market-sizing
Market Sizing
Most market sizes are built backwards. Someone finds an analyst figure with a B on the end, takes one per cent of it, and calls that the plan. The number is large, it is quoted with confidence, and nobody can say which companies it is made of.
A reader who has seen a few of these - an investor, a board member, a sceptical co-founder - discounts it immediately. Not because it is too big, but because it cannot be traced.
When to use
The user needs a market size for a deck, a plan, or a decision about which segment to go after, or is holding a top-down figure and wants to know whether to use it.
Do not use this to produce a bigger number. If the honest bottom-up size is small, that is the finding, and it is usually more useful than the flattering one: it tells you whether the business needs a second segment before it needs more marketing.