Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

What founders use most, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

1. This is the sharpest short essay on why a naive market number lies to you. Evans shows that a new product can either shrink a... Benedict Evans Essay · about 1,200 words · Starting Up Ways to Think About Market Size Benedict Evans
2. This is YC's curated shelf of talks and essays filtered to market size, so you get partner-level guidance in one place instead... Y Combinator Course · Starting Up YC Startup Library: Market Size collection Y Combinator
3. Kamps has seen more market-size slides than almost anyone and calls out the exact failures founders repeat, including claiming... TechCrunch Article · Starting Up I Reviewed 1,000+ Pitch Decks. These Are the Most Common Mistakes Haje Jan Kamps
4. This is a real deck with the market slide critiqued line by line, showing how a founder listed the entire sharing economy at... TechCrunch Article · Starting Up Pitch Deck Teardown: BoxedUp's seed deck Haje Jan Kamps
5. Even though your primary build should be bottom-up, you still want a top-down triangulation to check it, and this gives you a... Data-Mania Template · Starting Up Top-Down Market Sizing: Step-by-Step TAM, SAM, SOM (with Examples and Template) Data-Mania
6. Video · 55 min · Starting Up Balaji Srinivasan on Navigating the Idea Maze and Finding a Co-Founder Balaji Srinivasan
7. Video · 75 min · Starting Up Don Valentine, Sequoia Capital: Target Big Markets Don Valentine
8. This is the deep dive on why the 'next 200 million' users are real but hard to monetize, which is exactly the trap that... sajithpai.com Essay · 20 min read · Starting Up Vernacular Apps, the English Language Premium, and Monetising the Next 200 Million Sajith Pai
9. Redseer gives you an independent view of the internet-to-transacting funnel to cross-check Blume's household numbers. It... Redseer Strategy Consultants Article · 10 min read · Starting Up India's Internet Consumers (700 Mn+ Digital Consumer Funnel) Mukesh Kumar, Redseer
10. This long, unhurried conversation is the best audio explanation of the three Indias and why Indian consumer markets behave the... The Seen and the Unseen Podcast · 3 hr · Starting Up A Venture Capitalist Looks at the World (Sajith Pai) Amit Varma with Sajith Pai
11. An economist presses Pai on the data behind India1, India2, India3, so you hear the assumptions get stress-tested. It is useful... Ideas of India, Mercatus Center Podcast · 1 hr 30 min · Starting Up Sajith Pai on India's Digital Divides Shruti Rajagopalan with Sajith Pai
12. The original short essay that named the wedge, the sharp entry point our short answer is really about. Dixon explains how to... Chris Dixon (cdixon.org) Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up The Thin Edge of the Wedge Strategy Chris Dixon
13. Rachitsky turns the wedge from a slogan into a decision, with worked examples like Twilio, Airbnb, and Amazon entering big... Lenny Rachitsky, Lenny's Newsletter Article · 18 min read · Starting Up Picking a Wedge Lenny Rachitsky
14. A practical companion to Dixon and Rachitsky, focused on choosing the exact first customer segment when the broader market is... Nathan Baschez, Every (every.to) Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The Market Wedge: How to Pick Your Initial Market Nathan Baschez, Eric Thompson
15. A structured spreadsheet that makes you fill in the number of target customers, your unit economics, and your serviceable and... Scalepath Template · Spreadsheet · Starting Up Free Bottoms-Up TAM Template Scalepath
16. A founder-facing guide that ties market sizing to the question investors are really asking, and warns against describing only... 22nd Century Frontier Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up How Big Can This Get? A Founder's Guide to Market Sizing Petar Dimov
17. Video · ~90 min · Starting Up Startup Secrets: Building a Value Proposition Michael Skok
18. Blank separates a new market, where customers do something they could not before, from existing and resegmented markets, and... Inc. Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up Defining New Markets Steve Blank
19. A short clip where Gurley explains why top-down TAM estimates are often badly wrong, using Uber and the early cell phone market... Startup Archive Video · 5 min · Starting Up Bill Gurley on Why Founders and Investors Should Not Pay Too Much Attention to TAM Bill Gurley
20. This essay dismantles the seductive but hollow logic of if we just capture one percent of a huge market. It explains why that... Angus Norton, Predict Essay · 9 min read · Starting Up The 1% TAM Myth: Why Most Market Sizing Is Just Theater Angus Norton
21. A short, plain read on why the one percent capture argument backfires and how to reframe your sizing around real buyers. It... The Venture Crew Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Is the 1% Market Fallacy Holding Your Startup Back? Sahil S
22. A practical guide from a startup accelerator that walks through gathering the data behind both top-down and bottoms-up... MaRS Discovery District Article · 10 min read · Starting Up How to Estimate Market Size: Business and Marketing Planning for Startups MaRS Discovery District
23. A short India-focused primer on what a first pitch should cover, including where market size fits and how it shapes how much... Prime Venture Partners Article · 6 min read · Starting Up How to Pitch to a VC Prime Venture Partners
24. A short primer on how real technologies move from ignored to inevitable in an S shaped curve, and why early flatness fools... Andreessen Horowitz Video · 4 min · Starting Up a16z Video: S-curves in Innovation Benedict Evans

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