By market sizing, I mean taking a given market (e.g., the market for HD televisions or widgets or oatmeal cookies) and slicing and dicing it based on a series of assumptions.
I have had some opportunities to practice this through my internships (looking at market sizes to inform business plans or VC investments) and to a small degree in classes, but you can always improve — and the only way to improve is to practice.
If I could rewind to last summer, I might have spent some time practicing management-consulting case interviews (even though I didn’t want to go into consulting) for that very reason.
Why?
Well, case interviews require you to quantitatively walk through a business problem and figure out the magnitude of profit, revenue, etc., which guides your decision making. More important, they force you to develop your own analytic process.
Doing this repeatedly is bound to make you improve.
Bonus VC job tip: Pick an industry you know little or nothing about and spend about 10 hours (give or take) during a one-week period looking at the industry trends, value chain, competitive landscape, market sizes and value proposition for key players, and think about what you would like to invest in (if anything). After doing this, you’ll be familiar with yet another space and have another set of insights to share during your informational and formal interviews.
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