October 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cEveryone brushes their teeth,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to tell me why you\u2019re building a better toothbrush.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The emerging market is when a certain sector of the market is using a product, and there is potential for it to go mainstream.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about non-alcoholic beer before it became cool,\u201d Sardana said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then there is the invisible market, which Sardana calls \u201cthe biggest trap,\u201d and \u201calso a little bit of a dark art.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The market doesn\u2019t exist, and a founder has to essentially create one and provide investors with evidence of how innovative they can be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about smartphones in 2006; nobody knew they wanted them and they changed the world,\u201d she said, later adding that \u201cpeople don\u2019t know what they\u2019re looking for and sometimes you have to show them what\u2019s possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The audience at All Stage, many of whom are early-stage founders, peppered Sardana with questions, largely about what investors want to see. For instance, do investors want to see a TAM slide in a pitch deck?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s OK to create that slide and talk about the math behind your TAM,\u201d Sardana said, though she added that sometimes investors get annoyed when founders rely too much on industry metrics rather than having their own unique insight. Sardana also cautioned founders not to rely too much on industry reports. If a founder is too dependent on an external service to dictate how they think about the market, it can signal that they haven\u2019t thought deeply about the market they are trying to build in, she commented.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you size the TAM in the marketplaces, especially big marketplaces?\u201d one audience member asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, that question hurts,\u201d Sardana quipped. After all, Index once passed on Airbnb, having believed its TAM was too small.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is Airbnb created a whole new inventory, which is now bigger than some of the largest hotel brands, and that led to a big change in behavior on how people travel,\u201d she said, adding that marketplace TAMs are tricky. \u201cYou want to focus on, again, what is unlocking supply, and once you unlock the supply, how will behavior change?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The audience also asked Sardana what makes a company stand out to an investor like herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A tough one, Sardana said, but a really important one. Ultimately, if a founder can understand who the customer is and why they are willing to purchase their product, then a company should have no problem standing up to investors, she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the business of evaluating founders more than markets or products or anything else,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you talk about your market, it\u2019s really a lens on your ambition.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early-stage founders just can\u2019t get away from TAM \u2014 the concept of having a total addressable market for their startup to disrupt and conquer. But Index Ventures partner Jahanvi Sardana has a reminder for all those founders worried about finding TAM for their product or service: Many startups have emerged from markets that, at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-182943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}