.
  • Foundation Center offers their Foundation Finder
  • Guidestar; a leading source of information on non profits. Access to foundation tax filings (990s).
  • IdeaList; a project of Action Without Borders, you can search or browse through listings of over 58,000 nonprofit and community organizations in 165 countries. IdeaList's goal is to match volunteers with organizations.
  • NOZA searchable donor database
  • Women in Philanthropy ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/foundation_info.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/foundation_info.html Resources Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:12:28 -0800 News and alerts
  • Business Journals
  • Marketwatch from DowJones
  • Fast Company
  • Forbes
  • Fortune
  • Google News
  • Google News Archive Search
  • LexisNexis Academic; free to Stanford users. If you are a Stanford user connecting from off campus, connect through EZProxy
  • NewsDirectory.com
  • NewsLibrary.com
  • New York Times
  • Palo Alto Online
  • Red Herring
  • RefDesk.com
  • San Francisco Chronicle
  • San Jose Mercury News
  • Stanford resources (for Stanford users only; off campus Stanford users may need to use EZProxy to access)
  • Wall St Journal, pre-1985 (Stanford users only) ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/news_and_alerts.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/news_and_alerts.html Resources Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:43:54 -0800 I need an article or obituary. Lexis-Nexis Academic, which is available from computers on campus, or off-campus through EZProxy. Otherwise, try your local public library. One popular free online source of obituaries and death notices is: ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/top-ten-faq/i_need_an_article_or_obituary.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/top-ten-faq/i_need_an_article_or_obituary.html FAQ Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:45:16 -0800 How do I access this stuff off campus? EZ Proxy, which still requires that you authenticate yourself as a Stanford user. If technically minded, you can also configure your browser to use a Stanford proxy server, which works more seamlessly than going through EZ Proxy. In some cases you may also need to use VPN to connect Just to be clear, our Development Research website is not offering any free access to databases that normally require payment. Sorry! If you work at some other institution and the database links on this website work for you, it's probably because your organization has contracted with the database providers -- just as Stanford has. Caution: Never enter your Stanford password on a web page unless that page’s address bar points to weblogin.stanford.edu. Only authorized Stanford users are permitted to use computer networks and systems of Stanford University.]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/top-ten-faq/how_do_i_access_this_stuff_off.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/top-ten-faq/how_do_i_access_this_stuff_off.html FAQ Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:17:19 -0800 How do you determine the value of a private company? private company valuation). There is no precise way of doing this, but plenty of accepted means of making estimates. The most common for our purposes is based on a multiple of sales, determined by industry statistics. This method is widely used by screening services. Rules-of-thumb/multiple of sales method: One good tool is BizStats rules of thumb page. Scroll down the page and select the firm's industry category. Read across to the multiple of sales figure, read as a percentage of sales. In the sample case of a grocery store, it says 11% - 18% of annual sales + inventory. So if the grocery store had $500M in annual sales, the firm would be worth between $55M to $90M, plus the value of the inventory. BizStats also provides some guidelines on what the net income to a business owner might be for certain businesses. For that information, visit the BizStats home page. Also, Inc. magazine provides an annually updated business valuation table that is quite useful. (Thanks to Elaine Lotto of Development Research Systems for providing updated links to the above two sources.) Keep in mind that there is an entire financial consulting industry built around private company valuation, employing CPAs, attorneys and statisticians who spend a good deal of time and earn a good deal of money to make business valuations. So don't expect, as a busy prospect researcher, to do anything more than a rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate. Using a rule-of-thumb approach such as multiple of sales is highly recommended. But there are other accepted methods, as follows. Comparable firm method: Like a home up for sale, a private company's value is not a sure thing until it is actually sold. And just as in the real estate field, a researcher can look at comparable properties to get a feel for what the business may be worth. Find a publicly traded company, in the same industry, with comparable revenue and number of employees. Find that company's total market capitalization. You are almost there. Now you have to discount the value of the private firm somewhat. That is because a privately held firm is not as liquid as a public company. That means that the owners can't easily convert their ownership into cash, as a public company stockholder can quickly do by selling shares. Other factors could come into play as well, such as cost of borrowing. Another source of info is David Lamb's Prospect Research Page on Companies and Executives, which provides a good source of industry data, as well as databases of businesses for sale -- good for gauging what a comparable business is worth. David also created a presentation on private company valuation. Also, see: INC. magazine's charts, tables and worksheets which help in valuations. Other resources: ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/top-ten-faq/how_do_you_determine_the_value.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/top-ten-faq/how_do_you_determine_the_value.html FAQ Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:43:59 -0800 Companies
  • 10-K Wizard
  • AngelList; searchable list of startups and angel investors.
  • Business valuation rules of thumb from bizstats.com; great free tool for private company valuation. Select an industry, apply sales figure, and get a rough idea of what a company is worth.
  • California Business Registration database, from California Secretary of State's office
  • CrunchBase; free database of technology companies, people, and investors.
  • Financial Dictionary provides concise definitions of 8,000 terms from the world of banking and investing, providing users with thorough and reliable meanings to all the most common, and even uncommon, financial terms.
  • Financial glossary from Blackstone Group, with financial terms used in private equity.
  • Inc. business valuation table from 2009. Another good way to get a rough idea of the value of a private company. (Thanks to Elaine Lotto of Development Research Systems for providing updated links to the Inc. and BizStats sources.)
  • Google Finance; provides short company profiles (some appear to be from Hoover's), as well as financials. Similar to Yahoo!Finance, but you don't need to first look up the stock symbol in order to get to the company profile.
  • Hedge fund resources
  • Historical Stock Pricing
  • Hoover's
  • IPO Home (Renaissance Capital)
  • IPO Resources
  • IPO Scoop is an IPO tracking website that offers a fee-based service, but also provides some free information. You can view listings of new and archived IPOs, with file dates, proposed ticker symbols, lead managers, proposed trade dates, pricing and other info.
  • Marketwatch
  • Yahoo! Finance
  • ZoomInfo; millions of executive biographies extracted from the web; cached biographies from 2001 and earlier provide a way of seeing past employment, which may not be available from someone's current online bio. ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/companies.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/companies.html Resources Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:13:07 -0800 People
  • California state pay; searchable database listing most of the salaries of employees of the State of California. Search by name, agency or income levels. Includes the state's university and college systems. Also includes a ranking of the top earners. The information source is public and originates with the state, although this database is hosted by the Sacramento Bee
  • 10-K Wizard
  • CEO Wealth Meter
  • Forbes List index, includes wealthy individuals
  • Hollywood prospect research page from USC
  • Insider Tradingfrom MarketWatch. Search for securities holdings and trades. Find an individual's stock holdings in public companies. Remember that only insiders are listed, which generally includes top officers as well as directors and shareholders who own 10% or more of the company's stock. Be sure to hit the radio button for "name" if searching on an individual's name.
  • Insider Trading from MSN Money; default search is set for MSFT; simply enter another company's ticker symbol to find inside trades.
  • Insider Trading from NASDAQ; enter last name first
  • Lawyers from Martindale-Hubbell
  • Lawyer Search, State Bar of California
  • California Professional Licenses; California's Department of Consumer Affairs license lookup page; check to see if someone is licensed in their field such as accountants, architects, nurses, psychologists, medical board, etc.
  • NASD broker search; securities dealers website that contains brokers' work history and, sometimes, degree info. The link takes you to their disclaimer page, which you must accept to perform a search.
  • National Obituary Archive;describes itself as "the world's largest repository of obituaries and death records with more than 55 million individual entries on file."
  • Obituary Archive; look up obituaries by name, date and other criteria.
  • The Official Board; similar to LinkedIn or ZoomInfo, free membership allows you to view org charts of over 20,000 companies, and to view executive biographies.
  • Patent search from Google
  • Patent search - quick & simple search from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO); easy to use, but the advanced USPTO search page below with give you more refined results.
  • Patent search from USPTO; somewhat daunting advanced search page from US Patent and Trademark Office; be prepared to type things like: in/brin-sergey to find the name of an inventor
  • Phone book white pagesmeta-search; Langenberg is a sort of "meta-search engine," tapping into a number of databases for finding phone numbers of individuals and businesses.
  • Phone number reverse directory; when you have a phone number or street address and want to find a name.
  • Physicians and medical specialists (licensed); covers California only; maintained by state Medical Board.
  • Physicians from AMA;short educational and professional background on American Medical Association members; more abbreviated listings on non-AMA members.
  • Physician Salary Survey
  • SEC EDGAR; search filings of companies which report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The forms that are of interest to development research are the one which detail an individual's stake in the company. Those forms include the annual proxy statement (DEF-14A, etc.), or the company's initial prospectus (403-B) and registration (S-1). These forms generally list the stock holdings of top management, directors and those who own 10% or more of the company. Certain individuals at those firms also file Forms 3, 4 & 5 which detail their stock ownership and trades. It's important to note that not everyone at a publicly listed company is required to post their stock holdings. Also, by definition, stock ownership information is simply not available for those at privately held firms.
  • SEC Full-Text Search; covers the last four years only.
  • Social Security Death Index
  • Tax Assessor Database; good source for finding what a real estate parcel is worth. Repository of conversion factors for converting the assessed home value into estimated market value; also source for online tax assessor pages and phone numbers of tax assessor offices.
  • Women in Philanthropy; resource originally developed by the late Ann Castle; provides an online resources page.
  • Zillow; home valuation using comparables and other factors. Opinions differ on the accuracy of Zillow's home prices. It appears to be fairly accurate for properties in the San Francisco Bay Area and other busy real estate markets. Zillow's ability to give you "Bird's Eye View" of homes in Southern California area is a real boon.
  • ZoomInfo; "search engine for discovering people, companies and relationships." Claims to have summaries of 27+ million people and 2.3+ million companies. Why is this better than just doing a Google search and finding someone's company bio? Well, a ZoomInfo search includes older as well as newer archived bios, and since the database only contains biographical material, the results are very focused and not cluttered with irrelevant stuff. ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/people.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/people.html Resources Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:01:25 -0800 The Official Board TheOfficialBoard.com is a source of company org charts and executive backgrounds. Free Membership lets you consult 15 org charts for free. Each time you add a relevant contact, you can view 10 additional org charts. Premium membership lets you consult all the org charts with no limits and contact executives by email. Similar in some ways to LinkedIn, the crowd-sourced nature of this resource means that it is growing rapidly.]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/featured/the_official_board.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/featured/the_official_board.html Featured New Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:17:16 -0800 Planes, yachts and horses Aircraft Pilots and Airplane Owners Boats/Yachts Horses ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/planes_yachts_and_horses.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/planes_yachts_and_horses.html Resources Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:19:14 -0800 Birthday Database Free Birthday Database. They report that their database contains 120 million names and birthdates. The site says that its "information comes from official government records," and that "City/State/Zip shown in our results may not be current. It is what was listed on file at the time our data was collected." ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/featured/birthday_database.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/featured/birthday_database.html Featured New Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:34:05 -0800 Salary calculators and lists
  • American Lawyer magazine's 2011 AmLaw100 list of average compensation at top law firms. The top ten listings are free, but the entire list requires premium registration. Also see the 2011 AmLaw200 lists of average compensation per partner, with the top 20 available with free registration, and the full list available for purchase. Keep in mind that these are average figures. There are some older lists online, including this full AmLaw200 profits-per-partner list from 2000.
  • California state pay; searchable database listing most of the salaries of employees of the State of California. Search by name, agency or income levels. Includes the state's university and college systems. Also includes a ranking of the top earners. The information source is public and originates with the state, although this database is hosted by the Sacramento Bee
  • CEO compensation from Forbes
  • Medical specialists salary surveys:
  • Salary Wizard; compensation calculator from salary.com
  • Siliconvalley.com compensation database; lists 2008 compensation for 145 chief executives heading Silicon Valley's largest companies based on revenue. The data was compiled from proxy filings made by May 30 and analyzed by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm. Also included is 2007 data. Database is searchable by executive name and company name:
  • Sports salaries from USA TODAY; includes average incomes of baseball, football, basketball and hockey players incomes. ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/salary_calculators_and_lists.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/salary_calculators_and_lists.html Resources Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:11:54 -0800 International First, in our FAQ section, see And here are some other resources: ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/international.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/international.html Resources Mon, 23 May 2011 17:12:29 -0800 Level Business: UK company financial data Level Business offers access to filings of UK-based companies, which in some cases includes financial statements, (accounts), shareholders and directors. Data on smaller businesses appears to be limited to contact info and type of industry. http://www.levelbusiness.com/ The documents are pdf, and are freely viewable without registration. To download, the site requires free registration.]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/featured/level_business_uk_company_fina.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/featured/level_business_uk_company_fina.html Featured Mon, 23 May 2011 09:00:36 -0800 Search tools
  • Ask
  • Bing
  • Google
  • Northern Light
  • Yahoo!
  • Zuula metasearch engine ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/search_tools.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/resources/search_tools.html Resources Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:33:25 -0800 Angel Investors angel investor is "an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...Angels typically invest their own funds, unlike venture capitalists, who manage the pooled money of others in a professionally-managed fund." AngelList is a sort of social network that connects startups with angel investors. Not only can you glean names of angel investors, but you can identify companies and their founders who may be rising stars. The people directory of Crunchbase is another means to identify angel investors and the startups they invest in. ]]> http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/new/angel_investors.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/OOD/RESEARCH/new/angel_investors.html New Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:34:27 -0800