How big is the prize, really — TAM / SAM / SOM market sizing for Print-Flow-360
Why this matters first
At pre-PMF, market sizing is the one piece of “research” that feels like it’s for investors and not for you — which is exactly the trap. The number on the pitch slide is the least useful output. The useful output is the bottom-up model underneath it: the count of print shops you can actually reach, the price they’ll actually pay, and the share your current GTM capacity can actually win in 18 months. Built right, that model tells you whether founder-led outreach to small print shops is a $2M-ARR hobby or a $50M business, whether you need to add geographies or just go deeper in one, and how many doors you must knock on this quarter to hit plan. Built wrong — “the print market is $26B, we’ll get 1%” — it tells you nothing, and any investor who’s seen a deck before will know in ten seconds that you haven’t done the work. Get the math right once, reuse the spreadsheet forever.
TL;DR — Key Recommendations
- Lead with bottom-up, use top-down only as a sanity check. Your defensible number is
# of reachable small print/sign shops × Print-Flow-360 ACV. The “$26B web-to-print market” headline is a backdrop, not your TAM. - Your real ACV is roughly $1,400–$2,400/year per shop, not the sticker price. Derive it from your tier pricing with realistic blended-tier and discount assumptions (worked below), then build everything on that number — not the top-of-page monthly price.
- SAM is gated hard by three filters that are non-negotiable today: Stripe/Razorpay payment regions, English-first onboarding, and “small non-technical shop, not an enterprise MIS buyer.” Apply all three explicitly; each one shrinks the number and each one is honest.
- Build SOM from capacity, never from a percentage. A founder-led motion that can run ~15 real demos/week at a ~22% close rate, net of churn, caps your obtainable customers far below “1% of SAM.” Show that math; it’s what separates a credible deck from a fantasy one.
- Anchor counts to real, citable sources: US Census County Business Patterns / NAICS 323 (≈21,400 US printing establishments in 2023, 71% with 1–9 staff per WhatTheyThink/Census CBP), IBISWorld for AU (≈4,290 in 2023), ONS/BPIF for the UK. India (Razorpay) is your biggest upside but your softest data — label it an assumption, not a fact.
- Present three numbers, not one. Always ship a low/base/high sensitivity table. A single “magic figure” reads as guessing; a range with visible assumptions reads as rigor.
- Use the model two ways: investor-facing (TAM = “the prize is big,” credible bottom-up SAM, conservative SOM) and internal-facing (SOM = your 18-month revenue plan, with the assumptions register as your live planning dashboard).
Numbers in this doc are directional and illustrative. Hard counts (US/AU/UK establishment numbers, the web-to-print software market band) are sourced and cited in §6. Everything else — ACV, fit percentages, India, close rate, churn — is a labelled assumption you must replace with your own data. The deliverable is the model and its sources, never a single magic figure.
1. What TAM / SAM / SOM actually are — and what they are not
These three are nested concentric circles, biggest to smallest, and the rule is absolute: TAM ⊃ SAM ⊃ SOM. Each is an annual revenue figure (dollars/year), not a count of companies and not a lifetime value.
| Term | Plain-language meaning | The question it answers | For Print-Flow-360 |
|---|---|---|---|
| TAM — Total Addressable Market | Total annual revenue if you sold to 100% of everyone who could conceivably use this kind of product, everywhere, ignoring competition and your own limits | ”Is the prize big enough to build a company / raise money around?” | All small print/sign shops worldwide that could use a web-to-print storefront + design studio |
| SAM — Serviceable Available Market | The slice of TAM you can actually serve given your product, languages, payment rails, and segment focus — still ignoring competition | ”Of that prize, how much is even reachable by this product as it exists?” | Small, non-technical print/sign shops in Stripe/Razorpay regions, English-first, that aren’t enterprise MIS buyers |
| SOM — Serviceable Obtainable Market | The slice of SAM you can realistically win in a defined time window given your GTM capacity, sales motion, churn, and competition | ”How much can we, specifically, with our team and channels, capture in 12–18 months?” | The shops founder-led outreach + the channels in ACQUISITION_CHANNELS_2026-06-15.md can actually reach and close, net of churn |
Three things people get wrong:
- TAM/SAM/SOM is investment math, not a targeting tool. It tells investors (and you) whether the opportunity justifies the effort and capital. It does not tell your sales team who to call Monday — that’s your ICP (see
GTM_01_ICP_AND_POSITIONING_2026-06-15.md). Your ICP — “Maria, the non-technical local print/sign-shop owner” — is the high-fit core inside SAM/SOM. Don’t conflate “who we could bill” with “who we should chase first.” - They are revenue, consistently per-year. Mixing a one-time number into an annual one (or LTV into ACV) silently inflates everything downstream. Pick annual recurring revenue and stay there.
- The single number is the least important thing. The math, the sources, and the assumptions are the deliverable. A defensible $41M SAM with a visible model beats a confident $4B TAM with no math.
One more circle you’ll sometimes see: PAM (Potential Addressable Market) — TAM plus adjacent markets you could expand into later (e.g., print-on-demand merch sellers, sign-only shops, in-plant/corporate print departments). Useful for the “where this goes in 5 years” slide; keep it clearly separate from today’s TAM so you’re not caught padding the core number.
2. Method 1 — Top-down (industry report × filters), and why it’s a sanity check, not your headline
What it is: Start from a big published market figure and multiply it down by filter percentages until you reach your slice.
Top-down SAM = Published market size
× % in your geographies
× % in your segment (size/type of shop)
× % addressable by your productThe credibility problem. Top-down numbers come from research firms whose definitions vary wildly and whose methods you can’t inspect. Look at the spread for “web-to-print” that surfaces in minutes of searching (all figures as published by each firm — see §6 for links):
| Source framing | Stated size | Stated CAGR | What it actually measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web-to-print software (Verified Market Research) | ~$1.19B (2024) | 7.8% | SaaS/software licenses only |
| Web-to-print software (market.us) | (software-only) | 7.8% | Software only |
| Web-to-print software (Market Growth Reports) | ~$1.47B (2024) | ~7.4% | Software only |
| Web-to-print market (Mordor Intelligence) | ~$26.6B (2025) | ~5.7% | Includes print services, not just software |
| Web-to-print software (Prophecy Market Insights) | ~$7.5B (2024) | ~15.7% | Broader services-leaning bundle |
The tight software-only numbers ($1.1–1.5B) and the services-inclusive numbers ($7.5–27B) differ by roughly 20× — same words, opposite worlds. If you put “$26B TAM” on a slide and your product is software, a sharp investor will ask whether you’re counting the ink and paper. You are. That’s the trap.
How to use it correctly for Print-Flow-360: Use the software-only figure (~$1.1–1.5B today, growing ~7–8%/yr) as your TAM backdrop and as a cross-check on your bottom-up TAM. If your bottom-up TAM lands wildly outside the published software market, one of you is wrong — go find out which. Never lead the deck with the $26B services number.
Worked top-down sanity check (directional — every % is an assumption):
Published W2P software market (global) ≈ $1.3B / yr (mid of $1.1–1.5B band) [SOURCED band]
× share addressable by a non-technical,
storefront+studio product (vs. enterprise
MIS / heavy-prepress tools) × ~45% = $585M [ASSUMPTION]
× share in Stripe/Razorpay English-first
regions × ~55% = $322M [ASSUMPTION — this is our SAM-ish band]Hold that ~$300–600M top-down SAM band in your head. In §4 we’ll build the same SAM bottom-up and check whether the two methods agree. (Spoiler: they should land in the same order of magnitude, and bottom-up should be a fraction of the top-down band. If bottom-up exceeds it, an assumption above is broken.)
3. Method 2 — Bottom-up (units × ACV), the method you actually present
What it is, and why it wins. You build up from things you can count and price:
Bottom-up TAM = (# of target accounts) × (Average Annual Contract Value)This is the method serious investors want, because every input is inspectable: you can defend the shop count with a census source and defend the ACV with your own price list. There’s no “trust the analyst” step. The full multiplication chain for a SaaS like ours looks like:
TAM = Total # target accounts (everywhere) × ACV
SAM = (Total target accounts × geo% × segment% × payment% × language%) × ACV
SOM = (SAM accounts × reachable-via-our-channels% × realistic close% × (1 − churn)) × ACVNotice SOM filters on accounts, then multiplies by ACV — never start SOM as a flat ”% of SAM dollars.” The unit you can defend is shops you can reach and close.
3a. Deriving Print-Flow-360’s ACV from tier pricing
You cannot do bottom-up without an ACV, and the sticker price is not the ACV. ACV = what an average customer pays per year, blended across tiers, after annual-billing discounts, and including the usage dimension (extra stores, order volume). Pricing methods live in GTM_04_PRICING_RESEARCH_METHODS_2026-06-16.md; here we just need a defensible blended figure.
Assume a 3-tier shape (illustrative until pricing research firms it up):
| Tier | Target shop | Sticker (mo) | Annual (≈17% annual-pay discount) | Assumed mix of paying base |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1–3 staff, single store | $49/mo | ~$490/yr | 45% |
| Growth | 4–10 staff, 1–2 stores, B2B portal | $129/mo | ~$1,290/yr | 40% |
| Pro / Multi-store | 10–30 staff, multi-store, accounts | $299/mo | ~$2,990/yr | 15% |
Blended ACV (subscription only)
= 0.45 × $490 + 0.40 × $1,290 + 0.15 × $2,990
= $220.50 + $516.00 + $448.50
= $1,185 / yr
+ usage uplift (extra stores, order-volume overages, paid add-ons)
assume avg +18% on top = × 1.18
= $1,398 / yr → round to a BASE ACV of ~$1,400/yrFor sensitivity, carry three ACVs:
| Scenario | Logic | ACV |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Mostly Starter, heavy discounting, little usage uplift | $900 |
| Base | Mix above | $1,400 |
| High | Up-market mix, more multi-store, healthy add-on attach | $2,400 |
Reality check the floor: at $1,400 ACV a print shop doing even $300K/yr in revenue is spending <0.5% of revenue — easily defensible as “pays for itself if it saves a few hours of rebuilt artwork a month.” That’s your pricing-credibility anchor.
3b. Counting the accounts — sourcing logic (label every step an assumption)
The count is where bottom-up earns or loses credibility. Source it from real, citable data and show the filtering.
NAICS note (get this right or you’ll be challenged): “Printing and related support activities” is NAICS 323; “Commercial Printing (except Screen and Books)” is NAICS 323111, a subset. Per Census County Business Patterns (via WhatTheyThink), NAICS 323 held ≈21,400 establishments in 2023 (down ~21% since 2010), and NAICS 323111 ≈15,400 establishments (2022). Use 323 for the broad “all printing” universe and treat 323111 as the commercial-printing core. Sign/banner/promo shops live partly outside 323 (NAICS 339950 sign manufacturing, plus retail listings), so they need a separate uplift — don’t double-count.
United States (Stripe region, English-first) — the most data-rich market.
Total US printing establishments (NAICS 323, Census County Business Patterns 2023)
≈ 21,400 [SOURCE: WhatTheyThink / US Census CBP]
× 71% with 1–9 employees (small shops — our beachhead) × 0.71
≈ 15,200 small printing establishments [SOURCE: CBP size band]
+ sign/banner/promo & quick-print shops not captured in 323
(NAICS 339950 + retail; ASSUMPTION: adds ~35%) × 1.35
≈ 20,500 small print/sign shops (US) [PART ASSUMPTION]
× share that are storefront-needing & non-MIS (our ICP fit;
ASSUMPTION ~75% — most small shops have no real web-to-print) × 0.75
≈ 15,400 US target accounts [ASSUMPTION on fit %]Other Stripe English-first markets (UK, Canada, Australia).
UK printing enterprises ≈ 8,000–10,000 (ONS SIC 18 business counts; BPIF reaches ~1,300 of the larger ones) [SOURCE: ONS/BPIF — RANGE]
small/storefront-fit (ASSUMPTION: ~75% of small-share) ≈ 5,500 [ASSUMPTION]
Australia printing businesses ≈ 4,290 (IBISWorld, 2023; ≈4,286 in 2024) [SOURCE: IBISWorld]
small/storefront-fit ≈ 3,000 [ASSUMPTION]
Canada printing establishments ≈ 5,000–5,500 (StatCan business register, NAICS 3231 — directional) [ASSUMPTION — verify StatCan]
small/storefront-fit ≈ 3,800 [ASSUMPTION]
+ smaller English Stripe markets (Ireland, NZ, etc.) ≈ 1,200 [ASSUMPTION]India (Razorpay region) — biggest upside, softest data. India has no clean public NAICS-equivalent count of small print/sign shops, and informal/unregistered shops dominate. Treat this as a labelled assumption with a wide band, never as a hard fact:
Small print/sign shops in India that are (a) digitally-payment-ready via Razorpay,
(b) English-comfortable for onboarding, (c) storefront-aspirational
ASSUMPTION: 15,000 (low) – 40,000 (base) – 90,000 (high) [ASSUMPTION — flag loudly]Roll-up of SAM account count (base case):
US 15,400
UK 5,500
Australia 3,000
Canada 3,800
Other EN 1,200
India 40,000 (assumption-heavy; show with/without India)
------
SAM accounts ≈ 68,900 (with India) | ≈ 28,900 (ex-India, "hard-data" SAM)That ex-India ~29,000 is your conservative, well-sourced SAM count — the one to defend line-by-line. India is the upside slide.
4. Putting it together — TAM, SAM, SOM with a worked model
TAM (global, all small print/sign shops, base ACV)
To express TAM honestly, scale the SAM account base up to “all geographies, all small print/sign shops globally” (a much larger, fuzzier number). Directionally:
Global small print/sign shops (all geographies, all languages, all payment rails)
ASSUMPTION: ~250,000 (the world has far more print shops than our 4–5 hard markets) [ASSUMPTION]
TAM = 250,000 × $1,400 ACV = $350M / yr [DIRECTIONAL]Cross-check against §2: the published software-only W2P market is ~$1.1–1.5B and rising. A $350M bottom-up TAM for small-shop SaaS implies small shops are ~25–30% of all W2P software spend, with enterprise MIS taking the rest. That’s plausible — so the bottom-up TAM and the top-down software figure sit in the same order of magnitude, which is the cross-check passing. If your bottom-up TAM had come out at $5B, you’d know an assumption was broken.
SAM (our reachable segment, base)
SAM (ex-India) = 28,900 accounts × $1,400 = $40.5M / yr
SAM (with India) = 68,900 accounts × $1,400 = $96.5M / yrBoth sit inside the ~$300–600M top-down SAM band from §2 — i.e., we are claiming a fraction of the addressable software spend, which is the correct, humble posture for SAM. (If your bottom-up SAM had exceeded the top-down band, you’d be claiming more than the whole reachable market — a red flag.)
SOM (what we can win in 18 months) — built from capacity, not a percentage
This is the section that makes or breaks the deck. Do not write “we’ll get 2% of SAM.” Build it from the founder-led throughput in ACQUISITION_CHANNELS_2026-06-15.md.
GTM CAPACITY MODEL (18-month horizon, founder-led primary motion)
Demos / qualified conversations per week (founder-led, sustainable) = 15
Working weeks in 18 months (78 wks × ~0.85 utilization) ≈ 66
Total demos = 15 × 66 = 990
× close rate (small, non-technical, one-person buying committee;
ASSUMPTION 22%) × 0.22 ≈ 218 gross customers won (founder channel)
+ secondary channels (BOFU SEO + free design tool inbound;
ASSUMPTION adds 35% on top of founder-led) × 1.35 ≈ 294 gross customers (all channels)
− churn over the period (early-stage SaaS, ASSUMPTION ~30% logo churn
across 18 mo) × (1 − 0.30) ≈ 206 net active customers
SOM (customers) ≈ 206 paying shops
SOM (revenue) = 206 × $1,400 ACV ≈ $288K ARRThat’s the honest 18-month obtainable revenue for a founder-led motion at base assumptions. As a share of SAM it’s 206 / 28,900 ≈ 0.7% — and notice you arrive at “<1% of SAM” as an output of capacity math, not as an input assumption. That ordering is the entire point. It also tells you the truth pre-PMF: your near-term constraint is founder throughput and close rate, not market size. The market is plenty big; you can’t physically demo your way past ~$300K ARR solo, so the strategic questions become “raise close rate,” “add a rep,” or “shift weight to the inbound channels.”
Sensitivity table (always ship this — never a single number)
| Driver | Low | Base | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACV | $900 | $1,400 | $2,400 |
| SAM accounts (ex-India) | 22,000 | 29,000 | 36,000 |
| SAM accounts (with India) | 40,000 | 69,000 | 120,000 |
| Demos/week | 10 | 15 | 22 |
| Close rate | 15% | 22% | 30% |
| Secondary-channel uplift | +15% | +35% | +70% |
| 18-mo logo churn | 40% | 30% | 18% |
Working the SOM at each corner (holding utilization-adjusted weeks ≈ 66):
LOW : 10×66 = 660 demos × 0.15 = 99 × 1.15 = 114 × (1−0.40) ≈ 68 logos × $900 ≈ $61K ARR
BASE : 15×66 = 990 demos × 0.22 = 218 × 1.35 = 294 × (1−0.30) ≈ 206 logos × $1,400 ≈ $288K ARR
HIGH : 22×66 = 1,452 demos × 0.30 = 436 × 1.70 = 741 × (1−0.18) ≈ 607 logos × $2,400 ≈ $1.46M ARR| Output | Low | Base | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| TAM ($) | $158M | $350M | $720M |
| SAM ($, ex-India) | $19.8M | $40.6M | $86.4M |
| SAM ($, w/India) | $36.0M | $96.6M | $288M |
| SOM (net logos, 18 mo) | ~68 | ~206 | ~607 |
| SOM ($ ARR, 18 mo) | ~$61K | ~$288K | ~$1.46M |
TAM low/high use the low/high ACV against the 250k global base scaled ±45% for the count uncertainty; treat the TAM row as the loosest in the table.
Read it as: the market is not the risk; conversion and retention are. SOM swings ~24× from low to high, driven almost entirely by close rate × churn × channel uplift × ACV, while SAM moves <2×. That’s the founder’s actual to-do list.
5. Method 3 — Value-theory (value-based) sizing, as a corroborating lens
What it is: Instead of “shops × price,” you size the market by the economic value your product creates, then assume you can capture a slice of it via pricing. Formula:
Value-based TAM = (# of target accounts) × (Annual value created per account) × (Value-capture %)Why bother: It’s the strongest answer to “how do you know they’ll pay?” and it pressure-tests your ACV from the buyer’s side. If your price is a tiny fraction of value created, your ACV (and pricing) has headroom; if it’s a big fraction, you’ll meet resistance.
Worked example for Print-Flow-360 — value created for one small shop (every line an assumption you’d validate in interviews, see GTM_02):
Time saved rebuilding wrong-sized customer artwork
(3 hrs/wk × 50 wks × $35/hr loaded) = $5,250/yr
Quote-turnaround speed → won jobs that would've gone cold
(assume 1 extra $400 job/month × 12 × 40% margin) = $1,920/yr
Reduced "unpaid designer" labor (self-serve studio)
(2 hrs/wk × 50 × $35) = $3,500/yr
After-hours online orders captured (younger customers)
(assume +$500 revenue/mo × 12 × 40% margin) = $2,400/yr
Total ≈ $13,070/yr value created per shopValue-capture % (SaaS commonly captures ~10–25% of value created)
At our $1,400 ACV: $1,400 / $13,070 ≈ 11% capture~11% capture is comfortably inside the healthy SaaS range — meaning our base ACV is, if anything, conservative, and pricing has upside (corroborates §3a’s “pays for itself” framing). Apply that value-per-shop across the SAM account base for a value-theory SAM, and confirm it lands in the same ballpark as the units×ACV SAM. Three methods agreeing in order of magnitude is the strongest possible market-sizing claim you can make.
Watch the failure mode: value-theory sizing is the easiest to inflate (every “hour saved” is a guess, and value-capture % is a lever you can crank). Use it to corroborate ACV, never as your headline TAM. If your value-capture % comes out <5%, your price is leaving money on the table; if it’s >30%, you’ll face pricing resistance — both are pricing signals for
GTM_04, not sizing conclusions.
6. Sourcing your inputs credibly
| Input you need | Where to get it (best → acceptable) | Credibility note |
|---|---|---|
| US shop counts | US Census County Business Patterns / NAICS 323 (≈21.4k, 2023) and 323111 (≈15.4k); WhatTheyThink data series | Government source, citable, free; the gold standard |
| US shop-size split | Census CBP by employment band (71% are 1–9 staff, 2023) | Lets you isolate the small segment honestly |
| UK shop counts | ONS SIC 18 business counts; BPIF (reaches ~1,300 larger firms) | ONS is authoritative; BPIF undercounts small shops |
| Australia | IBISWorld “Printing in Australia” (≈4,290 businesses, 2023; ≈4,286 in 2024) | Paid but widely accepted by investors |
| Canada | Statistics Canada business register, NAICS 3231 | Verify the exact figure before citing |
| India (Razorpay) | MSME registrations, GST data, industry associations — all partial | Flag as assumption; never present as a hard count |
| Web-to-print software market | Verified MR / market.us / Market Growth Reports (~$1.1–1.5B software-only) | Use software-only, not the ~$26B Mordor services figure |
| Competitor customer counts | Competitor disclosures, Capterra/G2 review counts, Crunchbase, press | Review counts are a floor on customers, useful for cross-checks |
| ACV / pricing | Your own price list + pricing research (GTM_04) | The one input you fully control — make it airtight |
Cross-check trick: competitor review counts and disclosed customer numbers give you a reality floor. If a comparable web-to-print vendor claims ~3,000 small-shop customers, and your SAM is ~29,000 reachable shops, that vendor alone holds ~10% — useful context for how penetrable the market is and how loud the “we’ll get 1%” claim really is.
Sources used for the cited figures above:
- Printing Establishments 2010–2023 — WhatTheyThink (Census CBP, NAICS 323)
- Commercial Printing Establishments 2010–2023 — WhatTheyThink (NAICS 323111)
- US Printing Industry Establishments (size bands) — WhatTheyThink
- Printing in Australia — Number of Businesses, IBISWorld
- Web-to-Print Software Market — Verified Market Research
- Web-To-Print Software Market — market.us
- Web to Print Market (services-inclusive) — Mordor Intelligence
7. Presenting it: investors vs. internal planning
The same model serves two audiences differently.
| Investor-facing | Internal planning | |
|---|---|---|
| Headline number | TAM — “the prize is big” (~$350M base; show the path to PAM) | SOM — your 18-month revenue plan (~$288K base) |
| Method emphasized | Bottom-up (credible) with top-down cross-check | Capacity-driven SOM; assumptions register is the live dashboard |
| Tone | Big-but-defensible; range, not single figure | Conservative; this is the operating target |
| What to hide/show | Show the math + sources; never bury India as a fact | Track every assumption as a metric to update monthly |
| Common mistake to avoid | Leading with the ~$26B services market | Treating SOM as a ceiling instead of a throughput problem to solve |
Golden rules for the slide: (1) one slide, three nested circles, each labelled with its number and its one-line method; (2) a footnoted assumptions/sources line; (3) the sensitivity range visible, not a single magic figure; (4) the SOM explicitly tied to GTM capacity so it reads as “we know how we get there,” not “we’ll get a percent.”
Reusable artifacts
A. Bottom-up TAM/SAM/SOM spreadsheet model
ROW | LABEL | FORMULA / VALUE | SOURCE TAG
-----+----------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+-----------
A1 | Global small print/sign shops | 250,000 | ASSUMPTION
A2 | Base ACV ($/yr) | =BlendedACV (see tab B) | DERIVED
A3 | TAM ($/yr) | =A1*A2 | CALC
-----+----------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+-----------
B1 | US printing establishments (NAICS 323) | 21,400 | CENSUS CBP 2023
B2 | × small-shop share (1–9 staff) | =B1*0.71 | CENSUS CBP
B3 | × sign/quick-print uplift | =B2*1.35 | ASSUMPTION
B4 | × storefront-fit / non-MIS share | =B3*0.75 | ASSUMPTION
B5 | US target accounts | =B4 | CALC (~15,400)
B6 | UK fit accounts | 5,500 | ONS/ASSUMPTION
B7 | AU fit accounts | 3,000 | IBISWORLD/ASSUMP
B8 | CA fit accounts | 3,800 | STATCAN/ASSUMP
B9 | Other EN fit accounts | 1,200 | ASSUMPTION
B10 | India fit accounts | 40,000 | ASSUMPTION(WIDE)
B11 | SAM accounts (ex-India) | =B5+B6+B7+B8+B9 | CALC (~28,900)
B12 | SAM accounts (incl India) | =B11+B10 | CALC (~68,900)
B13 | SAM $ (ex-India) | =B11*A2 | CALC
B14 | SAM $ (incl India) | =B12*A2 | CALC
-----+----------------------------------------+------------------------------------------+-----------
C1 | Demos/week (founder-led) | 15 | ACQ DOC
C2 | Working weeks (18 mo, util-adj) | =78*0.85 | ASSUMPTION (~66)
C3 | Total demos | =C1*C2 | CALC
C4 | Close rate | 0.22 | ASSUMPTION
C5 | Gross wins (founder) | =C3*C4 | CALC
C6 | Secondary-channel uplift | 0.35 | ASSUMPTION
C7 | Gross wins (all channels) | =C5*(1+C6) | CALC
C8 | 18-mo logo churn | 0.30 | ASSUMPTION
C9 | SOM accounts (net) | =C7*(1-C8) | CALC (~206)
C10 | SOM $ (18-mo ARR) | =C9*A2 | CALC (~$288K)
C11 | SOM as % of SAM (ex-India) | =C9/B11 | SANITY CHECK (~0.7%)B. Blended-ACV worksheet
TIER | ANNUAL PRICE | MIX % | CONTRIBUTION (=price×mix)
----------+--------------+--------+--------------------------
Starter | 490 | 0.45 | 220.50
Growth | 1290 | 0.40 | 516.00
Pro | 2990 | 0.15 | 448.50
----------+--------------+--------+--------------------------
Subtotal blended ACV | =SUM = 1185.00
× usage/add-on uplift (1+0.18) | × 1.18
= BASE ACV | ≈ 1398 → round 1400
Low ACV (downmix + discount) | 900
High ACV (upmix + attach) | 2400C. Assumptions / sourcing register (the doc investors and you both rely on)
ID | ASSUMPTION | VALUE | RANGE (L/H) | SOURCE / BASIS | CONFIDENCE | HOW TO VALIDATE
---+-------------------------------------+--------+---------------+--------------------------------+------------+--------------------------------
S1 | US small printing establishments | 15,200 | 14k–16k | Census CBP NAICS 323 × 71% | HIGH | Pull latest CBP release
S2 | Sign/quick-print uplift | 1.35× | 1.2–1.6× | Estimate (outside NAICS 323) | LOW | Sample local listings/Yelp/Maps
S3 | Storefront-fit / non-MIS share | 75% | 60–85% | Estimate from ICP work | MED | Interview counts (GTM_02/03)
S4 | India reachable shops | 40,000 | 15k–90k | No clean source | VERY LOW | MSME/GST pull; partner channel
S5 | Base ACV | $1,400 | $900–$2,400 | Tier model (B) + usage | MED | Pricing research (GTM_04)
S6 | Demos/week founder-led | 15 | 10–22 | ACQUISITION doc throughput | MED | Track actual weekly demos
S7 | Close rate | 22% | 15–30% | Early-stage assumption | LOW | Measure once 20+ demos run
S8 | Secondary-channel uplift | 35% | 15–70% | Early-stage assumption | LOW | Attribute inbound signups
S9 | 18-mo logo churn | 30% | 18–40% | Early SaaS assumption | LOW | Cohort tracking once liveD. Sensitivity-analysis layout
| LOW | BASE | HIGH
----------------+------------+------------+------------
ACV | 900 | 1,400 | 2,400
SAM accts (exIN)| 22,000 | 29,000 | 36,000
TAM ($) | 158M | 350M | 720M
SAM $ (ex-IN) | 19.8M | 40.6M | 86.4M
SOM accts | 68 | 206 | 607
SOM $ (18mo) | 61K | 288K | 1.46M
----------------+------------+------------+------------
KEY SWING DRIVER (note under table): close rate × churn × channel uplift × ACV drive SOM ~24×;
SAM moves <2×. ⇒ Risk is conversion/retention, not market size.Cheap validation / first moves (this week)
- Pull the two free anchors today: US Census County Business Patterns NAICS 323 establishment count and the 1–9-employee share (71%). That alone makes your US SAM defensible by Friday. (WhatTheyThink summarizes both for free.)
- Build the spreadsheet from artifact A, plug in your real tier prices, and produce your own low/base/high — don’t ship the illustrative numbers above; replace them.
- Reality-check ACV from the value side (§5) with one real shop: ask a friendly owner how many hours/week they lose rebuilding customer files and chasing approvals. One conversation validates or kills your $1,400 ACV.
- Floor-check the market with a competitor: find one comparable web-to-print vendor’s disclosed/reviewed customer count; if they alone hold ~10% of your SAM, your “<1% in 18 months” SOM is conservative and credible.
- Validate the SOM driver, not the market: the model says your constraint is close rate and churn. Spend the week booking demos (per
ACQUISITION_CHANNELS_2026-06-15.md), not refining the TAM decimal places. - Label India loudly. In any deck, show SAM both with and without India so no one can accuse you of padding with a number you can’t source.
Cross-references
GTM_01_ICP_AND_POSITIONING_2026-06-15.md— defines TAM/SAM/SOM as investment math (not targeting), the directional figures this doc makes rigorous, and the ICP (“Maria”) that sits inside SAM/SOM.GTM_02_JOBS_TO_BE_DONE_2026-06-16.md— the jobs/value evidence behind the value-theory sizing (§5) and the storefront-fit assumption (S3).GTM_03_WIN_LOSS_AND_CHURN_INTERVIEWS_2026-06-16.md— real close-rate and churn signal to replace the SOM assumptions (S7, S9).GTM_04_PRICING_RESEARCH_METHODS_2026-06-16.md— firms up the tier prices and blended ACV that drive the entire bottom-up model.GTM_05_COMPETITIVE_INTELLIGENCE_2026-06-16.md— competitor customer counts for the market-floor cross-check (§6).ACQUISITION_CHANNELS_2026-06-15.md— the founder-led throughput numbers that ground the capacity-based SOM (§4).PLATFORM_GAP_ASSESSMENT_2026-06-07.md— the product gaps (preflight/CMYK, partial fulfillment, carrier/tracking) that justify the “non-MIS / small-shop” SAM filter and the storefront-fit assumption.