“A staggering 42 % of startups meet their demise due to absence of market need”
- Maeve Couch, Antler
Most startups die not because the product is bad, but because it solves a problem no one really cares about.So before building, the first step is to find a real, significant problem.One that actually matters to people.One that hurts enough that they would pay to fix it.
How do you know if it is worth solving ?
You can use a simple six - point check given by Antler:
Is the problem painful, popular, frequent, urgent, growing, or unavoidable?
Upon returning to India, Sidhant Keshwani dedicated a year to rigorous market research in the e - commerce and fashion sectors.
"During my research, I identified a significant gap in the Indian wear segment, especially within fast fashion. I noticed that Indian wear hadn't evolved much over the past 30-40 years, and there were very few organized, modern options available. Additionally, I observed a shift in consumer preferences toward Western wear, which highlighted the need for innovation in Indian fashion. This insight inspired me to launch Libas, a brand aimed at modernizing and rejuvenating Indian wear," shares Sidhant Keshwani, Founder & CEO, Libas.
“The entire process from conceptualization to going live took about six months”
- Aashka Goradia Goble, Co-Founder, Renee Cosmetics
Let's start with inversion theory - how NOT to do market research?
- Your TAM does not include 8 billion people.
- Copy-pasting data from paid reports without knowing what those segments even mean.
- Ignoring the supply side.
- Having no idea how the numbers were actually calculated.
- Forgetting to iterate
- “Others” is not a segment.
- And please don't overdo it.
I have made all these mistakes. So this is more about what has worked for me, you can be more creative with your own process. The goal here is to make sense of how to think about market sizing and when it actually matters. What that “Market size” slide really means? To investors, that slide is not just about how big your number is. It shows how deeply you understand your user and the problem you're solving. You can't fake that understanding, it shows in how you build the logic behind the numbers. So how do you get there?
1. Demand side market sizing
The TAM, SAM, SOM framework works when you are looking at existing, defined markets. Start simple, figure out what the industry looks like, what segments exist, and where you fit in. Before touching a single number, make sure you understand the definitions so clearly that you can explain them to a 10-year old.
Once you have the segments, make them MECE - mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. No overlaps. No gaps. Like in clothing, male and female clothing together make up the whole, without overlap.
But sometimes, you are not in a well-defined market. You are not looking at a well defined market or causing some disruption in the market. That is when the Beachhead Framework by Jim Goetz comes in, Facebook used it in the early days.
The idea is to win one segment at a time. Facebook started with Harvard, then expanded to Stanford, Yale, and Columbia, building network effects that made the product more valuable as more people joined.
“We do not want the beachhead market to be the biggest possible market, but the lowest hanging fruit that is big enough to be cashflow positive and create a position to win additional markets.” — Bill Aulet, MIT Sources to get numbers from: DRHPs, annual reports, investor presentations, government surveys, thought leaders, research papers, opinion pieces.
2. Supply side market sizing
Here is where most people skip, understanding your customer's behavior.
Ask things like:
- How often do they do this activity? - How long does it last each time? - How much do they spend? - What triggers it? The best way to find answers, talk to people. Founders who have built in this space. Investors who have backed similar models. Thought leaders who have studied it. The point is not to sound smart, it is to validate your assumptions and stress test your hypotheses. Step 2: Understand the business models Look back 10 years. What worked? What failed? Why? What was external (market timing, regulation, capital)? What was internal (pricing, execution, founder choices)? ***Personal experience - I learned this the hard way. When I was studying consumer brands, everyone said customization was the next big thing. I went mystery shopping, the experience was broken end to end. It made me realize that what looks good on paper rarely survives real customers.Step 3: Use social tools smartly Not Facebook or Instagram. Use Topmate, CoffeeMug, or even LinkedIn (some people drop Calendly links right there). These are goldmines for learning from people who have done it before. Because honestly, you do not have the time to make every mistake yourself. Step 4: Do not overdo it This one is personal. I have spent weeks going down rabbit holes, and it feels productive until it is not. Market research never ends. You just need to know when to stop. Put a cap. Know what you are looking for. And once you have enough to make a sound call, move on. *** Personal experience - When I was studying new sector's in my initial days, I would spend 20 - 30 days diving deep into a sector, mapping every little detail possible, but at the end of it if I had to pick up 5 points which I would like the reader to know about the market, I got nothing because my research was scattered and not directional. My learning - Give yourself 2 - 3 days to understand the keywords, another week to understand the market overview and ask yourself, what 5 things do I know about this market now. Repeat the cycle continuously.
