One thing we’ve learned doing acquisition sourcing: finding companies is actually the easy part. Figuring out which ones are worth your time is where it gets interesting. For a mandate we're working on right now, the brief wasn't "find companies." It was find a very specific kind of company, recurring or highly repeatable service businesses, in compliance-driven niches that don't always show up on a standard industry screen. So before we searched for a single company, we worked backwards from the business model and mapped the niches first. A few examples: Industrial water treatment / Legionella management - route-based service built around ongoing chemistry checks and testing. Electrical preventive maintenance (NFPA 70B) - recurring testing and maintenance of electrical systems, not new construction. Generator & ATS testing (NFPAredactedrecurring backup-power testing across critical facilities. Biosafety cabinet certification - specialized recertification work for labs and healthcare facilities. Commercial kitchen hood cleaning / fire protection - recurring compliance work across commercial kitchens. Solar O&M - servicing existing systems instead of competing for new installs. Once we had the niches, we took them into Grata, applied the relevant filters and ended up with an initial universe of 2,000+ companies. And honestly, that number doesn’t mean much by itself. Most of that list doesn't survive a closer look. We kept asking: Is the revenue actually recurring, or just repeatable? Is this a project-based business dressed up as a service company? Does the customer stick with the company, or with one guy who happens to work there? Is the owner basically the whole operation? Contractors, equipment distributors, generic consultants - plenty of that fits the industry label and none of it fits the thesis. All of it gets cut before a single email goes out. Only once the list is narrowed do we start enriching the survivors - people, emails, phone numbers, the stuff you actually need to reach out. So the real question was never "how do you find 2,000 companies." It's: how do you turn 2,000 into the 100–200 actually worth a conversation. That's where most of the time goes. Curious how other searchers and sponsors do this build the niche thesis first and search after, or start broad and let the thesis take shape once you see what's out there?