Does the company have any material differentiators from its competitors? Fighting against a negative industry CAGR to drive growth is something I would carefully about.

Hi from Mapleton, Tyler :) Man, so many things to consider in a good deal. I think you can still have a good outcome even with industry headwinds. Every deal has "hair," as they say, and you just have to decide whether that's the type of hair you want to deal with. I searched for 9 months and ultimately decided to buy a business on the side instead of going full-time. So I chose my own "hair." During that process, and afterwards, I realized there were some "sacred cows" in search that I probably could have challenged more. You have to evaluate the ideal criteria against the deals that are actually available and that you could actually see yourself running. So is industry growth the most important metric? It's important, but I don't think it is the most important. I think it's more of a force multiplier. If the industry is growing, it can make other metrics feel better. If it's declining, it can make every weakness hurt more. To me, durability of cash flow is the most important metric, and you can definitely have durable cash flow in a declining industry. But obviously you need to take a hard look at what offsets the decline.