Early-stage founders cannot just go away from the TAM-the concept of having a total recognition market to disrupt and conquer them at the beginning. But the Index Ventures partner Jahani Sardana There is a reminder for all the founders who are concerned about the search for TAM for their products or services: there have been many startup markets that were not currently present at the time.
“What was the market for search before Google?” Sardana asked the audience earlier this month in all the 2025 stage event of the Tech Crunch in Boston. “What was the operating system market before Microsoft, or what was the cloud market before Amazon?”
Sardana compared the TAM with surfing. In every few years, it is important to ride on the founders of large -scale waves here – the Internet came first, then the mobile wave, then the cloud, and now, he said, the greatest wave of all: artificial intelligence.
“Have you created the right product to ride this wave?” It continued. “This is what we call the product market fit.”
Which Tom Bucket are you in?
Sardana kept Tim in three buckets: known market, emerging market, and hidden market.
First, the well -known market, already exists, and this happens when a founder tries to change the current current and he has to prove to an investor why his startup idea is better.
Taxkarnch event
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
“Everyone cleanses their teeth,” he said. “You have to tell me why you are making a better toothbrush.”
The emerging market occurs when a specific market sector is using a product, and there are possibilities for its mainstream.
“Think about it before the non -alcohol beer cools down,” Sardana said.
Then there is a hidden market, which Sardana “is the largest trap” and “a little bit of a dark art.”
The market does not exist, and the founder must make one and investors have to provide evidence of how modern they can be.
“Think about smartphones in 2006; no one knew that they wanted them and changed the world,” he said, “He later added that” people do not know what they are looking for and sometimes you have to show them what is possible. ”
At each stage, the audience, many of whom are the founders of the early stage, with questions, to a great extent about what investors want to see. For example, do investors want to see Tom slide in the pitch deck?
“It’s okay to make this slide and talk about mathematics behind his Tom,” said Sardana, although he added that when investors are sometimes angry when the founders relies heavily on the industry matrix rather than having their own separate insights. Sardana also warned the founders not to rely too much on industry reports. If a founder relies heavily on an external service so that he orders how he thinks of the market, it can indicate that he has never thought deeply about the market he is trying to build.
“How do you size in markets, especially in big markets?” A member of the audience asked.
“Well, this question hurts,” Sardana said. However, the index once spent on Air BNB, after believing that its Tom is very small.
“The fact is that Airbon B created a whole new inventory, which is now larger than the hotel’s largest brands, and this has led to a major change in travel methods.” “You want to focus again, unlock the supply, and once you unlock the supply, how will the behavior change?”
The audience also asked Sardana that the company is standing in front of an investor like itself?
A tough, Sardana said, but is really important. He added that finally, if a founder can understand who is the user and why they are ready to buy their products, then no company should have any problem in standing in front of the investors.
“We are in business to test more than markets or products or anything else,” he said. “When you talk about your market, it’s really the lens on your wish.”