BM 490: Strategic Management

A private company does not offer or trade its company stock to the general public on the stock market exchanges; instead, the company's stock is offered, owned and traded or exchanged privately. Privately held companies generally have fewer or less comprehensive reporting and transparency requirements than publicly traded companies.

Source: Library of Congress Research Guide - Private Companies

Researching private companies can be difficult because so much information about them is not published for public consumption. Keep reading to discover some strategies that will help you dig deeper.

Because private companies may not release much information to the public and the analysis/reports that exist for large, public companies like Target or Volkswagen do not exist, you may have to think "outside the box" to locate useful information. Here are some suggestions:

• Reach out to the company - often their public relations or human resources dept. might be helpful. Are they doing a lot of hiring? Can they share promotional information with you? The information will be very favorable to the company, of course, but it does tell you how the company sees itself.
• Search news headlines - what kind of information has the company used to promote itself? Has a key executive within the company given an interview? Have they been recruited from another company? How long has the company been in operation? Has there been any research by journalists that is publicly available? 
• Zoom out and research the general industry/market that the company competes within. For example, if your company operates coffee shops only within a particular state, research business trends within that state, or research the overall trends within the industry. Labor and market statistics and trends published by state and federal government can be invaluable (see websites page for more ideas).
• Contact the department of business development or labor within the state where the business is located (see Corporate Registration and Internal Revenue Service links above). There may be information on how the company filed to operate within that state - is it a partnership? A limited liability company? What kind of paperwork/documentation did it have to submit to establish itself within the state?