Go to the Washington Business Journal and look for "New Incorporations" (it's updated weekly). Next, search the web for local DUNS Numbers, and access the DBUS Directory because this provides market identifiers that you can use to do further research via Boolean search, or through search engines like Grokker.com or Clusty.com, or even go to the local library to pull US SIC Codes - and then localize them.
Then, pull weekly text files in ASCII comma delimited format for New Incorporations listings by State. The following example shows new incorporations going back to early 2005 in Rhode Island (see http://www.rules.state.ri.us/corporations/corp_search/newcorps.php). Once you get a list like this you simply import into Excel, convert to csv file and enter into Salesforce.com, Zoho.com (free) or some other contact manager.
Go to local news sites and pull new incorporations by week. Every new business has to file locally and every new business gets listed somewhere. They even group them for you. (see http://www.al.com/business/birminghamnews/inc.ssf). Sometimes it's hard to get past the login, but just search around the web and often you will locate the page. Here, you will see the actual page to all new incorporations pulled on Friday, Dec. 22, 2006 from the local Probate Court. (see http://www.al.com/business/birminghamnews/inc.ssf?/base/business/1166793629185660.xml&coll=2) Do this for each jurisdiction.
Somewhere in the process you should check the U.S. Census Bureau to see how many people there are in the area and use this as a rough guide as to whether you are statistically way off track (using a rough percentage of how many incorporations there are per person in each area). (see http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51013.html)
Pull announced plans of new or expanding companies from Economic Development Partnerships (see example at http://virginiascan.yesvirginia.org/Data_Center/Announcements.aspx).
You can also contact the Virginia Department of Business Assistance to access new incorporation listings.
Then, merge all this together into one .csv file, to have your new clean copy of all incorporations in the local area with contact information, email, phone, address, first and last name, title, company name, type of company, industry, etc.
