TAM/SAM/SOM
TAM – College affiliates in the US
Total tertiary college students: 19 million [Source]
Total college employees: 3 million [Source]
SAM – 57% of US universities are willing to spend on Slack [Source]
SOM – Stanford affiliates which is about ~22K people [Source]
Pricing – Subscription model like Slack.
$5 price per head billed annually
$100K during the first year
The interviews revealed that the process for scheduling private events is smooth and rather enjoyable. Scheduling a meeting with people within the same company also seemed straightforward as the same Calendar software is used and employees have access to the meeting attendees calendars. This way free time blocks can be identified across multiple people within the organization.
But the most painful scheduling experiences by far were related to semi-professional, academic settings where lengthy back-and-forths via email or scheduling tools such as when2meet add to the frustrations encountered during the scheduling process.
To estimate the pricing model for our product, we looked at how Slack charges organizations for its product suite. Slack operates with a subscription model and charges per head at an annual rate of $100. Since our product is less powerful but still provides value to the user, we estimate that an annual rate of $5 per head is realistic. Multiplying this price with the number of users we can capture gives us the TAM/SAM/SOM estimates below.
We defined our Total Addressable Market (TAM) as all college affiliates in the US, calculated by finding the sum of all college students and all employees in the US. Based on our pricing model, this market would yield $110 million per year in revenue.
We calculated our Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) by looking at the adoption rate of an analogous product in our TAM. A rough analog for our concept is the productivity and communication tool Slack. We found that about 57% of US colleges have adopted Slack and assume that our solution would see a similar trend. Based on our pricing model, this market would yield $62.7 million per year in revenue.
Finally, we defined our Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) as the population of Stanford’s campus. With a population of approximately 22,000, our pricing model projects a market that would yield $100,000 per year in revenue.
INTERVIEW NOTES
User interview #1
- Context
- Mostly meetings in the context of classes, study groups, and preparing for LLP
- No mention of having to go through this process for social planning
- Sounds like it’s a lot more spontaneous in that context
- Less friction as well in those situations
- Process
- Email with two possible meeting times
- Either it works and it’s all set or it doesn’t and a back and forth starts
- Only works effectively for groups of size up to 3
- Agree on location as either remote or GSB Coupa
- Tools
- Apple Calendar which is fully synced with everything else
- Mentioned but doesn’t use Calendly and Doodle?
- Other comments
- Fully aware of the fact that this approach doesn’t scale
User interview #2
- Context
- Schedules meetings for class work and has social activities to deal with
- Often overbooked and needs to cancel last minute
- Process
- Sends an email out with a when2meet link
- Awaits a response from everyone which rarely comes
- Has to message a few times
- Ultimately book a meeting for a suboptimal time with people missing
- Tools
- WhatsApp for social planning
- when2meet for class meetings
- Calendly for holding office hours
- Google Calendar for some meetings include TA planning
- Outlook Calendar for some meetings
- Other comments
- Too many calendars to keep track of
- Doesn’t always receive notifications for meetings
- Loses track of meetings booked a while ago and might miss them
- Needs an easy way to get a summary of what’s coming in the next few days
- Also wants agenda and work item planning
QUOTES FOR OPPORTUNITIES
“Sending emails with times back and forth is usually how I do it. I know it’s not scalable but it works for now.”. -> The user is aware that their approach is not great and will not work with too many people involved. They have been confronted with that issue yet.
“I have at least 5 calendars with active events on each. They each have different settings and might not always be synced across the board.” -> The user is having issues keeping track of everything going on. As a result, they run into issues of overbooking themselves and having to cancel prior commitments.
“I only use when2meet in chill class context to organize a regular meeting time. It doesn’t work well though.” -> Current solutions are suboptimal. An easier way to schedule meetings across the board is needed.
