marketing, launchI have heard from a lot of startup talks that an ideal market for launch would be a market which is small and very fast growing.
I can gauge whether the market is small, but how can I exactly gauge whether it would be fast growing. If it is already, then how can I ensure that it is not a bubble (or would have a steep end)?
Is it through pure intuition or experience, or are there indicators or metrics through which I can gauge the market?
This question relies heavily on the type of industry your in and product you want to market, but I will try to give the most general answer possible to cover most bases.
In terms of gauging initial market the main thing to do it to try and find Problem-Solution Fit. This meaning that you have identified a major problem for a set of people and have identified the correct solution to solve this problem.
You stated that you can tell if the market is big, and that's a good start. Now the next step is to brainstorm a few customer archetypes that you think would make good early adopters.
Then go and find some of the people who fit these archetypes and conduct problem-solution interviews with them. A really good resource on how to conduct these interviews without a lot of bias can be found in the book "Running Lean" by Ash Maurya. You should get a good idea if these people are a good fit for early adopters after a 5+ interviews with different people in each archetype.
It is best to try to find one solid customer archetype who REALLY wants your product, build for them and then expand into the mainstream market.
You also asked if there were metrics you could track, and many industries have this information available. However, in the early stages these "quantitative metrics" may not be helpful. As opposed to in-person interviews which may be useful "qualitative metrics" to guide you in the right direction early on.
A good proxy is to go to local meet-ups and the like, and gauge whether users are willing to buy what you have to sell. The operating word there is buy. If they’re merely “interested” in what you’re up to it’s meaningless.
You may want to suggest here that they’re not representative. At the end of the day, it takes a very special type of person to decide “hey I’d like to meet up with this group and do whatever.” But they actually are. They’re the active minority that will get the word out - so they’re important.
Combine that with national statistics of how many people work in the field and you’ve a proxy of how much you’ll be able to sell. It’s far from perfect, but it will give you an idea of what you can sell to who - and even more importantly, how.
The same general type of remark goes for sites such as erlibird.com or producthunt.com.
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