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MGSB22 Entrepreneurship / MGSD24 New Venture Creation & Planning

Winter 2023

Market research can be hard

  • Library databases may have limited value for you depending on the nature of your venture.
  • The market research you do find may not be specific enough to your venture, e.g. geography, industry, customer segment.
  • Doing market research is time-consuming - be careful to allocate your time appropriately between primary and secondary market research.
  • Market research may produce conflicting data about your market.  Look at the sources involved, evaluate for potential bias or methodology issues, and do your best to triangulate.
  • Market research can be messy.  Sometimes, you have to use a best-guess or an estimate when sizing or analyzing a market. 
  • Market research is no substitute for a powerful story about the problem your team is trying to solve - but all startups need to do it!

Image CC0 public domain, no attribution required

Market research in practice

Market research by startups often gets boiled down to just one or two slides in a pitch deck, like in this AirBnB example.  So don't lose perspective!