Five things we do for a government, an investor, a state or a sponsor.
Applied America works alongside governments, investors, state and regional offices, and project sponsors — on where to build, which public programs apply, who the counterparty should be, and whether a project is ready for the commitments that follow.
- States & DC scored
- 51
- Inward-investment offices mapped
- 56
- Platforms in development
- 9
What advisory means here
Capability that already exists, pointed at your question.
Most of what follows is not built for a client. The state scores, the directory of inward-investment offices, the daily and weekly briefings drawn from federal and statehouse sources, the development standards — all of it exists because the platform needs it to do its own work. Advisory is that work applied to one government, one investor, or one site.
That has a consequence worth stating plainly: we are useful on the questions the platform already studies, and candid where it does not. A capability appears on this page when the work behind it is published and can be inspected. Where we would be guessing, we say so and point to someone who would not be.
What we do
Five capabilities.
Each is grounded in something the platform already publishes; follow the link to inspect the work behind it.
Location & market entry
Where in the United States a project or a company should land, tested against the same eight pillars the State Development Index scores all fifty-one jurisdictions on — and against the corridor, sector and workforce work behind it.
Public programs & alignment
Which federal, state and regional programs a project can reach, and what it has to look like to qualify. The daily and weekly briefings that track those programs are built from federal and statehouse sources and published openly.
Investor origination
Matching a jurisdiction to the investors and companies plausibly looking for what it has. The foreign direct investment (FDI) directory maps the inward-investment office and the named contacts for every jurisdiction that reported one.
Project readiness
Taking a defined project through feasibility, structuring and funding readiness until it meets the standard capital providers expect. This is the platform’s own development sequence, applied to a project that is not ours.
Counterparty & partnership development
Finding and convening the other side — the public bodies, operators, financiers and regional institutions a project needs — and setting the terms on which they participate.
What stands behind it
The published work, counted.
Each figure names the dataset it counts.
Who we work with
Four ways in.
The question differs by who is asking. Each pathway below leads to the surface written for it.
Common questions
The research is published and free to read.
A developer, convener, and standard-setter that brings the capital — a nonprofit division of CEFA. It develops projects, assembles and commits the capital stack behind them, and carries them to delivery. It does not place securities or give investment advice, and none of its compensation is contingent on the size or the closing of any financing.
No fee schedule is published here, and this section does not offer one. Applied America is a nonprofit division of CEFA. What any particular engagement involves is settled in conversation, not on a price list.
It is the same work, described from the other side. "What We Do" is the development sequence the platform runs — identify through delivery — written from the inside. This section is written for someone deciding whether to make contact, and groups that sequence into the five questions people arrive with.
National-security review of foreign investment, representation of a jurisdiction inside another country, and running trade missions are three that comparable firms offer and this page deliberately does not. Nothing the platform publishes would support the claim, and a capability belongs here only when the work behind it can be inspected.
From the State Development Index, the FDI directory generated from the Commerce Department’s SelectUSA database, and the project registry. The directory and registry counts are computed at build time rather than typed, so they cannot drift from what the site contains.
It is a snapshot of the SelectUSA FDI database, a federal work, and it carries the date of that snapshot wherever it is shown. Incentive programs and contacts move; the directory states its own currency rather than implying it is live.
Yes — trade ministries, investment-promotion agencies and embassies are one of the four pathways above. The work is placing their companies and investors in the right American jurisdiction, with the public programs and counterparties that make it viable.
In its own initiatives, yes: Applied America develops them and commits the capital behind them. A project that belongs to a sponsor stays the sponsor’s: Applied America takes no ownership interest in it, and any capital it commits alongside is disclosed in writing before an introduction is made. Which relationship applies is settled explicitly rather than left to be inferred.
What you are trying to build or attract, where it stands, and which of the five capabilities is actually the constraint. Most conversations end by narrowing the question rather than by proposing a program of work.
Yes. The state index, the rankings, the FDI directory and the briefings are published and free to read. That is deliberate: anyone can check the research before deciding whether to make contact.
Start with the question, not the proposal.
Tell us what you are trying to build or attract and where it currently stands. If the constraint is something we study, we will say how we would approach it; if it is not, we will say that too.