Privately-held companies

One of the annoying things about investing is finding good-looking companies that are privately-held or otherwise unavailable for investing:

• Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
• Ikea
• Lego
• Louise's Trattoria
• Samy's Camera
• Trader Joe's
• Robbin's Brothers
• PRIMECAP Management

It can be difficult to find out who owns these companies, but the best place to start is Hoovers, which is owned by Dun & Bradstreet. Of course there is no way to know if these companies would actually make good investments. For instance, I was pretty excited about Google until I saw how much people paid in the IPO. Build-A-Bear Workshop looked pretty good until just before it went public and had to release it's finances. But these private companies look like solid businesses that could be very profitable to own.

I've done business with all of the companies listed in one way or another, and they all impress me. Except Ikea and Lego, they started in Los Angeles. I feel like I would have an edge when it comes to evaluating them. Mostlikely, few of these companies will go public, but I'm ready for them!