Market Size
Prove the opportunity is big enough for venture returns, built bottom-up, with a named beachhead.
Draft your slide, then click Mark complete to move forward. The checklist and quiz below are optional self-tests. You can mark complete anytime.
Include, tick each as you draft
Nothing checked yet. You can still mark this module complete and continue.
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 investors call out
- !'1% of $X billion = huge' math
- !No named first customer segment
- !TAM includes companies that clearly can't pay you
Common failure patterns
What experienced readers spot first when this slide is weak.
- 1TAM is a Gartner-style top-down number with no path to capture.
- 2SOM is stated but never tied to the ARR the next round will judge you on.
- 3The beachhead segment could plausibly reach millions of customers, which means it isn't a beachhead.
Run this against your own slide (60 seconds)
- ?Can you write the SOM as (customers × ACV) on a napkin without a calculator?
- ?Does the SOM number match the ARR milestone on your Ask slide?
If either answer is no, the fix is above in Include or in the Weak vs. strong block below.
Starter template
Beachhead: [N customers] × [$Y ACV] = $Z SOM. Adjacent: [next segment] adds $[…]. Total TAM: $[…].
Weak vs. strong, the same slide, rewritten
“The global healthcare market is $500B, we only need 1%.”
“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.
Check yourself
Sources
See the full methodology for how dwell seconds and scoring weights are derived.