Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs: Guy gets it right - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
Abhi 09 Jan 06
>> “Gartner says our market will be $50 billion in 2010.”
As a small company, there is limited bottom up research we can perform. We have to rely on external resources like Gartner and IDC to make certain projections.
Don’t VCs or any other rational set of people need numbers to quantify the potential return?
I may be extremely passionate, but if the market size of my product is limited, why would any one care?
How are projections like fortune telling? Projections are just that, predictions. Based on what we know today, this is likely to happen. Projections have to be updated regularly, based on new knowledge.
You can look at someone’s projections and understand the amount of effort they have put into understanding the product and the target market.If someone uses 2002 data to make projections about handheld devices in 2010, that is inaccurate. Though, 2003 projections can be compared with 2005 actuals and you can see a trend and reasonably predict 2006/2007 numbers.
I love Point 6 about where the game is won...