Inc. Magazine May 2019

The idea that entrepreneurs can change the world is central to Inc.’s mission, but the sentiment can be overstated. Witness how early episodes of HBO’s Silicon Valley lampooned the bloated pledges of certain tech founders: “Making the world a better place, through minimal message-oriented transport layers.” At Inc., we don’t dismiss good business ideas, even if they don’t lend themselves to snappy slogans. And yet it’s inspiring to see companies swing for the fences. Our May issue focuses on businesses that are tackling big, complex issues that affect everyone. Executive director of editorial Jon Fine identified four key areas in need of innovation: climate change; community; food and drink; and health. He and his team then found the companies—some big, most small—that are pushing fresh approaches and creating the industries of…

Koch’s Turkey Farms sits on 300 acres in a hilly part of Pennsylvania at the southern edge of the Pocono Mountains. For four generations, since 1939, the Koch family has been raising turkeys there. In the 1990s, the company became known as an industry pioneer for its humane practices and the clean diet that its turkeys eat. It sells around a million turkeys each year, 30 percent of them in the run-up to Thanksgiving. Like that of all farms, Koch’s Turkey’s business rises and falls largely according to forces outside of its control: the price of grain, trade conflicts, diseases that threaten its flock. But, in 2015, something entirely different happened. On Thanksgiving Day that year, a New Yorker named Alice Norton posted on an online cooking forum that her family…

THE DISINFORMATION DEFENDERS While Graphika does disin for mation defense for some large clients, Austinbased New Knowledge specializes almost entirely in the practice—but was criticized for weaponizing social media during Alabama’s 2017 special election. After spotting and mapping the spread of false information, these services can identify where such campaigns began and help affected companies provide the right information to law enforcement and the social media platforms. THE AMBIENT LISTENERS Most com panies won’t pay for those services on an ongoing basis, but a good alternative is to use one of the “social listening” applications that have arisen in recent years. Services like Mention and Keyhole allow you to track mentions of your company—or industry—across many social platforms. You won’t get the same level of sleuthing, but you will spot bad behavior sooner,…

Victory Belt Publishing (Las Vegas) FOUNDED 2006 PROJECTED 2019 SALES Mid-eight figures “When I started Victory Belt, I was a published author of nearly a dozen books and a professional practitioner of muay thai, a martial arts discipline native to Thailand,” says owner Erich Krauss. “My goal was to publish health and fitness books on subjects I liked and had researched. In 2014, we published our first keto book, Keto Clarity. I knew keto would be a wave and publishing niche. Keto worked for me, and I knew it could work for others, and that if I brought highquality titles to market quickly, they’d sell.” Keto-Mojo (St. Helena, California) FOUNDED 2017 2018 SALES $16.5 million “In early 2015,” says co-founder Dorian Greenow, “I went on a keto diet. I bought a ketone meter, which uses ketone strips,…

GHOSTING • verb Not what your ex did, but when “a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact.” Jobs and dating have officially collided. Next, watch out for “hot bedding,” “work-love balance,” and “360-degree performance appraisals.” Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago FAKE SPONCONS • noun Wannabe “influencers” hyping themselves with social media posts that falsely imply they contain sponsored content. Which reminds me: Thanks, #Bollinger, #Rolex, and #Bentley! Source: The Atlantic SYMBOL BRAND • noun By dropping its name from its logo of interlocking red and yellow circles, Mastercard aspires to join the elite rank of “symbol brands,” which are universally recognized by a shape. Hey, it worked for Christianity. Source: Mastercard GENERATION ALPHA • noun “The tech-savvy young children of millennials whose rising influence could soon make Gen Z an after-thought.” This…

More than three-quarters of all Americans under 49 are on a social platform, according to Pew, but among CEOs that percentage shrinks. Are those execs who choose to sit out missing a chance to engage with customers—or dodging a bullet and a time suck? We asked Sallie Krawcheck, who has more than two million followers on LinkedIn, and Beatriz Ramos, who doesn’t even own a cell phone. BEATRIZ RAMOS Co-founder and CEO of Dada.nyc, a social network where users communicate through drawings Is having a personal brand good for business? I don’t have any social media presence besides LinkedIn. We’re trying to build a thing so complex, I need to have the fewest distractions possible. I need to put a filter between me and everybody else so I can keep that space to do…