Here’s an excerpt from Andrew’s new guest post, “Why Market Sizing Is Critical for Hyperlocal Founders Seeking Investment” — now live on Street Fight Magazine.
Because of my longstanding participation in the entrepreneurial community, I have the good fortune of speaking with hundreds of founders each year and reading their pitch decks.
These pitch decks usually include a great amount of detail about how a product will be built, how it will be used, and how it will affect change with consumers or businesses. Good presentations would also describe the amount of money that a founder is seeking, what they intend to do with the money, and how much revenue they expect to generate over the next several years.
But far too many pitch decks completely ignore a vital section that can make or break the whole presentation: market sizing. The market size is the total amount of goods or services expected to be sold in the vertical area in which a business intends to operate. Skipping this section is usually reason enough for a pitch deck to end up in an investor’s rejected pile.
In fact, an entrepreneur’s projections about the total amount of revenue to be generated in the entire market for their vertical can be even more important than the projections they make for their individual business. I’ve always found that the best way to judge an opportunity is by first examining the projected market sizing.