Adam put me on to a new website called BizEquity.

It’s a company that helps you determine how much your (or your competitor’s!) business is worth.

Here is what BizEquity promises to give you:

• Easily search approximately 10 million estimated business valuations.
• Get valuations based on publicly available data and industry-specific rules of thumb.
• Compare how companies stack up against their competition.
• Get helpful reports and charts on industry trends.
• And it’s free! (the best part for entrepreneurs)

You can search for an industry, a category, or a company in a given geographic area (choose your city, state, zip code). You’ll then see a Google Map which shows you a list of all the potential businesses that meet your criteria. From there you can click through to see a detailed valuation about that business, its location and the industry.

On top of the free public valuation service, the company also offers a custom valuation tool where you can enter in specific financial information about your business and receive a custom valuation report telling you how much your business is worth.

I can see this being a useful tool to:

1. Figure out which industries are making money and are worth starting a new business in
2. Look for local competitors. Do you have an untapped opportunity or are competitors all around you?
3. See how your industry is doing. Is it profitable? Which geographic markets are making the most?
4. Know who are the top dogs in your industry and how close are they to your location
5. Understand how much is your business worth if you’re trying to sell it or raise equity capital
6. Determine how much is a business worth if you’re trying to buy it from someone else

What do you think of this service? Has anybody used BizEquity before?