Startups Stack Exchange Archive

How to determine market size?

• posted by: Andrew on 2015-02-04
• tagged: market-research
• score: 0

I’m working on a product designed for Ruby developers. I need to find numbers and statistics on market size so that I can convince investors. Things like:

• total number of Ruby developers compared to other languages
• total number of companies using Ruby on Rails
• total percentage of startups using Ruby on Rails

In general, how do I go about finding this type of information?

Answer 3326

• posted by: Ben I. on 2015-02-04
• score: 2

Most of the stats are about job postings and open source projects, because that is what is collectible. Here are a few:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

http://www.statisticbrain.com/computer-programming-language-statistics/

Also, http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/HTML5%2C+Ruby-on-Rails%2C+Python%2C+PHP%2C+Javascript%2C+Java%2C+.NET.html

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/Ruby-on-rails.html

Ruby on Rails doesn’t have the best looking market. This page makes it sound more promising (although it’s a little disingenuous because the data is outdated):

http://blog.bloc.io/ruby-on-rails-job-trends-report/

Unfortunately, Ruby on Rails has been trending downward recently:

http://www.itworld.com/article/2851688/losing-steam-don-t-drop-everything-to-learn-ruby-on-rails.html

Really, if you’re not entirely stuck with Ruby on Rails, you may want to consider developing your product for a development environment that is trending up instead of down. The best way to attract investors is to have better fundamentals - then it is less about selling and more about simply showing the facts.

Of course, if your tool represents a substantial step forward with the language, you may also begin to drive development there. Also, Ruby is still the most-popular MVC environment out there. You can point to a large base of users who know the language, even if they are working elsewhere, and then talk about how your specialized tools will make things much better, making Ruby a great development platform for certain kinds of use cases. It’s just a harder sell for investors if you have to make that kind of case.

So, is it too late to switch?

Answer 3329

• posted by: Denis de Bernardy on 2015-02-04
• score: 1

Adding what doesn’t fit in a lengthy comment to Choirbean’s answer, be wary that raw market figures are not the only thing that counts.

Consider for a moment that you’re offering washing machine repair services. Within your city, you might have a heap of households, nearly all of them equipped with a washing machine, and say 5% of these machines breaking per year for some reason or another. Your addressable market is not 5% of the households. Because:

• Some households will just buy a new machine.
• Some households will have a handyman around (husband, kiddo, cousin, neighbor, whatever).
• Some households will make do with it, e.g. a small leak by putting a bucket or a mop around.
• Etc.

My point here is, even if you do have precise figures, you still won’t be able to know what your addressable market.

To have a credible business model whatsoever, you need to identify a problem that you solve, which your prospects:

1. actually have,
2. are actively trying to solve here and now when have it,
3. are willing to pay to resolve it; and

Bonus points for being able to outline how to find them when they do. If you can do the latter, chances are you already have a product-market fit.

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