When I mentioned to a well-regarded local investor that we were preparing a list of L.A.’s fastest growing companies, he asked, “How can you tell if it’s the complete list?”

We can’t and it’s not. But I suspect that it’s as close to the complete story as you’re going to find, thanks to the tremendous efforts of our two researchers, Edvard Pettersson and Jennifer Johnson.

This is never an easy list to prepare because private companies are often reluctant to share their financial information. Many just flat-out refuse. The ones that didn’t verify their data for us were excluded from the list even if a preliminary check indicated that they might be among the 100 fastest growers.

We could, of course, publish the companies without their verification, but past experience has shown much of that data to be invalid. And there’s no sense running a list unless we believe the information to be correct.

That’s what we’re delivering this week, starting on page 1 and running from pages 31 to 66.

Mark Lacter

Editor