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Ask YC: What's your Advice on Performing Market Analysis for a Startup?

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Ask YC: What's your Advice on Performing Market Analysis for a Startup?

#1

Post by iamdave »

I'm in some early stages of a startup concept, and part of the conceptualization involves some pretty intense and detailed market analysis. I would need to contact various hosting vendors and dedicated server individuals and gather information like data transfer rates, processor usage, hardware acceleration, very detailed stuff that goes beyond your ordinary analytics (like what's your typical bounce rate of a user coming from x site).

What's the best way to gather this kind of data without raising the red flag?

Re: Ask YC: What's your Advice on Performing Market Analysis for a Startup?

#2

Post by dkokelley »

What it looks like you're trying to do is go beyond market analysis and into industry analysis for your startup. Your market is much broader and includes your industry as well as your consumers and everything that affects both of those.

Probably the best way to get the information you want is to get a job working at one of those places for a few months. You will learn the industry inside and out if you keep yourself open to gathering information.

Another (probably obvious way you've already considered) is to call the companies as a potential customer. Ask them questions about their products/services that you would expect them to answer for a regular customer.

That should be enough to get you started. Good luck!

Re: Ask YC: What's your Advice on Performing Market Analysis for a Startup?

#4

Post by aagha »

dkokelley wrote: post #2

What it looks like you're trying to do is go beyond market analysis and into industry analysis for your startup. Your market is much broader and includes your industry as well as your consumers and everything that affects both of those. Probably the best way to get the information you want is to get a job working at one of those places for a few months. You will learn the industry inside and out if you keep yourself…

Good suggestion on acting like a potential customer.

Furthermore, I agree that these questions may be at an "industry analysis" level. As such, I'd advise looking into utilizing http://www.marketresearch.com/ or http://www.gartner.com/.

Re: Ask YC: What's your Advice on Performing Market Analysis for a Startup?

#6

Post by nikiscevak »

aagha wrote: post #4
dkokelley wrote: post #2

What it looks like you're trying to do is go beyond market analysis and into industry analysis for your startup. Your market is much broader and includes your industry as well as your consumers and everything that affects both of those. Probably the best way to get the information you want is to get a job working at one of those places for a few months. You will learn the industry inside and out if you keep yourself…

Good suggestion on acting like a potential customer. Furthermore, I agree that these questions may be at an "industry analysis" level. As such, I'd advise looking into utilizing http://www.marketresearch.com/ or http://www.gartner.com/ .

Honestly, you'll waste your time. They'll see you coming from a mile away.

A fantastic source of market research is from larger public companies. Look up their most recent 10-K (annual report). They are legally obligated to give a fairly detailed market analysis (that synthesizes the research from folks like Gartner etc.) in each annual report. It's a great starting point.

Also, for most startup 'markets' there isn't actually a market. It's completely new. So 'market research' in this sense is not very useful and you should examine the premise that you need to do market research at all (versus say concentrating on whether consumers actually have a problem that you can solve).

Re: Ask YC: What's your Advice on Performing Market Analysis for a Startup?

#7

Post by mosburger »

nikiscevak wrote: post #6
aagha wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good suggestion on acting like a potential customer. Furthermore, I agree that these questions may be at an "industry analysis" level. As such, I'd advise looking into utilizing http://www.marketresearch.com/ or http://www.gartner.com/ .

Honestly, you'll waste your time. They'll see you coming from a mile away. A fantastic source of market research is from larger public companies. Look up their most recent 10-K (annual report). They are legally obligated to give a fairly detailed market analysis (that synthesizes the research from folks like Gartner etc.) in each annual report. It's a great starting point. Also, for most startup 'markets' there isn't…

Totally agree w/ nikiscevak. I abandoned one of my ideas for a wireless MVNO after analyzing the 10-K's of some publicly traded wireless companies. Just reading through the summaries will give you good nuggets of information.

Re: Ask YC: What's your Advice on Performing Market Analysis for a Startup?

#10

Post by OpenWebU »

I did the same as thorax. Often if you say you are considering becoming a customer, they will give a one to two week free trial. You learn a lot from salespeople and their sales consultants.

You may enter this trial thinking that you will compete, but you may also learn a lot -- like info to feed into your product strategy -- in my case realizing that I'd like to outsource some components of what I'm doing and focus on what is original/unique about my idea.

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