1.  He says financial institutions have recognised that little companies provide a base for industry and the seed corn for new ideas.

2.  What the little company did have was the vision and fierce determination of its leader, nuclear physicist John Robert Beyster.

3.  America seems to produce an endless stream of little companies that become valued at a billion dollars before anyone in Europe has quite worked out what they do.

4.  And that is why so many people of my age want to quit their big companies to go to little companies.

5.  And this little company has the ingenuity and horsepower to make its contribution to the software needs of wireless communication.

6.  A contract with the little Jack Frost sugar company kept Cumberland alive, but without a branded line of its own it was little more than a marginal operation.

7.  A. Duane Reade and Longs Drug Store are not national, but they are fine little companies.

8.  But I never wanted us to be a nice little profitable Internet company.

9.  But more venture capitalists will become interested, Robbins-Roth said, as the big pharmaceutical companies become corporate partners with the little companies or simply buy them.

10.  But the insurers say it is expensive to reach the small groups and premium rates are often too costly for little companies and their employees.