Market Sizing and TAM Analysis

TAM is the full revenue opportunity if everyone who could use your product bought it. SAM is the part of that you could realistically serve given your geography, segment, and product fit. SOM is what you could actually capture in a defined period given your resources and the competition. Each number gets smaller and each one gets more scrutiny.

Bottom-up is the one you present, because it can be walked through step by step and each input can be checked. Top-down works as a cross-check to confirm your bottom-up figure lands in a plausible range. A sizing that exists only as a percentage of a large industry number is the version investors dismiss.

Two to four weeks for most analyses. If the sizing needs primary research first, because the customer counts or pricing aren't publicly available, add time for that.

It depends on how much of the data is publicly available, whether primary research is needed to establish customer counts or pricing, and how the analysis needs to be presented. Sizing built from existing sources costs the least, and sizing requiring original research costs the most. We provide a fixed-scope quote after an initial consultation.

That happens in emerging or narrow categories, and it's solvable. We build the estimate from adjacent data, structural proxies like establishment counts or employment figures, and primary research where necessary. The estimate is then presented with its limitations stated. A confident number with nothing behind it is far less credible.

Investors don't usually challenge the number, they challenge how you got it. A sizing with documented sources, stated assumptions, and a bottom-up method holds up in a way that a large round figure does not. We build for that conversation.

Yes. International sizing needs attention to how a category is defined differently between markets, to currency and pricing differences, and to data availability, which varies a lot by country. We'll tell you upfront where the data is thin.

Yes, and it's common. Market sizing is often run with competitive analysis and customer research so you get the size of the opportunity, who else is going after it, and what customers actually want, from one project.

Annually for most companies, or whenever something material changes such as a new entrant, a pricing shift in the category, or your own move into a new segment. Fundraises are also a natural moment to refresh it.

Yes. We build investor-facing and funder-facing decks presenting the sizing, with the backing detail available for the questions that follow. We've delivered market sizing work as a funder-facing deck built to withstand exactly that kind of questioning.