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The 3 Market Numbers Every Founder Must Know Before Launch

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You’ve Built an Incredible Product. But Who Is It Actually For?

You’ve spent months, maybe years, immersed in code. You solved a complex technical problem and built something powerful.

Now comes the question that stops many brilliant builders in their tracks: Who is going to pay for this?

This isn't a trick question. It’s the difference between a side project and a business. For many technical founders, "market analysis" sounds like a vague, time-consuming task full of spreadsheets and guesswork. It feels like a distraction from improving the product.

That’s a critical mistake.

Market analysis isn't about creating busywork; it's about defining the universe your product exists in. Without it, you're building in a vacuum.

 

Stop Guessing: The Three Numbers That Actually Matter

Forget complex frameworks for a moment. Understanding your market comes down to three core metrics. This is your map.

  1. Total Addressable Market (TAM): This is the biggest number. It represents the total possible demand for a product or service if every single potential customer in the world were to buy it. It's the "what if" scenario. Investors look at this to gauge the ultimate potential of your idea.

  2. Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM): This is your slice of the pie. It's the segment of the TAM that your product or service can realistically reach, constrained by your business model, geography, or specialization. This is your specific battleground.

  3. Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM): This is your starting block. The SOM is the portion of the SAM you can realistically capture in the short term, given your resources, competition, and current strategy. This is your first objective.

TAM, SAM and SOM

Knowing these numbers isn't an academic exercise. It forces you to answer the most important strategic questions: Is this market big enough to build a real business? Who are my actual competitors? What share of the market can I realistically win in the next 1-2 years?

Answering these questions used to take weeks of research. You don’t have weeks. You need to be building, iterating, and shipping.

That's why we built Cambium AI. You provide a URL, and our platform instantly analyzes your business and generates your TAM, SAM, and SOM. It performs the deep market research so you can focus on strategic decisions, not data collection.

Ready to see the size of your market? Use our tool for free.