Your Market Isn’t Everyone — Use TAM/SAM/SOM to Prove It
Let’s be honest.
TAM, SAM, SOM often shows up as a slide to impress investors. A big top-down number, pulled from a consultancy report, that says “this could be huge.”
But for early-stage teams — especially in pre-seed and seed — that kind of abstraction helps no one. Not your GTM strategy. Not your content priorities. Not your sales team. And definitely not your actual growth trajectory.
Used right, TAM/SAM/SOM becomes something far more valuable:
A tool to clarify focus
A way to understand your capacity and traction
A framework to prioritize where and how to win
I’ve built and led marketing teams from scratch across European startup scene — and I’ve seen the difference between decks that look good and strategies that work. Let’s break it down.
Use TAM, SAM, SOM to sharpen your aim, from market size, to market fit
TAM: Total Addressable Market
“How big could this get if everything broke our way?”
TAM is the total demand for your solution if you had no competition and could serve everyone, everywhere.
It’s a useful number to show scale potential and start thinking about future directions. But let’s be real:
You’ll never capture all of it
You won’t even get close.
And that’s okay.
TAM is not a strategic goal. It’s just a compass to orient ambition.
Use it to:
Sense the size of the playing field
Frame your category and relevance
Communicate your long-term vision
Don’t build your roadmap based on TAM. That’s fantasy land.
SAM: Serviceable Available Market
“Who can we realistically serve today?”
This is where your real strategy starts. Your SAM is the portion of your TAM that you can serve with your current product, channels, language support, and Go-To-Market strategy.
⚠️ If you haven’t done the work on segmentation and ICP profiling — start with that.
SAM only makes sense if you know:
Who you’re built for
Where you can reach them
Why they’ll buy now
This is the moment where you stop saying “everyone with X problem” and start saying “Series A SaaS teams in Europe struggling with XYZ”.
Your SAM tells you where to focus your time, team, and tactics.
SOM: Serviceable Obtainable Market
“How many customers can we realistically win in the next 1–3 years?”
This is your short-term growth horizon. The deals you can actually close — not just the ones you’d like to.
Ask yourself:
How many customers can we onboard and serve at current capacity?
Where do we already have early traction?
Which use cases are repeatable?
Here’s where your beachhead segment comes in.
It’s not about where the biggest opportunity lives — it’s where your traction lives.
Focus here until you’re winning consistently. Only then, expand.
Final thoughts
Smart founders use TAM, SAM, SOM to build their company, and not only their deck.
It’s a marketing module for founders and early-stage teams to:
Measure real progress
Guide GTM decisions
Prioritize segment focus
Understand the delta between potential and practical
It forces you to be honest about where you are — and where you can go next.
Because as an early-stage company, you’re not here to serve everyone.
You’re here to win where it matters — and then expand from there.
