When choosing problems to solve in a new venture, one critical question to answer is how big is the market. How many people have this problem? What is this problem worth to them? An hour or two of secondary market research can go a long way towards helping you decide whether you are solving an impactful problem or whether your problem statement is a bit too niche.

In big companies, market sizing involves buying analyst reports for thousands of dollars yet, subscribing to an analyst portal such as Gartner, IBIS World and the like for tens of thousands of dollars. In a new venture we don’t have this type of budget. Here are a few pro-tips on doing quick and dirty secondary market research on a budget.

Market segmentation is a frequently overlooked step in venture creation. Entrepreneurs often lock and load on a specific target market without considering their alternatives. This can be expensive – if you pick the wrong area of focus, you could spend years building the wrong solution. Thoughtful segmentation coupled with primary market research to build knowledge about the customer will pay dividends for years to come and is very worthy of a few weeks of investment.

In this module, we will define terms and provide actionable advice on how you might come up with a segmentation framework for your own venture.

Originally developed at the Stanford d.school and brought into the mainstream by the product design firm IDEO, Design Thinking is a framework that encourages us to solve problems by building empathy with the user / customer to understand their needs, wants and expectations. This helps us define the problem and rapidly prototype and test solutions. This human-centric approach is universally applicable whether you are creating a product, service or user experience.  Note that it is a solution-centric framework that does not typically include business/financial considerations.