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Inc Magazine Review
Inc. Magazine is a monthly publication that concentrated on all issues related to running a small business. The magazine focuses on a few areas (the share of their content in each area is in parenthesis):
- Small and medium companies (60%)
Articles relating to all issues affecting small businesses, including: sales, marketing, financing, operations, technology, management, and others.
- Large companies (25%)
Profiles and case studies of large companies (companies with several hundred million in revenue).
- Start ups (10%)
Issued relating to start ups. These mostly have to do with getting financing.
- Lifestyle (5%)
Profiles of consumer products that business people will supposedly enjoy.
My Opinion
One of the problems with this magazine is the label of "small business". In the business world, a small business is one that has about $10-$100 million in revenue. But when most people hear "small business", they think more in the lines of $50,000 to $1 million in revenue. Therefore, most people should realize that this magazine deal with medium-sized businesses. The ideal reader of this magazine is someone running a company that has about $1-$10 in revenue.Similarly, the content relating to startups is also skewed towards the higher-end of the market. Their articles on startups deal mostly with companies that are looking for a few million in venture capital money. Small-time entrepreneurs who are looking for tips on how to bootstrap their growth and financing by getting a bank loan or loans from friends will be dissapointed. The magazine also tends to be light on web-based start-ups, which I also think will disappoint alot of people because so much of the popular startup literature deals with web companies. Some people might look at this as "underweighting" the technology sector but it really isn't.
The content related to large businesses is largely irrelevant because the articles concentrate on running the business as opposed to whether or not it's a good investment. You can also get this kind of content from Fortune and Forbes, which I assume most people do.
Most of the articles which profile the different businesses and people are very short. Sometimes you'll see a two-paragraph article that says, "Jennifer opened up a cupcake store last year and now wants to grow it to 5,000 stores in 5 years. Here's 3 sentences summing up what she needs to do." The lack of depth in the analysis will be bothersome to some. Others may appreciate the clarity involved in boiling down the big picture to a few key points. This is not good or bad - it is a personal preference.
My Recommendation
As an investor or trader, you can get a lot of value from reading general business magazines because it sharpens your business analytical skills. Unfortunately, that principle doesn't apply in this case because most of the issues that relate to running small businesses (e.g. networking, project management, etc) don't apply to larger public companies. One great thing about the magazine, though, is that it is super cheap at $15 for two years. I would highly recommended Inc Magazine for small business owners but for strictly investing purposes, don't get it.Welcome
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