Market research for startups — a practical guide

Market research doesn't require a budget

Founders often assume proper market research needs expensive tools or paid analyst reports. Most of the highest-value research — search-demand signals, competitor mapping, and direct customer conversations — is free and more reliable than a generic industry report anyway, because it's specific to your exact buyer and category.

Step 1 — Define the specific buyer

Research is only as good as the specificity of who you're researching. “Small businesses” produces research too broad to act on. “Independent accounting practices with 5–20 staff” produces research you can actually use to find real people to talk to.

Step 2 — Check search-demand signals

Google Trends shows whether search interest in your problem space is growing, flat, or declining over the past 24 months — a quick, free directional signal. Forum conversations (Reddit, industry-specific communities) show whether people are describing your exact problem in their own words, which is often more revealing than search volume alone.

Step 3 — Map the competitive landscape

List every direct and indirect competitor you can find, their pricing (often public), and any available revenue signals (funding announcements, review-site activity, hiring pages showing headcount). A market with zero visible competitors is usually a red flag, not an opportunity — real markets have existing solutions, even informal ones.

Step 4 — Estimate market size bottom-up

Skip the “the global market is worth $500B” framing entirely — it's neither credible nor useful for decision-making. Start from a specific, countable buyer population (e.g. “4,200 UK accounting practices with 5–20 staff”) and a realistic annual spend per buyer, then work upward. This produces a number you can actually defend and use to plan.

Step 5 — Talk to 10 real buyers

Structured interviews focused on their current workflow, existing tools, and specific frustrations — not pitching your solution. The goal is understanding their world well enough to know whether your idea genuinely fits into it, not confirming what you already believe.

Step 6 — Synthesise into a decision

Research that doesn't end in a clear decision is just accumulated information. Combine your search-demand findings, competitive landscape, market size estimate, and interview evidence into an explicit go, iterate, or skip decision — and write down the specific reasoning so you can revisit it later if circumstances change.

Turning research into a score

Once you've gathered this evidence, running it through Skip or Ship turns your qualitative research into a comparable score — useful when you're weighing multiple researched ideas against each other rather than evaluating just one in isolation. For a specific market-sizing calculation, the TAM/SAM/SOM calculator turns your bottom-up buyer count and spend estimate directly into a sized opportunity.