Focusing On The Market Opportunity Of Your Deck/Plan – A Hands-on Use Case.
Let's properly research the market for a pitch deck.
⏱️ Too lazy to read for 6 minutes? Here’s the TLDR Summary:
📚 When you’re doing online research, you’ll find what you’re looking for, even if it’s wrong.
❓Ask the right questions, not the ones that you want, but the ones that have a statistically correct answer.
ℹ️ The dynamic of selecting trustworthy sources—selecting governmental websites and the Big Four, then trusting your mind to make sense of it.
🧠 The ultimate decider on whether market research makes sense is your brain.
(Use case for paid subscribers) 📝 A detailed rundown of a recent deck that I created for a client (Market Opportunity Slide).
Your Questions Must Make Sense.
Before you show the “market opportunity,” you’ll need to ask questions. This is the root of everything. If you ask the wrong questions, then you’ll display something that the investor won’t care about.
It could get worse. What if you’re doing this market research as a self-assurance that you’re on the right track? Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll keep moving on the wrong track.
The thing about the internet is that it’s always going to lead you where you’re looking.
So if you’re looking for “how your headache is actually a brain cancer,” you’ll find something in that area.
If you’re looking for how trivial your headache is, you’ll also find something there.
Google will either display an Ad for you or an SEO article written by someone who wants to make money by showing you an ad (How else would Google make $224 billion last year?)
So Google might not be able to give you the wrong information. However, those blogwriters out there couldn’t care less.
When you’re doing your market research, your questions must have a quantitatively proven answer.
Instead of, “Do people need a ride-sharing platform in Australia?”
Ask, “How many ride-sharing apps launched in Australia, what are their valuations, and what is their user count?”
The answer to one of them might please you. But the numerical answer of the other is factual, which should be much more valuable to you.
Let me put it in bold — When you are doing market research, always ask reasonable questions.
Never Entirely Trust Your Trustworthy Sources
Some sources are credible; others are just pure nonsense. Usually, in my experience, the ones who have a reputation to keep are the ones who are more likely to show credible information.
Aim for the likes of McKinsey, Deloitte, KPMG, and so on. They constantly release research that is well-designed and tells a good story. But they don’t cook the numbers in their offices. They mostly research them as well.
Who’s their source, then? The source of your source? Governmental Websites.
The Department of Labor (dol.gov)
Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
The likes of those are the ones who are the core of the core. But it is controlled by other people as well. Hence, my advice is to never entirely trust even the most trustworthy sources.
What should you do then? Use something that is much more valuable than those websites — Your brain.
In many client calls I get, the client would be working in an industry for twenty years. They would challenge research. They would bluntly say that it’s not how it is. Call me naive, but in many cases, I believe them. That doesn’t mean I disregard research, but I have to acknowledge that their brains are a product of the biggest market research that exists—work experience.
Hands-on Use Case (ExoTwiin)
Now let’s get practical. We’ll start analyzing a market research slide that I’ve done for a startup in a sector of the metaverse.
This is what the slide looks like.
How did we get there? Let’s take a step back.
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