Venture Building

“Many investors will say that the total addressable market (TAM) size is the primary indication of ‘venture scale,’ but I disagree. You can have large TAMs that actually aren’t very good markets for startups, and smaller markets that can be expanded by the abilities of a talented startup with the right product offering.

So instead I tell founders t

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2. How much pain are you solving?

On a scale of 1 to 10, how painful is the status quo? Is it a 9-10, or is it 4-5? It’ll be hard to get people to pay a lot of money, or to switch from a good-enough product, if there isn’t a lot of pain.

1. Is my market big enough?

Do the math. What would have to be true for your business to reach $100M in revenue in one year? How many people would need to be using it (and/or paying for it), and how much should you need to make per user?

To gauge the venture-scaliness of an idea, investors look for:

1. Large enough market: Are there enough people (or companies) spending enough money for you to be able to generate $100M in revenue per year—and eventually $1B in revenue a year? This usually means that the total addressable market (TAM) needs to be $5B or more. And the bigger the better

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