R1 — Rent (or use free) for data ABOUT THE OUTSIDE WORLD; you will never out-collect the Census Bureau

Rule: When the data describes the outside world — demographics, exchange rates, weather, transit, average labor costs, industry benchmarks — recommend renting it (the cheapest decent vendor) or using the free public version. Do not build it.

Why: You will never out-collect the Census Bureau, the Bank of Canada, OpenET, NASA, or NOAA. Vendor benchmarks that tell a café owner their food cost is 5 points above industry norm are worth far more than the few hundred dollars they cost. The free public sources (FRED API (St. Louis Fed) — free with API key; covers GDP, inflation, employment, interest rates, Bank of Canada Valet API — free, no key required; ~500,000 daily public requests across ~12,500 series and ~4.5M observations, Census Business Builder — free US Census tool; pick business type + location → demographics, consumer spending, competition, GTFS — open transit data standard created Google + TriMet 2005; 10,000+ operators, 100+ countries; MobilityData stewardship, NASA / USDA OpenET — free Landsat-based evapotranspiration data via API for automated irrigation decision-support) are higher quality than any SMB could build.

How to apply:

• Default recommendation for any "we need data about X (where X is external)": free first, then the cheapest credible commercial source.
• Reserve build effort for the R2 — Build only on data you already own — transaction history, CRM, scheduling, no-show patterns; that is the only category with native defensibility case.
• Honest test: if the data is about the outside world, someone else already gathers it better than you can.