The Startup Velocity Question: Segmentation Drives TAM

I see segmentation errors left, right and center.

As such, I see sloppy TAM models left, right and center too.

Segmentation requires a precise profiling of your ideal customer with a host of parameters each of which can individually slash your TAM down by 10%.

Featured Videos

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So let me double click down on the second one. I will come to the picks and shovels in a moment, but my observation is that to build a vertical application on top of an LLM, you obviously need to train in domain specific data. Now, there is a benefit to kind of constraining that model. You can tell me more technically how much of this is viable and how are people doing it. If you constrain the model to a small language model, the hallucination problem should go away or at least get much more manageable. Is that a correct statement?

The Startup Velocity Question: TAM Drives Fundability

More often than not, an honest Total Available Market (TAM) analysis yields small or medium sized markets. This could range from $50M, $100M, $200M to $500M.

Video FAQs

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: All right, let’s discuss the second example.

Ashmeet Sidana: Sure, another example I’m very proud of is a company called Robust Intelligence. Again, I was the first investor and they did a good job. CEO Yaron Singer, PhD from Berkeley, was at Harvard when he observed the hallucination problems with the development and deployment of AI models.

The Startup Velocity Question: Segmentation Matters

An acute lack of understanding of Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and an inadequate Market Segmentation result in artificially bloated TAM.

Often, Segmentation is too broad.

Let’s look at an example.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital (Part 1)

Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital, talks about his AI investment thesis. It’s a wonderful discussion that not only entrepreneurs should listen to, but investors should also listen in to calibrate their own investment thesis.

Building a High-Impact EdTech Venture from Alabama: QuantHub CEO Josh Jones (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of the students of these 10K students on your platform are performing at high levels?

Josh Jones: Let me, tell you our latest number. I think it is 581 in the last semester.

Sramana Mitra: That’s very good. And they all have internships?

Building a High-Impact EdTech Venture from Alabama: QuantHub CEO Josh Jones (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Can you discuss pricing for this K-12 data science training program? What kind of schools? Is this part of the curriculum now? Is data science being taught at a curriculum level? What’s the state of the union?

Josh Jones: I’d be happy to go much, much deeper into this area because it’s a passion point and it’s what I’m doing 24 hours a day right now. We were just in Virginia the last two days teaching 125 data science teachers from across the state. I’m in Chicago today meeting up with Data Science for Everyone, which is a nationwide initiative around getting data skills training in schools.