Streams progressively — you don’t need to wait for the whole file. You can also download it to listen offline.
Open a research tool and the biggest number on the screen is the size of the market. It is also the number least likely to describe anything you can win.
This episode works through why a large category is usually a crowded one, the difference between the whole market and the share a seller can realistically take and then hold, why the biggest categories so often carry the thinnest margins, and why a small market defended properly tends to compound faster than a large one entered badly.
The Total Addressable Market tells you how much money exists. It does not tell you how much of it is still available. Those are two different numbers, and only one of them is yours to go and win.
The written companion
This covers the same ground as one of the written pieces in this section, in conversational form:
- Why Amazon sellers overestimate TAM — the same argument, written, with the research-tool numbers worked through.
Where to go next
- Start looking for winning markets — what to look at once market size stops being the headline.
- Why boring products win — the categories nobody is excited about, and why that is the point.
- Products that compound — what a defended position is worth over several years.