Everyone knows Nvidia, Google, and Amazon. How do you find all the good companies that never make the headlines?

The same ten companies get talked about everywhere. But there are thousands of public companies, and plenty of them are solid businesses that people in their industry know well and the rest of us have never looked at. Think of something like Adobe. Not a secret, not tiny, just not in the news every day.

I'm not asking about penny stocks or the next 100x. I'm asking how you discover the companies that are hiding in plain sight.

1. How do you learn what companies even exist in an industry you don't work in?
2. Do you start with an industry and work down to companies, or stumble on a company and work outward?
3. What tools or sources do you use? Screeners, ETF holdings lists, 13F filings, trade publications, supplier and customer lists?
4. Once you find an industry that looks interesting, how do you figure out who the real players are?

What's your go-to method for finding companies you had never heard of?