Market — Sizing, Beachhead, Competition, Industry
Market sizing with every assumption named and sourced, the beachhead to land first, the competitor grid including the ones founders forget, and how the industry actually works.
Market
Two failure modes, both fatal in a pitch. The first is the top-down number with no arithmetic behind it — "the Indian wellness market is $XX billion" — which tells an investor nothing except that you read a report. The second is a competitor slide with two names on it, both obvious, which tells them you have not looked.
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This file exists to make both impossible.
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Sizing — bottom up, with the arithmetic shown
Build it from countable units, not from a report headline. Show every assumption so a reader can disagree with a specific number rather than dismissing the whole slide.
TAM — everyone who could conceivably buy
[TBD — count of units] × [TBD — price] = [TBD]Assumptions: [TBD]
Source for the count: [TBD]
SAM — everyone you could serve with today's product, in your geography
[TBD] × [TBD] = [TBD]What excludes the rest of the TAM: [TBD — geography, regulation, language, channel, product capability]
SOM — what you can realistically win in year one
[TBD] × [TBD] × [TBD — capture %] = [TBD]Why that capture rate is believable: [TBD]
The worked shape of a good bottom-up count: "There are roughly 90,000 offices in this city. Of those, maybe 15,000 are large enough to want a managed drinking-water contract — the segment I can reach through B2B sales. At ₹8,000 per office per year, that segment is ₹12 crore. If I win 3% of it in year one — 450 offices — that is ₹36 lakh."
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Every number is contestable and every number is visible. That is what makes it credible. A single unsourced figure with nine digits is not.
Cross-check: does your SOM reconcile with your capacity in 06-operations and your projections in 07-money? A SOM you cannot physically deliver is a different problem than a small market, and investors spot the mismatch immediately.
Beachhead
The first niche you will dominate. Small, reachable, and specific enough that word travels within it.
| The beachhead | [TBD] |
| Size | [TBD — number of customers, revenue if you won it all] |
| Why here first | [TBD] |
| What "winning" looks like | [TBD — a number and a date] |
| What it unlocks next | [TBD] |
Choose it on reachability, not attractiveness. The best beachhead is usually the one you can physically walk into this week — your own neighbourhood, your last employer's industry, the community you already belong to. Founders systematically pick a beachhead they find impressive and cannot access.
Competition
The grid
Go beyond the obvious two. Every row should be a real company you have looked at, with a real price you have found.
| Competitor | Who they serve | Their price | Why customers pick them | Why customers leave them | Your edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[TBD] | |||||
[TBD] | |||||
[TBD] | |||||
| Doing nothing | ₹0 | Free, familiar, no risk |
The four competitors founders forget
Fill these in even if — especially if — the answer is uncomfortable.
| Type | Who | Why they matter |
|---|---|---|
| The incumbent doing it badly | [TBD] | Often a large or government provider with a poor product, given away or heavily subsidised. Free-and-bad beats good-and-paid more often than founders expect, and you cannot out-price free. |
| The adjacent platform | [TBD] | The bigger player one step away who could add your feature in a quarter. Especially acute for software: large AI ecosystems now absorb narrow app use cases quickly. If your entire product could be a feature in something that already has your users, say so here. |
| The informal alternative | [TBD] | The local guy, the WhatsApp group, the cousin, the spreadsheet. Usually your actual competitor, almost never on the slide. |
| The new entrant | [TBD] | Well-funded, launched last quarter, spending heavily on marketing while delivering badly. They will not last but they will distort your market and your price for a year. |
The honest read
[TBD]
Where do you genuinely lose? Not "we lose on brand awareness." Which specific customer, in which situation, correctly chooses a competitor — and what would have to be true for that to change?
A competition section with no losses is a competition section nobody believes.
Your defensibility
Pick one or two, honestly. Most early companies have none yet, and saying so is stronger than claiming five.
| Moat | Have it? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Intellectual property | ☐ | [TBD] |
| Proprietary data | ☐ | [TBD] |
| Distribution / channel access | ☐ | [TBD] |
| Community or brand | ☐ | [TBD] |
| Cost structure | ☐ | [TBD] |
| Regulatory know-how or licence | ☐ | [TBD] |
| Timing | ☐ | [TBD] |
| Switching costs | ☐ | [TBD] |
On patents. They are worth less than founders hope and more than cynics claim. A patent does not stop a well-resourced competitor copying you — it gives you standing to act if they do, and it is a credibility asset in some sectors and with some grant committees. Filing costs real money that could go into customers. Get an honest read on what is worth protecting before you spend, and note the decision and its reasoning in 04-product.
How the industry works
The part that separates a founder who has done the work from one who has read a market report.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who actually pays, and out of whose budget? | [TBD] |
| How does money flow? — margins at each step from you to the end user | [TBD] |
| Payment terms — 30 days? 90? Cash on delivery? | [TBD] |
| Who are the gatekeepers? | [TBD] |
| What is the buying cycle? — impulse, quarterly budget, annual tender | [TBD] |
| What is changing structurally? | [TBD] |
Payment terms deserve their own line in your head. A business that sells well and gets paid in 90 days can fail while growing. That connects directly to working capital in 07-money.
Who matters in this space
Not competitors — the people whose work you should know and whose attention is worth having.
| Name | Why they matter | Are we engaging? |
|---|---|---|
[TBD — leading researcher, operator, journalist, community, or the person publicly running the experiment everyone watches] |
A pitch in a technical field that does not mention the people actually advancing that field reads as underinformed, however good the product is. If there is someone visibly doing the definitive work in your space, know what they have found — and be prepared to say why you are doing something different.
Sources
Every number above traces to a row here.
| Claim | Source | Date | Reliability |
|---|---|---|---|
[TBD] |
Mark anything from a paid market report, a press release, or a competitor's own marketing as low reliability. Prefer things you counted yourself.