The New 49ers Time for a Change!(Alaska Business Monthly New 49ers list of business successes) (Brief Article) (Editorial)

With 15 years of "The New 49ers" in the archives, we decided it was time to dust off the policy that has served so well since that first ranking of Alaskan businesses in 1985. Writing then, Publisher Bob Dixon likened The New 49ers to athletes.

"The game of business is limited to the fittest of the fit no matter where it's played, and most who enter it don't make it through the opening period. These pioneers (49ers) have chosen the harshest league of all to prove their entrepreneurial prowess, and won. They are the first team of Alaska's home-grown business survivors-the 49 largest Alaskan-owned and Alaska-based companies, and they've achieved their victories largely without the backing of multinational corporations or Big Government."

The figure "49" derives from being the 49th state of the Union. But it was (soon to be editor)Judith Fuerst (Griffen) who the following year latched on to the mining comparison that she drew from the California gold rush of 1848-1849. The miners who arrived there were called forty-niners. When the Alaska rush followed at the turn of the century, the forty-niners were drawn north to Alaska to again seek their fortunes. Entrepreneurs followed, moiling for their fortunes in business and commerce.

"Annually, Alaska Business Monthly identifies the state's most successful prospectors," Fuerst wrote. They are Alaskan-owned and Alaska-based businesses who worked their claims and have generated the largest annual revenues, she said. They are The New 49ers and the metaphor has continued to this day.

Change 2000

Often the selection of those first 49ers was fairly clear-cut. The company was 51+ percent owned by Alaskans and headquartered here. But soon mergers and technology came into the picture, and it was no longer as dear as it had been. In the early years, there were no foreign corporations and few subsidiaries were involved...