Product
Creating a platform where college students can borrow each others’ rally gear for specially themed events.
Market Size
TAM
Since we’re addressing college students, we can use the total number of college students to estimate the TAM. We will assume a US only market.
18.99 million
SAM
To narrow the population, we can evaluate how many college students go out, particularly for a themed event. While there is no such statistic, I will use the percentage of college students that drink (80%) as a metric for determining the number of students who go out. Since themed parties don’t happen that often, I will assume that 25% of parties are themed.
18.99 million * 0.8 * 0.25 =
3.8 million
SOM
We can only really look at Stanford’s campus as a SOM because it is the most reachable market at the moment. To get to this number, I will use the equation for SAM but substitute the total number of US college students for the total number of Stanford students.
16,914 * 0.8 * 0.25 =
3,383
Interviews
- My first interview was with a friend who is a senior at UCSD, a school that is typically known for its lack of social presence on campus. When discussing social life and themed parties, the interviewee suggested a lack thereof at her school, also mentioning “I’ve never had trouble finding what I wanted to wear going out. I usually just look in my wardrobe and find something I need.” This makes me wonder: are we catering to a small niche of students? How much of our bias is playing into what we think is a strong market for our product idea? When discussing my idea to her, she stated that she would not even think to pay to use our product.
- My second interview was with my roommate, a fifth year undergrad at Stanford and a member of Greek life. He goes out once a week, but when he does go out, he typically doesn’t “have trouble picking out what he’s going to wear.” When there is a themed party, he tends to borrow clothes 40% of the time and typically reaches out to his fraternity’s Discord channel to ask others to borrow clothes. This is not promising at all to hear, and I think it is time to steer the product into a different direction.
