I was on vacation with my family in Europe recently and something I noticed on that trip has been sitting with me since. As a full time searcher, even at a vacation, my mind was always thinking about businesses and what is happening locally. WHAT I NOTICED Every city has its own visible economy, and it's almost never what you'd guess from the outside. - Amsterdam: bicycle shops and hardware stores, hairdressers, eyewear shops on nearly every block - Italy, from an earlier trip: a tabaccheria, an alimentari, a salumeria — each doing exactly one thing, run by one family, sometimes for generations - Hong Kong, from an earlier trip: almost entirely food and tea, block after block Different texture every time, but the same underlying idea: you can read what a neighborhood's economy actually runs on just by walking down the street. THE QUESTION THIS RAISED Most of us build a buy box top-down — margins, multiples, what fits our background, what's been talked about here as a "good" category. Then we go hunt for deals inside it. That's the standard playbook and I've mostly followed it too. What I haven't seen anyone actually do — and genuinely want to know if someone has — is start from the other direction entirely. Not "what's a good industry," but "what does the ground I'm literally standing on produce, in volume, and why does it exist here." Pull the local data first. Let density point you toward categories before you've decided what you're looking for. WHY IT MIGHT MATTER - More businesses in a category near you means more deal flow, full stop - More density means more comps to actually anchor a valuation on - Sellers in a dense local category tend to know each other and talk - More optionality means you're not betting everything on the one listing you found on BizBuySell So, has anyone here actually built a buy box this way — starting from local density data rather than industry preference? - Did it change what you actually searched for? - Did it hold up once you got into diligence, or was it an interesting exercise that didn't - change your outcome? - Has anyone been surprised by what showed up near them once they looked? Would love to hear from anyone who's tried it, in either direction. 👇