Five questions, and the tools that answer them
A market move turns on five questions. Every tool below answers one of them, and each works on its own — use the sizing without ever starting a project. Four of nine are live today; the rest carry a real judgement while their analysis is built. Opening one takes an account, so that what it produces has somewhere to live — the worked examples are open to anyone.
Is the need real?
The needIs the market worth it?
The marketMarket Size Calculator
Rates Market Size
Fifteen methods across four families — top-down, bottom-up, value-theory and diffusion — each sized on its own and then reconciled against the others, because two published figures for one market are two answers to the same question, never a bigger market. Nothing is asserted on your behalf: a figure you have not claimed renders as a dash, not a zero.
What it gives you
- → TAM, SAM and SOM, with a downside/base/upside band built from a documented risk checklist
- → An AI search that finds real published figures, screens out the report mills, and names what it set aside
- → An audit trail behind every number, and an Excel export where the figures are still numbers
Value Chain Mapping
Rates Fragmentation
Walks the value chain hop by hop — who buys from whom, at what material share — so you can size the layer public data never reports on directly, and see how consolidated the buyers and the channel actually are.
What it will add
- → A hop-by-hop chain builder with material shares at each step
- → A derived size for the layer you sell into, not just the whole chain
- → A concentration read across buyers and channel, which is what Fragmentation scores
The judgement already works: the rating and progress you set on its page persist to the project, feed the screen and show on the dashboard. The analysis above is what is being built.
See the page →Regulatory Risk Analyzer
Rates Regulatory Risk
Surfaces the regulatory exposure that can end a market entry outright — which regimes apply, what approval or registration each demands, and the deadlines that turn a risk into a date. It reads the upside too: an incentive or a duty on the alternative is exposure the other way round.
What it will add
- → Applicable regimes per market, with status and evidence
- → Approval, registration and compliance obligations as dated items, not open questions
- → Incentives and restrictions you depend on, and what happens if they move
- → Knockout flagging for the exposures that would stop entry regardless of the rest
The judgement already works: the rating and progress you set on its page persist to the project, feed the screen and show on the dashboard. The analysis above is what is being built.
See the page →Can we win it?
The edgeCompetitive Pressure
Rates Competitive Intensity · Substitution Threat
Holds the incumbents and the substitutes in one place, because they are answers to the same buyer question: what else could they choose. One registry of named alternatives, compared on the dimensions your customer actually buys on.
What it gives you
- → A named-alternatives registry covering both direct rivals and substitute technologies
- → A technical comparison table against your own offer, dimension by dimension
- → Separate reads for how crowded the field is and how good the alternatives are
Value Proposition Builder
Rates Value Proposition
Turns jobs, pains and gains into a positioning statement that survives contact with a named alternative — the claim, who it is for, and what makes it hard to match.
What it will add
- → Jobs / pains / gains capture, scored by how strongly each is felt
- → A differentiation claim tested against each named alternative
- → A positioning statement assembled from what you actually evidenced
The judgement already works: the rating and progress you set on its page persist to the project, feed the screen and show on the dashboard. The analysis above is what is being built.
See the page →Economic Value Calculator
Rates Economic Value
Builds the value your offer creates for the customer in money — driver by driver, net of what it costs them to switch — and turns that into a defensible price and a payback they can check.
What it gives you
- → A driver-by-driver value build (yield, downtime, waste, labour, disposal)
- → Switching cost netted off, so the number is what they actually gain
- → A value-based price band and the payback period that follows from it
Qualification & Switching
Rates Switching / Qualification Barriers
Maps what it takes to get specced in, and how well those same barriers defend you once you are. Both directions matter: high barriers you can clear are a moat, high barriers you cannot are a wall.
What it will add
- → The qualification path as real steps — owner, duration, cost, pass-risk
- → Time-to-qualify and total cost derived from those steps, with the longest pole named
- → What the buyer gives up to switch, and how hard the next entrant would find it
The judgement already works: the rating and progress you set on its page persist to the project, feed the screen and show on the dashboard. The analysis above is what is being built.
See the page →Growth Plan Developer
One tool — also answers ⑤
Two layers of the same number. The growth aspiration is a second pass on SOM — the ramp, price and margin you intend to win. The launch plan builds the same figure bottom-up from named accounts, and the tool reconciles the two.
What it will add
- → Growth aspiration: a multi-year ramp with price and margin, checked against SOM
- → Launch plan: named target accounts, channel and sales enablement
- → A reconcile step between the two, the way TAM reconciles top-down against bottom-up
The judgement already works: the rating and progress you set on its page persist to the project, feed the screen and show on the dashboard. The analysis above is what is being built.
See the page →Can we make it?
The buildAnswered as checks rather than a rating. Taking an existing product somewhere new collapses this to capacity and qualification, and the route writes down exactly what that assumed. A new product asks more of it — development effort, production readiness, what has to be built before anything ships — and how far that gets specified here is an open question. Where the capacity or the build has to be paid for, this is also an investment decision, and it is weighed against the growth plan it is meant to serve rather than on its own payback. Either way the question is never skipped: it is answered, or recorded as a claim someone has to retire.
How do we enter?
The entryAnd one that runs after the decision
Not part of the go/no-go. It starts once you have moved, and checks whether the answers above held.
Is it working?
The proofRuns on what the other five already recorded, rather than on a tool of its own. This is the question that outlives the decision — actuals against the plan, and the triggers you set before the data arrived. It recurs rather than completes, which is why it is a review and not a gate.