Capability 03
Who is plausibly looking for what you have.
Most inward-investment work is addressed to everybody: a sector, a source country, and an invitation. This is the opposite operation — establishing what a jurisdiction demonstrably answers, then finding the counterparties who hold that requirement.
- Jurisdictions in the directory
- 56
- Named investment contacts
- 79
- Platforms in development
- 9
Why origination is narrowing
Everyone is courting the same sectors and the same countries.
The SelectUSA FDI database asks every U.S. state and territory which industries it courts and which countries it wants capital from. In the February 2025 snapshot the most-named sector, Information and Communication Technology, is on most of the 56 lists, and the next several are not far behind. A pitch built on a sector and a source country is one most of the field is also making.
The snapshot cannot narrow that for them. Only 30 of the 56 ticked any of the 8 federal supply-chain categories — a coarser list than the sectors, and still a claim about which chains a jurisdiction wants projects in, not about what it can deliver. Narrowing runs on the delivery side instead.
The limit belongs beside the claim. A good score does not produce a counterparty, and the State Development Index’s own page publishes the test — its composite is indistinguishable from no relationship with domestic migration.
The crowded field
The same sectors, on most of the lists.
How many of the 56 jurisdictions name each sector as a recruitment priority — the 12 named most often.
- Information and Communication Technology43 of 56
- Agribusiness39 of 56
- Aerospace and Defense37 of 56
- Energy34 of 56
- Healthcare32 of 56
- Food and Beverage30 of 56
- Financial Services27 of 56
- Business and Professional Services22 of 56
- Industrial Materials21 of 56
- Automotive20 of 56
- Cleantech/Clean Energy20 of 56
- Advanced Manufacturing18 of 56
What a jurisdiction has already said
Its own answer, on the record.
The directory holds each jurisdiction’s own account of itself. An approach that contradicts it has not read it.
- 01
Sectors named
What the office says it is recruiting.
- 02
Countries courted
Where it already goes looking.
- 03
Incentives published
What it has put in writing.
- 04
Sites listed
What it can offer now rather than later.
- 05
Named contacts
The person an approach actually reaches.
How the match is made
Five narrowings.
Each step removes candidates. What survives is short and defensible line by line.
What the place answers
The constraint a place demonstrably relieves — read off the pillars, the occupational tables, the delivery figures.
What the counterparty needs
A requirement, not a sector label: a date for power, a supplier tier already located in state.
Where the field is thin
Approach where few others can answer. The directory is filterable by sector, source country and incentive type.
The test before the approach
Would the fit survive the hearing — jobs against the regional wage, suppliers in state, net fiscal position?
Carried, not handed over
Applied America joins the project team and stays through the vote.
How crowded the field is
Counted, not asserted.
Counted off the generated snapshot, which is dated February 2025 and is not a live feed.
Common questions
A roster of capital is not the scarce input.
That is project origination — finding the sponsor prepared to own a project. This is its mirror: the place already exists and has an owner, and the question is who holds a requirement it answers.
No, and no such list is published on this site. A roster of capital is not the scarce input; the defensible reason one counterparty would choose you over the others courting the same capital is.
Read the pillar, not the composite. All eight are published separately: a counterparty whose constraint is permitting reads “Housing permits and prices” — housing authorized per worker — and one weighing the state as a credit reads “Fiscal standing”.
Then that is the answer. What follows is the narrower question: what would have to change, and whether the jurisdiction can change it — a technician pipeline, a site at a usable tier.
Yes — 9 platforms of its own, 5 of them at an indicative location rather than a settled one. That makes Applied America a counterparty in some of these conversations and never a representative of the other side.
Declared per engagement, before it begins. The capabilities page names the problem plainly: a site-selection or tax firm’s client is usually the company, and its incentive is to maximize the award, not defend it afterward.
Yes, with one limitation. The office directory here holds state offices plus three regional or city bodies and no counties, and the federal snapshot reports by state or territory only. Below that we work from your own material.
Three things: the constraint you believe the place relieves, the evidence for it, and the approaches that failed and why. The last matters most — a failed approach names a requirement the place did not meet.
Start with the requirement your jurisdiction can meet.
Send the evidence you would put in front of a counterparty. If the match is findable in what we publish, we will say how we would look for it.