How we build market research.
Five stages, in this order. We do not skip stages and we do not invert them. The methodology survives because the work is auditable backward, every claim on page 12 traces to a source line in the appendix.
Scope
Day 1 of every engagement. We lock the industry, the geography, the audience for the report (investor / lender / strategic / internal), and the time horizon. A 12-page report scoped at "global SaaS" is not a useful report. The scope statement appears in the methodology section so reviewers can audit what we promised versus what we delivered.
Sizing
Bottom-up first, top-down as anchor. We count units (customers, vendors, transactions, square meters, whichever maps to your model) and price them. We then check the result against industry reports (IBISWorld, Statista, sector-specific publications). When bottom-up and top-down disagree, we name the disagreement in the appendix and explain which we trust.
Competitive landscape
Five named competitors minimum, seven for the Comprehensive tier. Each gets: positioning, pricing if disclosed, funded status, defensibility (network effects, IP, regulatory moats, switching costs), and a one-line vulnerability. "We have no competitors" is the phrase that kills more rounds than any other; if you believe it, we will help you find them.
Customer evidence
Demand signals triangulated from at least three independent sources: search volume, app store ranks, job postings, regulatory filings, trade press, primary interviews where the tier includes them. We discount any single signal by default, three weak signals pointing the same way beats one strong signal in isolation.
Synthesis
The report’s conclusions are written last, against the evidence collected. We do not start with the thesis you want and find evidence for it. If our synthesis disagrees with your intuition, we flag the disagreement in the executive summary; you can act on it or override it, but you cannot say you were not warned.
Scope boundaries
- Forecasting individual stock prices, M&A outcomes, or specific deal closures.
- Primary research with statistically significant n (we do qualitative interviews, not surveys).
- Regulatory legal opinions, we flag the regulation, we do not interpret it.
Order the document built on this methodology.
Market Research Comprehensive
The MR most founders need. 20-25 pages plus a 10-slide executive deck.
The market research most founders raising rounds actually need. 20-25 pages plus a 10-slide executive deck. Bottom-up TAM, segmented SAM, named competitors.