The company has not necessarily been in stealth mode, but has been expanding the target audience for its hundreds of data points on demographic, geographic and real estate information. "We started out focused on the economic-development business," Chuck Branch tells GlobeSt.com. Branch came to ACN as a business development executive in November 1999 and became president of the company one year later.

Like many websites, ACN had its roots in a print publication making a transition to the Web; in this case, Memphis-based Towery Publications, a chamber directory publisher. At the request of those chamber clients, Towery took the first steps in 1997 to create an apples-to-apples database for companies to do community research, primarily for corporate relocations or expansions.

ACN was able to develop a database that had 200 pieces of information on every county and metropolitan statistical area in the country, Branch says. The company was sold to Birmingham-based Vulcan Publications in May 1999. Ultimately, Vulcan merged its two economic-development publications with ACN, and the company re-incorporated as Xpansion Lab Inc. in January 2000. Vulcan is now an investor in Xpansion Lab, along with company executives and Morristown, NJ-based site consulting firm Wadley-Donovan Group.