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When Cyrus Massoumi ruptured his eardrum (during a flight), he tried to find a qualified ENT. Unfortunately, the process took a grueling four days.

Interestingly enough, this experience was the spark for an interesting venture: ZocDoc. In fact, the company recently announced a $3 million round of funding from Khosla Ventures.

True, the online healthcare space is fairly crowded with major players like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). However, while they are focused on medical records, ZocDoc's mission is on something that often gets neglected – searching and scheduling of physicians. With ZocDoc, patients can search the database on criteria such as specialty, location and insurance qualifications (which can be critical). All in all, it's an interesting idea with a large market potential.

As of now, ZocDoc is only limited to Manhattan and Brooklyn. Moreover, the site has only a few specialty categories, such as dental and dermatology. But all this should change soon since the company now has some capital to move things forward.

Currently, the site has about 30,000 registered users and the growth rate is a torrid 50% per month -- an indication there is a serious need for the service.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

John W. Nichols, who is the co-founder of Devon Energy (NYSE: DVN), died recently. He was 93.

As should be no surprise, his life provides many lessons for budding entrepreneurs. Interestingly enough, his innovations were not necessarily about creating new products. Instead, he was an innovator of finance.

Nichols started his career as an accountant and audited the financials for oil companies. Leveraging this experience, he started an oil company in 1941. With sky-high income taxes, Nichols structured innovative financial vehicles to minimize the bite from Uncle Sam. For example, he was the first to register a public oil & gas drilling fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And it was a hit -- he attracted large sums of capital from wealthy individuals (even Hollywood stars like Barbara Stanwick).

No doubt, Nichols biggest feat was the creation of Devon. He formed the venture in 1971 with the help of his son, a lawyer.

The financial innovation didn't stop as Nichols developed the so-called royalty fund, which became a standard in the oil industry.

It was also a big spur for growth. After all, Devon is today a $43 billion company.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Pilgrim's Pride's home roots in the small town of Pittsburg, Texas, perhaps explain why it is the largest chicken producer in the U.S., even ahead of competitor Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE: TSN) in Arkansas. In 1946, Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim dressed like a standard Pilgrim and tucked a small chicken under his arm when completing orders for customers. He gave away free chicks when he sold chicken feed as a way to expand his market for chicken feed. As of today, Pilgrim's Pride operates chicken processing plants in 13 states and Mexico and processes 44 million chickens per week, resulting in 9 billion pounds of chickens per year and over 528 million chicken eggs per year.

Pilgrim's Pride's operations are almost exclusively located in the U.S. close to its farms, and it has become the second-largest chicken supplier to Mexico as well. It does have processing plants in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Along with such huge chicken-producing numbers come a few problems, as a huge product recall in 2002 due to Lysteria contamination killed seven people and made over 40 customers sick. In 2004, more than 24,000 hens were destroyed after a strain of avian flu was found in Hopkins County, Texas.

Pilgrim's Pride is still based in the same location where it was founded over 60 years ago, but today stands as a completely vertically-integrated company: it owns every process and facility from egg to table, as it says. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Publix Super Markets (OTC: PUSH) and KFC, a division of Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) ,can be counted as some of Pilgrim's Pride's largest customers.

Be sure to check out more Big Company, Small Town posts.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Johnnie Bryan Hunt, eponymous founder of J.B. Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT), was, like so many Depression-era children, a jack-of-many-trades. He picked cotton, harvested grain, sold lumber, auctioned livestock, sold lawn sod, and drove a truck. He was a handy soul, inventing a rice hull press and designing a unique poultry truck.

It was the rice hulls that would be the start of J.B. Hunt. J.B. came up with the concept of using rice hulls for chicken bedding. He and a partner used the rice hull business as seed money to buy five trucks and seven trailers and in 1969 started J.B. Hunt Transport. Today the company operates 11,000 trucks and about 47,000 trailers and containers, though its founder died in 2006 -- in time to see his little transport business become the largest publicly-traded trucking company in the world.

It's fitting that J.B. Hunt, which made its start on the profit earned from chicken farmers, should be based in rural Arkansas -- the land of poultry. Lowell, Arkansas is a tiny town, made up of only about 5,000 residents, so J.B. Hunt is a big force. With 16,000 employees, the company could triple the town's size based on its payroll alone.

Be sure to check out more Big Company, Small Town posts.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Publix Super Markets is the largest employee-owned supermarket chain in the U.S. with 936 stores in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. You must be an employee of Publix to buy stock in the company. More than 30% of the stock is owned by employees, and more than 30 million shares are owned by members of the founding family -- Jenkins. Its chairman is a family member -- Charlie Jenkins, Jr.

Publix ranks number 11 on the Forbes list of largest private companies, and 107 on the Forbes 500 list. It employs more than 100,000 employees, with revenues over $23 billion.

Yes, if you haven't figured it out, the company was founded by a Jenkins -- George W. Jenkins, Jr., in Winter Haven, Florida, in 1930. In 1940, Jenkins built Florida's first supermarket by mortgaging an orange grove. Jenkins moved the headquarters for Publix to Lakeland, Florida, in 1951, and built its first distribution warehouse there. In 2005, Publix celebrated its 75th anniversary.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Is there any piece of furniture more classically American than the La-Z-Boy recliner? It goes hand in hand with the image of Dad -- any Dad, all Dads, from the 1950s to today -- enjoying the simple pleasure of sitting with his feet up and his head back, tempting sleep as he reads the paper. After a long day at work but before the wife puts a delicious roast on the table, there's always time to relax a bit in the world's most famous comfy chair.

La-Z-Boy (NYSE: LZB) invented the first version of that iconic chair in 1929. The company got its start a few years earlier when two cousins, Edward M. Knabusch and Edwin J. Shoemaker, founded the Kna-Shoe Manufacturing Co. in Monroe, Michigan. They made furniture and cabinets in the proverbial start-up garage, and they has some initial success, especially with new designs like the Gossiper, a bench with a phone stand built in. But competitors kept stealing their designs and their profits. So when someone suggested that they upholster their popular wooden recliner, they proceeded carefully, filing for patents and choosing a distinctive name. Sit-N-Snooze and Slack-Back were in the running, but La-Z-Boy was the name they finally selected for the world's first reclining upholstered chair.

The La-Z-Boy was a huge hit, although it hadn't yet achieved its truly classic form. That occurred in 1953, when the Otto-Matic model was introduced. The long-running problem of the ottoman, a separate piece of furniture needed to support the feet while relaxing in a comfy chair, had now been solved. From now on, the ottoman was rendered superfluous, since the La-Z-Boy could offer a built-in foot rest. Oh, sweet perfection!

This post is part of my series featuring established companies and the smaller, more aggressive or innovative rivals that may eventually succeed them.

I remember way, way back to November 2006 when Wall Street was stunned that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) was paying the ungodly sum of $1.65 billion for privately held YouTube. How were they to monetize this goofy, home video web site? Since November 2006, it appears that Google got a bargain when compared to other social networking web sites.

Facebook has over 80 million users including a new Facebook profile for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Facebook attained Wall Street relevancy last year when Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) agreed to pay the unheard of $246 million for a 1.6% ownership stake. That October 24, 2007, Microsoft investment valued Facebook at nearly $10 billion in the private equity world. As of yet, there is no filed Facebook IPO, but investors bet the company will file an IPO before the end of 2009.

The new player capturing headlines in the social networking world is LinkedIn. The company is designed for the business and professional world. The more than 23 million registered users represent over 150 different industries. It's a place to swap ideas, best practices and other opportunities.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Cabela's Inc. (NYSE: CAB) has come a long way since the husband and wife team of Dick and Mary Cabela sold outdoor gear from their kitchen in 1961. Today, Cabela's has become the largest mail-order, retail, and internet outdoor outfitter in the world, with record revenues of $2.3 billion in 2007. The company sponsors dozens of outdoor events, from the Cornhusker State Games to the Iditarod, and was named one of the Top 100 Companies to Work For in the Forbes January 2000 issue.

The company's world headquarters is located just off Route 80 in a small town called Sidney, Nebraska. Sidney has also come a long way since being called the "wickedest town in the west" back in 1868. The frontier town now holds more than 6,000 residents and was named one of the Top 100 Rural Communities in America in Boom Town, USA by Jack Schultz. Cabela's is by far the largest employer in Sidney, with more than 2,000 employees. The town's Memorial Health Center is a distant second, employing 300 people.

According to Cabela's, the Sidney store sees millions of visitors each year. In addition to all the fishing, hunting, climbing, and camping gear your heart can desire, the store is outfitted with museum-quality animal displays, huge aquariums, and the largest of trophy animals scattered around the store. They have a delicatessen-style restaurant with selections that would make your mouth water, including elk, wild boar, ostrich, and bison sandwiches. Cabela's even has a large campground and RV park outside its store where visitors can put their newly purchased equipment to good use.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

This entry in the Big Company, Small Town series features one of the great recent American business success stories, as this powerhouse brand came from very humble beginnings only 30 years ago.

Ben & Jerry's was started in 1978, when Long Island, N.Y., natives Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield used a $12,000 investment to open up a homemade ice cream scoop shop in Burlington, Vermont. The Ben & Jerry's shop grew rapidly in popularity, and by 1980 they began packing pints to sell in grocery stores. By 1985, the company's sales were more than $9 million, and it began building its manufacturing plant in nearby Waterbury, Vermont. The plant in Waterbury was then opened to the public for tours of Ben & Jerry's ice cream making operations, creating a tourist attraction for the town, which has a population of around 1,700.

Although Ben & Jerry's was bought in 2000 by Unilever (NYSE: UN) for $326 million, the company still maintains its local roots, with its headquarters in South Burlington and its factory still open for tours in Waterbury. The founders of Ben & Jerry's, while no longer holding any positions within the company, have worked with Unilever to make sure it remains as socially conscious as when they ran it, keeping that small-town, grassroots feel that made it such a success worldwide.

To this day, Ben & Jerry's maintains its Free Cone Day, which Ben & Jerry started to honor the first anniversary of their ice cream shop.

Be sure to check out more Big Company, Small Town posts.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Oshkosh B'Gosh, the well-known children's clothing manufacturer, was founded in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1895. As are most of the cities in Wisconsin's Fox River Valley, Oshkosh was incubated first on the fur trade in the early 1800s, then was built upon the railroads and the lumber industry, and finally, it rests on light and medium manufacturing and the pursuit of higher education and culture. Currently, Oshkosh has a population in the neighborhood of 65,000, and it covers more than 24 square miles.

Oshkosh B'Gosh is probably the best-known namesake of its home city. Though the company's manufacturing operations have been moved away, it still maintains its corporate headquarters there. The company began as a manufacturer of sturdy clothes for working people, most especially its trademark overalls. It wasn't until the mail-order company Miles Kimball featured Oshkosh B'Gosh overalls in one of its catalogs that the company moved its products into retail stores. At that time, Oshkosh B'Gosh expanded its children's clothing line, which would eventually become the company's mainstay.

Two other companies have carried the name Oshkosh to great heights in the business world. One is Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE: OSK), formerly called Oshkosh Truck, and the other was Chief Oshkosh Beer. However, perhaps the most renowned feature of Oshkosh is the yearly Experimental Aircraft Association Airventure air show (EAA). During that annual event, Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, becomes the busiest airport in the world.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Like most big companies located in small towns, Tyson Foods (NYSE: TSN) has a delightfully quirky origin. John Tyson, owner of a battered truck and 500 chickens, opportunist, and debtor in the Depression-era 1930s struck an idea that probably seemed like folly to his neighbors: he'd deliver chickens to Chicago and Kansas City, where they'd get more money.

I'm sure for every story like Tyson's, there were 100 that didn't turn out so auspiciously. But in this tale, the hero comes back to his little Arkansas hometown with a profit and pays off his debts. He keeps on raising and selling birds in points north, eventually devising a plan to keep more of the profits by "vertically integrating" (I'll bet dollars-to-doughnuts he didn't call it that) and incubating his own chicks instead of buying them from a hatchery, as well as milling his own feed instead of buying it from a feed store.

This wasn't the end of Tyson's forethought. He bought a broiler farm in Springdale, Arkansas (beginning the company's history in that town) and started to cross-breed birds designed for meat production, instead of using heritage (or "pedigree") breeds.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

As with many interstate travelers, the Cracker Barrel is a regular meal stop during my family vacations. Partaking of some comfort food, perusing the country store for toys and foodstuffs we recall from our childhoods, and resting for a spell in the rocking chairs can be just the thing after long hours on the road.

But also like many travelers, I'm sure, I had no idea that the Cracker Barrel came from the small town of Lebanon (pronounced LEB-nun by many natives), Tennessee, the county seat of Wilson County, east of Nashville.

A local spring was the chosen site for the town, and a nearby grove of red cedars inspired the town's biblical name. The town was incorporated in 1819, and Cumberland University opened its doors there in 1842. The town square -- which today features antique and gift shops that bring tourists from far and wide -- was the site of a Civil War battle in 1862. Some 130 confederate soldiers are buried at Lebanon's historic Cedar Grove Cemetery.

The town expanded once the Tennessee and Pacific Railroad came to town after the Civil War, followed by the Lebanon Woolen Mills and the Gulf Red Cedar Company in 1908. General George Patton's tanks passed through the town on their way to Europe, and after World War II, the town expanded again, with the opening of Tennessee's first industrial park, which is the site of Cracker Barrel's corporate headquarters.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Few companies are as strongly associated with their hometowns as L.L. Bean, which has been producing outdoor clothing, sporting goods, and brightly colored preppy wear in Freeport, Maine, since 1912. The company's first product, the iconic rubber boot called the Maine hunting shoe, was manufactured in Freeport, and quickly became a big hit despite the fact that most of the first boots sold were returned due to a design defect.

In the past 95 or so years, both L.L. Bean and Freeport have come a long way. The company store, which began in a basement, grew significantly over the years, despite the fact that most of Bean's $1.5 billion in annual sales come through its ubiquitous mail-order catalog. The store has been open 24 hours a day since 1951, with a few exceptions for the deaths of John F. Kennedy and the founder, Leon Leonwood Bean.

Today, the company dominates the very small town of Freeport, population 7,800. It's much more than just a store, as its multiple buildings, parking lots, and outdoor patios and sculptures define the town itself. L.L. Bean has become more of a campus than a store, with different buildings for clothes, hunting and fishing gear, bikes and boats, and a discount outlet, as well as outdoor spaces dedicated to demonstrations of equipment and live musical performances.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

How long does it take to manufacture 100 billion crayons? Well, if you're the developer and foremost manufacturer of the colorful little cylindrical beauties, it takes exactly 93 years, as evidenced by the successful history of Crayola Crayons.

Easton Pennsylvania, sitting at the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers, has served as the backdrop for the entire glorious history of Crayola Crayons. A small town, covering just under five square miles, and home to fewer than 30,000 inhabitants, what Easton might lack in girth, it certainly makes up for with history. The partnership of cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, creators of the Crayola Crayon, probably were located in Easton to take advantage of the town's former status as a railroad hub, its access to raw materials, and its proximity to both Philadelphia and New York City.

While the partnership of Binney & Smith has grown and flourished, the city of Easton Pennsylvania has had its difficulties. While the Crayola empire has continually sought to enhance its offering and involvement in the creative arts by expanding, experimenting and inviting innovation, Easton has sought to remain true to, and thoughtful of its heritage. However, renewed stimulation of Easton's economy over the past decade has been focused on making the city an attractive getaway destination for visitors. This effort involves a deeply thoughtful utilization of the city's cultural, historical, and natural resources, which are being blended and deployed with strategic local focus.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

State Farm is the world's largest mutual property and casualty company, which means its owned by its policy holders. In 2007, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company paid $1.25 billion in dividends to its mutual auto insurance policy holders. (In the interest of full disclosure, I did get one of those checks.)

The corporate headquarters are based in Bloomington, Illinois, where State Farm was founded in 1922 by George J. Mecherle. He thought farmers were being charged too much for car insurance because they don't drive as much as city folk and didn't incur as many loses. Well, the insurance companies available at the time didn't agree with him, so he started his own car insurance company for farmers.

Today, State Farm has grown into the largest insurer of cars and homes in the United States, as well as the leading insurer of watercraft. State Farm is also a leader in insuring Canadian cars and homes. State Farm serves a total of 77 million auto, fire, life, and health policies in the U.S. and Canada with 67,000 employees and 17,000 agents. About half of its employees are involved in claims processing in one of its more than 390 claims offices.