TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin

Despite their potential, not many high-tech firms nave what it takes to make our ranking of the largest private companies.

Scouring this year's ranking of the state's largest privately held companies, you'll find few examples of the high-tech businesses that are creating the so-called New Economy. The North Carolina 100 has been, is and, for the foreseeable future, will be dominated by old-line industries.

The reasons are simple: time and money. While traditional industries such as manufacturing, distribution and construction can grow at a more-leisurely pace, using revenues and bank loans to finance expansion, high-tech firms must virtually explode, growing at breakneck speed to avoid being left behind in fields that are changing almost overnight. That kind of growth takes outside capital, which means companies such as these rarely remain private or independent long enough to make the list. "High-tech has the ability to go public very quickly," notes Alan Day, a principal in the Charlotte office of Arthur Andersen LLP, the international accounting firm that compiles the ranking each year for BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA.

At the top of this year's North Carolina 100, based on 1999 revenues, are the usual suspects: distributors of auto parts and tires, manufacturers of furniture and textiles, a restaurant chain and that high-tech holdout for private ownership, SAS Institute Inc. The first six, each with annual sales of more than $500 million, also topped last year's list, though in a slightly different order.

The more-dynamic bottom of the list, composed of companies with less than $50 million in annual sales, has six newcomers in the final 10. You might expect to find a batch of fast-growing tech companies nibbling at the tail end. But here, too, it's business as usual. Newcomers to the bottom rung include a sock maker, two wholesale food distributors, an electrical contractor, a lumber distributor and a manufacturer of parts for recreational vehicles -- and one computer-system designer.

Software maker SAS is the only company on the list built on making, instead of merely using, high-tech products. And founder James Goodnight has talked about taking the company public, which would erase it from the ranking.

So does that mean that North Carolina's highly publicized bid for high-tech growth is a bust? Not necessarily. Mitch Mumma, general partner of Intersouth Partners, a venture-capital firm in Durham, says the state has plenty of start-up...