TAM / SAM / SOM
Size your market top-down: total, serviceable, and honestly obtainable.
Your numbers
Results
How it works
SAM = TAM × the share you can actually serve. SOM = SAM × the share you can realistically win.
TAM is everyone who could conceivably buy the category. SAM narrows to the segment your product, geography, and channel can actually reach. SOM is the slice of SAM you can plausibly capture in the next few years, given competition and your resources — the only one of the three you can be held accountable to.
The classic mistake is pitching TAM as if it were your revenue plan ("if we get just 1% of a $50B market..."). Top-down sizing is a sanity check; make the SOM defensible bottom-up — customers × price — or don't put it on the slide.
Worked example
The category is worth $2,000M (TAM). Your product serves 20% of it — SMBs in your geography — so SAM = $400M. You can credibly win 5% of that in 3–5 years: SOM = $20M. Note that's 1% of the headline TAM — which is why investors ignore the big circle and interrogate the small one.