We plan to bring eChai across 100 cities in India. It starts with eChai Startup Demo Day on 26 September, all in person. 13 cities confirmed, 675 founders registered. Any city that reaches 20 interested founders is on too. See your city

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Market size & timing

Is it big enough, and why now?

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How big does my market need to be for this to be a real business? It depends on your ambition: a bootstrapped indie business can thrive in a market worth a few million, but a venture-backed one needs a market that... Intermediate 19 resources → What are TAM, SAM, and SOM and how do I actually calculate them? TAM is everyone who could ever use your category, SAM is the slice your product and geography can actually serve, and SOM is the realistic chunk yo... Intermediate 18 resources → Why does 'why now?' matter so much for a startup idea? Most great startups ride a change that just made something newly possible or newly cheap: a new technology, regulation, behaviour, or cost curve. I... Intermediate 17 resources → My market is small right now but growing fast. Is that a problem? A small, fast-growing market often beats a big, flat one, because you can ride the growth instead of stealing share in a knife fight. Investors and... Intermediate 16 resources → Should I worry that my market is already crowded with competitors? A crowded market is proof that people will pay, which is a good sign, not a red flag. What kills you is entering a crowded market with no sharp wed... Intermediate 18 resources → Investors keep asking for a top-down TAM slide, but I built my number bottoms-up. Which do I show? Show both, but let the bottoms-up number lead and treat the top-down as context. Bottoms-up (customers times price times frequency) proves you actu... Intermediate 19 resources → How do I size a market I want to sell to businesses outside the big Indian startup hubs? Public data thins out fast once you leave the metros, so build the number from the ground: count the actual businesses (GST registrations, industry... Intermediate 19 resources → Is it smarter to enter a market while it's still forming, or wait until demand is obvious and proven? Entering early buys you a shot at owning the category, but you pay for it by spending years educating customers who aren't ready, and early is ofte... Intermediate 18 resources → My total market looks small, but each customer is worth a lot. Can a low-count, high-value market still work? Yes, and it's often a better business than a huge market of tiny accounts, because a few hundred customers each paying serious money can build a re... Intermediate 19 resources → Two of us disagree on how big the opportunity is. How do we resolve a market-size argument between cofounders? Stop arguing about the number and get specific about the assumptions behind it, because you're almost always disagreeing about who the customer is,... Intermediate 19 resources →

eChai Partner Brands The partnership →