Market Assessment
Framework previewRun rigorous customer discovery with the Mom Test: audit your interview questions for bias, capture past behavior and workarounds, rate your evidence from assumption → financial proof, and size the market bottom-up from real buyers and real pricing.
The Mom Test — Interview Audit Canvas
Log a real customer conversation. Bea flags leading questions and rewrites them to surface past behavior.
What is The Mom Test?ShowHide
The Mom Test is a framework by Rob Fitzpatrick for asking customer questions that even your mom can't lie to you about. People naturally want to be polite and tell you your idea is great. To get the truth, follow these 3 rules:
- Talk about their life and past actions, not your idea or hypothetical future features.
- Ask about specifics in the past ("When was the last time you…?") rather than generics or opinions ("Would you ever…?").
- Talk less and listen more — let the customer show you their real workarounds, tools, and budget.
Evidence Level Meter
What kind of proof do you have? Aim for Level 3+ before investing further.
Bea's Socratic pushback
You're at Level 1 — opinions and verbal interest are notoriously unreliable. Before you mark this module complete: what workaround did a real customer show you? Whose calendar have you seen blocked with this pain? Who has paid — even $1 — to make it go away?
Bottom-Up Market Size (TAM / SAM / SOM)
Build revenue from real buyers, not top-down "1% of $100B" fiction.
The entire revenue opportunity if you captured 100% of the market.
e.g. All HR departments globally.
The slice of TAM you could realistically serve given geography, language, and operations.
e.g. English-speaking Series-A HR ops leads in North America.
The portion of SAM you can actually win in year 1 with today's team, channels, and budget.
e.g. 50 paying HR ops clients in the first 12 months.
💡 How to calculate bottom-up market sizeShow exampleHide
- Count reachable buyers in year 1 (e.g. 1,000 HR ops leads you can email or meet).
- Multiply by your annual price per buyer (e.g. $200/month × 12 = $2,400/yr).
- 1,000 × $2,400 = $2.4M SAM. Apply a realistic win-rate (e.g. 5%) → $120K SOM.
⚠ Avoid top-down sizing. "If we just get 1% of a $10B industry" is a red flag. Investors want real buyer math — who, how many, at what price, reachable through what channel.
Annual revenue potential
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CAC paybackCAC Payback Period = Months of subscription revenue needed to recover the acquisition cost. Under 12 months is healthy for early-stage SaaS.
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ARPU : CAC (yr 1)First-year annual ARPU divided by CAC. Above 3× means each customer pays back their acquisition cost 3× over in year one.
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Unbiased Interview Script Generator
Give Bea your problem hypothesis. She'll draft 5 questions that surface truth, not politeness.
Key customer quotes & learnings
Verbatim beats paraphrase. Capture the sentences that made you rethink your product.