Mindshare Strategy
Sample Sizes
How large is your market? How do you measure it? A $1MM market might sound huge to a Mom&Pop grocery store in the country, but it’s small potatoes to a real estate developer in Manhattan. What methods can you use to accurately measure your market size?
A lot of times I see relative figures scattered over people’s resumes. “I saved the company 10% …” or “I increased revenue by 25%.” These relative figures don’t mean much without context. If you’re working in a startup with 4 paying customers, simply adding yourself to the client list increases revenue by 25%. To make a long story short, relative numbers and percentages are meaningless without an initial figure to provide context.
So before making broad statements about your figures or using them in projections, make sure you establish a baseline to measure against. Saying you increased revenue by 10% in a $15MM industry is a much more powerful statement. It also makes your figures more reliable and means savvy investors and businessfolk will be more likely to pay attention.
