Ask HN: How does one identify markets and their sizes? - cronjobma
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roymurdock
This is my job as a market researcher and analyst at VDC Research. We produce
models and reports at my firm by interviewing executives at companies in each
market we cover, surveying large samples of end users (embedded and IoT
engineers), and integrating a lot of secondary and financial data into our
models. We sell our research to vendors, consultancies, banks, etc. Happy to
answer questions about the process.

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yread
I was always wondering do you actually pay the CEOs for the interviews? Or do
they pay you for the brand recognition?

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roymurdock
We don’t pay any executives or companies to participate in our research. Their
incentive is to be be accurately represented in terms of company size,
strategy, and positioning because their competitors and potential acquirers
read the reports. There are some “pay to play” market research companies but
we don’t engage in any of that (it’s basically just marketing), which is often
targeted more at end users of the products instead of the vendors and
investors.

We do pay end users (IoT and embedded engineers) for their time on surveys and
interviews. Drop me an email if you want to be added to our email list. We
usually offer a $40 amazon gift card or donation to Doctors Without Borders
for a 30 minute survey, and we report feedback on hardware, software, and
tools to vendors to help them improve their products.

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farnsworthy
Your characterization might indicate a different incentive, but I suppose
everyone knows (and accounts for?) that…

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gt_
For the record, I am a technical and sometimes creative grunt and this kind of
research is far from my specialty.

The last time I tried to do this, I exhausted everything I could find on the
internet and was still very short. I was researching a major professional user
software sector and my only option at this point was an annual report sold by
a private firm for around $4,000/year. They seemed open to bids but did not
accept my extremely low ones. They did keep spamming me for a while, though. I
never could tell if this was going to be legitimate. I wasn’t able to find
reviews of the firm’s services, and even if I could have afforded it, I expect
I would have been too suspicious to follow through.

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paulcole
Pardon my ignorance but why do you call it spamming when you contacted them
first?

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gt_
I guess I have a different definition, or at least a different threshold, for
what I consider spam. This particular situation was not extreme but I still
consider it spam. They continued emailing me around twice per month with the
same offer despite me having been perfectly clear on at least two occasions
that I was not interested. They did this for 14 months before giving up. I
received another message at the 2 year mark that was an actual release
announcement, which I do not consider spam.

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kevinwong
It's more of an art than a science but you can triangulate depending on what
you have and what you're trying to do.

If looking into existing markets and figuring out your angle into those -
firms like Gartner, Forrester, as well as research arms of banks/consulting
firms (Deloitte, JPM, BAML, etc) will have pretty good reports that you can
purchase/search for (filetype:pdf can give some great results). I find these
to be a good high level starting point and you can go deep on individual
topics. "Value added research" can involve customer interviews, public
surveys, hands on research (visiting a location), etc.

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roarktoohey
If it is established market, look at public companies and their financial
statements. If not, you have to infer from "reasonable" assumptions.

Ideally, the question would have more specifics to warrant a better answer.

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JSeymourATL
How To Identify Your Market And Size Up Competitors>
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccabagley/2013/10/02/how-
to...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccabagley/2013/10/02/how-to-identify-
your-market-size-up-competitors/#355c8dfe6834)

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arthurcolle
big banks publish a lot of market color & researh for exactly this purpose

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cronjobma
Publish to the public? Would love to see what you mean.

