PinpointIQ is a geographic market intelligence platform built by 2nd St Strategy for location- and route-based businesses and their investors. It covers 900+ U.S. metropolitan statistical areas and 30+ verticals with MSA-level total addressable market, competitive density, demographic drivers, and individual business data down to the census-tract level.

Who is PinpointIQ for?

Multi-site and route-based operators planning expansion, investors evaluating location-based services markets, strategic acquirers screening targets, and bankers and lenders sizing local services markets. Anyone whose decisions live at the MSA or census-tract level.

What verticals does PinpointIQ cover?

PinpointIQ covers 30+ location- and route-based verticals, including HVAC, plumbing, pest control, landscaping, funeral homes, auto repair, veterinary services, dental, physical therapy, childcare, hotels, self-storage, roofing, pool service, home health, and quick-service restaurants.

How does PinpointIQ help with market analysis?

PinpointIQ lets users size the local market in every MSA where a business operates or might expand, identify the largest and lowest-density targets for acquisition or expansion, score and rank MSAs by attractiveness, and map white space inside an MSA at the census-tract level.

Who built PinpointIQ?

PinpointIQ was built by 2nd St Strategy, a boutique commercial due diligence and growth strategy firm based in Chicago. The platform grew out of internal tools developed across 150+ commercial diligence and growth strategy engagements.

How much does PinpointIQ cost?

PinpointIQ offers two plans: an All Verticals subscription at $10,000 per month covering every supported vertical, and a Single Vertical subscription at $1,500 per month covering one vertical of choice.

An MSA is a U.S. Census-defined metropolitan statistical area: a central urban core plus the surrounding counties that are socioeconomically integrated with it. There are about 930 MSAs covering most of the U.S. population. MSAs are the natural unit of analysis for any location-based or route-based business because they capture the actual labor shed and customer trade area, not arbitrary state or ZIP boundaries.

Why is national TAM the wrong number for a location- or route-based business?

A location- or route-based business does not grow nationally. It grows MSA by MSA. National TAM captures none of the dynamics that actually determine whether the next MSA will work: local density, competitive intensity, demographic drivers, labor pool. National TAM also blurs together categories with very different dynamics in different regions (HVAC in the Sun Belt vs. the Rust Belt, for example).

What should MSA-level data include?

Five things. Total addressable market decomposed by segment and driver. Competitive density with deduplicated business records (name, address, revenue, employees, year founded). Demographic data at the census-tract level relevant to the vertical. White-space maps showing under-served census tracts inside the MSA. Vertical-specific establishment counts joined to the demographic data.

How does PinpointIQ build its MSA data?

PinpointIQ merges public data sources (U.S. Census, BLS, IRS County Business Patterns, etc.) with commercial data sources (Google Places, Apollo, other operator databases) and proprietary data. The competitive landscape is deduplicated and resolved so you get one row per real-world business rather than the messy duplicates raw sources produce. Coverage is 900+ MSAs across 30+ verticals.

Multi-site and route-based operators use it for de novo expansion and M&A planning, investors evaluating location-based services markets use it for diligence and target screening, strategic acquirers use it for bolt-on screening, and investment bankers use it to size markets in pitch materials. Anyone whose decisions live at the MSA level benefits from the data.

Tools for MSA-Level Market Analysis

National TAM is the wrong number

Every pitch deck on a location-based services business starts with a national TAM number. National TAM is the wrong number. The business does not grow nationally. It grows MSA by MSA, and the TAM that matters is the TAM in the MSAs the business operates in plus the MSAs it can realistically enter.

National TAM blurs together categories with very different local dynamics. HVAC in the Sun Belt is not HVAC in the Rust Belt. Landscaping in the Pacific Northwest is not landscaping in South Florida. Funeral homes in a town of 30,000 with three multi-generation operators are not funeral homes in Phoenix. None of that shows up in a national chart.

Why MSAs are the right unit

A metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is a U.S. Census-defined unit: a central urban core plus the surrounding counties that are socioeconomically integrated with it. There are about 930 of them covering most of the U.S. population.

MSAs are the right unit for location-based and route-based businesses for four reasons.

They match the labor shed. A technician will drive across an MSA, not across a state line. The labor pool the platform actually competes for is the MSA labor pool.
They match the customer trade area. Households buy local services from operators within their MSA. ZIP codes are too small, states are too large.
They match the density economics. Route density, back-office consolidation, marketing leverage. All MSA-scale phenomena.
They match the public data. Census, BLS, IRS County Business Patterns are all available at MSA resolution. ZIP and tract data nest cleanly inside.

What MSA-level data should include

Five layers, in order of importance for diligence work.

1. Total addressable market by segment

TAM for the MSA, decomposed by the segments that matter for the vertical. For HVAC, that means residential vs. commercial vs. new-construction. For funeral, traditional vs. cremation. For landscaping, residential vs. commercial vs. snow services. The decomposition is more useful than the total.

2. Competitive density

How many operators serve the MSA. Critically, with deduplication: one row per real-world business, not duplicates from messy raw sources. Each row needs name, address, contact info, revenue, employees, year founded where available. Raw Google Places data is not this; it requires resolution and merging.

3. Demographic drivers at the census-tract level

Census tracts are the right resolution inside an MSA. They are stable boundaries, they nest into MSAs cleanly, and they are sized at about 4,000 people each. small enough to see local pockets, large enough to be statistically meaningful. The drivers that matter depend on the vertical: household formation for HVAC and landscaping, age 65+ for funeral and home health, household income for childcare and professional services.

4. White-space maps

Which census tracts inside the MSA are under-served given the demographic drivers. This is where the next location goes or where the next acquisition target operates. National TAM cannot answer that question. Census-tract-level white-space mapping can.

5. Vertical-specific establishment counts

Public IRS and BLS data on the actual number of establishments in each vertical in each MSA, joined to the demographic data. This is the cross-check on competitive density and the base rate for bottom-up TAM modeling.

How PinpointIQ delivers this

PinpointIQ is built around exactly these five layers. We cover 900+ U.S. MSAs across 30+ location-based and route-based verticals: HVAC, plumbing, pest control, landscaping, funeral homes, auto services, veterinary, dental, physical therapy, childcare, hotels, self-storage, roofing, pool service, home health, quick-service restaurants, and more.

For every MSA-vertical combination, you get:

Segment-decomposed TAM
Resolved, deduplicated competitive landscape with firmographic fields
Census-tract demographic data joined to vertical establishment counts
White-space maps
Saved layers and MSA cohorts for reuse across deals
MCP server for programmatic access

PinpointIQ was built by 2nd St Strategy, a boutique commercial due diligence and growth strategy firm. The platform grew out of internal tools developed across 150+ commercial diligence and growth strategy engagements.

What this changes in a workflow

The cycle from “new market on the radar” to “defensible MSA-level market sizing” used to be a week of analyst work. With PinpointIQ it is the first hour. The team spends the saved time on the work that actually moves the answer: customer calls, operator calls, and judgment.

Tools for MSA-level market analysis.