Market Research

When to Use

Activate when a founder needs to size a market opportunity using TAM/SAM/SOM, validate market assumptions for a pitch deck, understand growth trends, evaluate market entry, or prepare for investor conversations about addressable market. Trigger phrases include "how big is our market," "TAM/SAM/SOM," "market size," "market opportunity," "is this market big enough," "market trends," "help me with the market slide," or "validate our market assumptions."

Context Required

• From startup-context: product description, target customer segments, pricing model, geographic scope, business model.
• From the user: the market or segment to analyze, known data points (industry reports, customer counts, pricing benchmarks), geographic and industry constraints, whether this is for internal decision-making or external presentation (investor deck), and any specific hypotheses about market dynamics.

Workflow

1. Define market boundaries -- Specify the problem space, customer segments, geography, and constraints. "Project management tools" is a different market than "team collaboration software." Precision determines whether the analysis is useful.
2. Top-down estimation -- Start from total industry size using industry reports, public company revenues, and government statistics. Narrow to the relevant segment by applying filters for geography, customer type, and product category.
3. Bottom-up estimation -- Build independently from unit economics: (number of potential customers) x (price per customer) x (purchase frequency). Cross-validate against the top-down estimate.
4. Scope the SAM -- Identify which portion of TAM is realistically serviceable given current product capabilities, pricing, distribution channels, and geographic reach.
5. Estimate the SOM -- Project achievable market share in 1-3 years based on competitive position, go-to-market capacity, and current traction.
6. Project growth -- Forecast how TAM, SAM, and SOM evolve over 2-3 years. Identify key growth drivers, technology shifts, regulatory changes, and demographic trends.
7. Map assumptions -- Surface every critical assumption underlying each estimate. Rate confidence levels and identify how to validate the most uncertain assumptions.

Output Format