30 Great Photographs from Inc. Magazine

Bernard Goldhirsh launched Inc. magazine in Boston in the spring of 1979.

Good to Great Jim Collins appeared on the cover of Inc.'s anniversary issue in April.

A photograph of a community pool near Phoenix, from Inc.'s monthly photo essay, "Behind the Scenes."

Fashion designer Betsey Johnson appeared on Inc.'s cover in April 2004.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was photographed with friends for our July 2006 issue. He was only 22 at the time.

Inc. commissioned a portfolio of photographs to illustrate different trends in innovation, including neural gaming and quantum computing.

Carmia Marshall and Carmen Webber--the Sistahs of Harlem--started selling t-shirts and handbags at street fairs. Webber later appeared on the reality series Project Runway.

Tom Szaky dropped out of Princeton to launch a company called TerraCycle.

Method Home founders Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan have successfully competed with giants such as Procter & Gamble and Clorox, in part because their products feature sleek packaging.

T3 founder Gay Gaddis founded and runs the nation's largest woman-owned advertising agency.

Mel Zuckerman of the celebrated spa, Canyon Ranch, was photographed on the grounds of his company's western Massachusetts property.

Junki Yoshida came to the U.S. from Japan at age 19, with $500 in his pocket. Today, his Portland, Oregon-based companies gross a combined $180 million a year.

Skydiving enthusiast David Becker, CEO of Philippe Becker, has jumped out of a plane more than 1,500 times.

Journalist Phaedra Hise watched as her husband lost control of his Richmond, Virginia, beverage company, Switch.

Chris Cashman of Protez Pharmaceuticals wound up raising money from the angels. He later sold his company, providing his backers with a handsome payday.

Bob Wahlstedt (pictured) and his partners built St. Paul-based Reell Precision Manufacturing into the dominant producer of laptop hinges.

Bill Strickland's company, Manchester-Bidwell, is based in Pittsburgh with a second location in Oakland, California.

Kenny Kramm founded FlavorX, which makes a flavoring to make medicine palatable to children, in 1995. His daughter Hadley inspired the business in more ways than one.

Hadley with her older sister Sarah, photographed in the Kramm family's home in Bethesda, Maryland.

A portrait of a marriage: Columnist Meg Hirshberg, shown here with her husband Gary, the co-founder of Stonyfield Farm, the yogurt company.

In October 2008, Elon Musk's Hawthorne, California-based company became the first private enterprise to launch a rocket into orbit.

Many of the Cobalt Boats's workers are former farm hands who apply the skills they learned fixing tractors to build fast boats.

Jeff Koeze, a former law professor (right), succeeded his intuitive and impetuous father, Scott (left), as the head of the family nut business.

To assemble a mob to chase Digg.com founder Kevin Rose, Inc. magazine posted an advertisement on Craigslist.

Tony Hsieh, the founder and CEO of Zappos, appeared on Inc.'s May 2009 cover.

Past cover subjects include Bert and John Jacobs, left, the founders of the "Life is Good" line of apparel, and Gary Erickson, right, who launched Clif Bar in 1992.

This photograph of fashion designer Paul Frank is a bit of a rarity--the shoot was not originally intended to produce a cover image.

Markus Frind, founder of dating website Plenty of Fish, with his girlfriend Annie Kancier, in their Vancouver apartment. He works about an hour a day and his business makes $10 million a year.

Bill Kaplan, the founder and leader of the MIT blackjack team, used his knowledge of statistics, computer science, and applied math to beat the game of 21. He drew inspiration from Edward O. Thorp's 1962 bestseller Beat the Dealer.

Singer-songwriter Ani Difranco founded her own label, Righteous Babe Records, in 1990. The business released her latest album, Red Letter Year, in March 2008.

Virgin Media founder Sir Richard Branson photographed for the April 2005 issue on the grounds of his estate in England.