Module 05 · The fundraising deck~16s dwell · weight 9
Market Size
Prove the opportunity is big enough for venture returns, built bottom-up, with a named beachhead.
Include
- TAM / SAM / SOM, built from the bottom up (customers × price)
- Your specific beachhead segment, the first 100 customers
- Credible, dated sources for the numbers
- The path from beachhead to adjacent segments
Cut
- '1% of a huge market' reasoning
- Top-down billions with no path to capture
- Unsourced analyst figures ('per Gartner' with no year)
- Charts that don't add up to the totals shown
Red flags a reader notices
- '1% of $X billion = huge' math
- No named first customer segment
- TAM includes companies that clearly can't pay you
Pitfalls behind them
- TAM is a Gartner-style top-down number with no path to capture.
- SOM is stated but never tied to the ARR the next round will judge you on.
- The beachhead segment could plausibly reach millions of customers, which means it isn't a beachhead.
60-second self-test
- · Can you write the SOM as (customers × ACV) on a napkin without a calculator?
- · Does the SOM number match the ARR milestone on your Ask slide?
Template
Beachhead: [N customers] × [$Y ACV] = $Z SOM. Adjacent: [next segment] adds $[…]. Total TAM: $[…].
Weak
"The global healthcare market is $500B, we only need 1%."
Strong
"Beachhead: 18,000 remote-native software companies (10–500 FTE) × $11.7K ACV = $210M SOM. Adjacent: design/agency shops add $180M. TAM (global payroll + EOR software): $62B."
Bottom-up math, named segment, and a SOM tied to the ARR milestone the next round will judge Nimbus on.
Quick quiz
Pick an answer. Nothing is graded, and correct answers stay hidden until you choose.
1. Which market claim is most credible?
2. A good beachhead is…