Acquisition International Magazine nominated Communications & Research, Inc. for its 2015 Business Excellence Award.  We were nominated for our early-stage venture capital deals and our success at marketing startups. This is a big deal for our small company. C&R’s Joe Ross and JD Snyder are the brains behind the firm’s nerdy deal-making acumen.

When the magazine asked us why we deserve this honor, we told them that we don’t just specialize in launching new products and services. We have a history of putting our own capital into startup deals. We suspect Acquisition International was also impressed by the firm’s research capabilities and how they’re used to drive the growth of our private equity investments.

C&R survived the dot-com bubble of the late ’90s and is prospering in the current expansion. The firm has invested its profits in venture deals at a number of levels.

After making double-digit profit gains in C&R’s stock fund in recent years, we decided we can better manage risk in the stock market. Going forward, our investments in venture deals will be limited. We will instead focus on using our marketing, PR, executive-level sales and research skills to offer sweat equity to startups. Looking back, it wasn’t our funding that created our startup successes; it was our marketing strategies and the hard work put into executing those strategies.

“We want to stick with marketing and be king-makers, not kings,” said Kathy Schaefer, C&R owner and partner.