Venn To Get Funding: The Entrepreneur’s guide to TAM (total addressable market) on the Cheap (or free)
This next post is a three-parter going straight down into the maw of one of the single most important part of getting any project or company off the ground: The dreaded TAM (Total Addressable Market for those engineers who are trying to make something work without the brain pollution of standard marketing types.), or "So how big is the market for this, really?"
It’s sooo much easier when you are working for a big company. Just call the folks who keep the corp. library or competitive research group and ask for all the market size data you need. (Ok…it’s not that easy since most new ideas don’t have direct market data support but require bank shots to figure out, but still a lot easier.) But when you’re in a small company, start-up or start-up wanna-be, you are in a serious catch-22. You need credible market size numbers to get funding, but without the numbers, you have no extra cash to spend money on analyst reports.
What we’ll cover here is why the hell you need to build the TAM in the first place, how to figure out how to use mental sonar to ping around the shape of credible market sizing when you are blazing new trails, and where and how to find good market data for nothing, since that's usually yer budget.
It’s sooo much easier when you are working for a big company. Just call the folks who keep the corp. library or competitive research group and ask for all the market size data you need. (Ok…it’s not that easy since most new ideas don’t have direct market data support but require bank shots to figure out, but still a lot easier.) But when you’re in a small company, start-up or start-up wanna-be, you are in a serious catch-22. You need credible market size numbers to get funding, but without the numbers, you have no extra cash to spend money on analyst reports.
What we’ll cover here is why the hell you need to build the TAM in the first place, how to figure out how to use mental sonar to ping around the shape of credible market sizing when you are blazing new trails, and where and how to find good market data for nothing, since that's usually yer budget.
Part 1: TAM the Torpedo-full speed ahead (Or why do you need a Venn anyway?)
Part 2: Market sizing as a word problem
Part 3: Where to sneak free market data
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