Before launching anything, you need to measure the size of the opportunity, not just guess it. That’s what market sizing does.

It’s the process of turning a vague idea like “people love burgers” into concrete numbers: how many people, how often, and how much they spend.

In this blog, I’ll show you how to think like a consultant, building logical assumptions, testing them with data, and mapping out the true potential of a market before diving in.

Let’s get into it.

Market sizing answers the questions that decide whether your idea is worth chasing:

1. Is this market worth entering?
2. What is the growth rate of the market?
3. What share can we realistically capture?

If you have a product idea, no matter how innovative or sexy, you need to study the market before anything else. The world isn’t the place for “Cool products win”. You have to spend some time thinking and working like a scientist. And this has to be the first step after you get an idea.

Every market sizing exercise has three core pillars

1. Population of buyers
   • Who are the potential customers?
   • How many of them are there?
2. Spending power & frequency
   • How much customers spend in that niche?
   • How often they do that (daily, monthly, yearly)?
3. Reachability & market share
   • Can you reach those people with your channels?
   • What share can you realistically capture?

Now, you have a better picture of what market sizing exercise aim to find out. Each of these three pillars will help you see the market at different angles and better understand if you are going to survive or be eaten by the sharks.

But how to do the math thing here? Like let’s say I have an idea to open a fast food restaurant to sell burgers, what am I supposed to do exactly?

Market Sizing Example

Goal: Opening a fast food selling burgers

Based on the three pillars we defined above, the following questions become the core of our market research:

1. Who eats burgers?
2. How many people eat burgers, and how often?
3. What is the average price people spend buying burgers?
4. Can my fast food burger easily reach those people?
5. Is the market big enough for another fast food selling burgers?

Now it’s time to think like a consultant. This step is about making assumptions and doing some math. It does not have to be perfect, just avoid dumb logics or unrealistic numbers.

For our example, let’s focus on Erbil. The population of Erbil is around 2M. Of that two million, about 274,000 are in the age bracket of 15-29. This age range is our sweet spot since majority of fast food customers are in that segment.

Though, sometimes we see kids and even old people eat burgers, we exclude those for the sake of simplicity. Remember that we are looking at the sharks not the small fishes.

So, about 274,000 individuals in Erbil eat burgers. But how often, and how much they spend?

Now we make up three categories for our burger lovers.

• Category one: Low burger consumption
• Category two: Medium burger consumption
• Category three: High burger consumption

Then we assume a percentage out of the 274K (our target) for each of these categories.

Let’s assume 40% of the 274K are the low consumers. And 50% are the medium consumers. And the rest of 10% are the absolute burger lovers, the high consumption category.

That gives us

1. Low consumers (40%): 0.4x274,000 = 109,600 individuals
   • Assume they eat 2 burgers per month
     = 2x109,600 = 219,200 burgers/month
2. Medium consumers (50%): 0.5x274,000 = 137,000 individuals
   • Assume these people eat 4 burgers every month
     = 4x137,000 = 548,000 burgers/month
3. High consumers (10%): 0.1x274,000 = 27,400 individuals
   • Assume they eat 8 burgers every month
     = 8x27,400 = 219,200 burgers/month

Now sum up the numbers:

219,200 + 548,000 + 219,200 = 986,400 burgers each month

Category	People	Burgers/person/month	Total burgers/month
Low	109,600	2	219,200
Medium	137,000	4	548,000
High	27,400	8	219,200
Total	274,000	—	986,400 burgers/month

That is ≈11.8 million burgers per year

Let’s do a quick sense-check here.

If 11.8 million burgers per year sold that means ~33K/day. Do we have enough fast foods to make that number?

If we assume each fast food shop sells an average of 100 burgers per day then there should be around 300 places that sell burger. We could search through some of the delivery apps and count the number of burger-selling places. But for our example, we will carry on.

Please know that the numbers you put in a market sizing exercise should be reasonable and make sense. It’s not reasonable to say 274K people eat burgers every day. That is why we made three categories and assumed the percentage of those people likely eating certain number of burgers per month. We did not invent the numbers, however we used some logic to make a not-totally-wrong assumption.

Now we make one last assumption, the average price of a burger. Based on our experience an average burger costs around $4-$8. Let’s choose the middle $6 for the average price of a burger.

$6 x 11.8 million (burgers sold in 1 year) ≈ $70.8M

That means the market size of burgers in Erbil is $70.8 million. This is the Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM). The segment that you could serve.

Of course not the whole SAM is achievable due to brand, competition, etc. What you can do here is calculating your SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) with the following formula:

SOM = SAM × Expected Market Share

For example, if you are able to capture only 2% of the market for burgers, that would be 2% x 70.8M = $1.4M (your SOM)

That means if your burger business can realistically capture only 2%, your share is going to be $1.4M annually.

Final Note

Market sizing isn’t about perfect accuracy, it’s about strategic direction.
The numbers are models, not facts. They help you think clearly, not predict exactly.

Small shifts in assumptions (frequency, price, % share) can swing outcomes dramatically, so always treat your math as a range, not a point.

The goal isn’t to be “right.”
The goal is to understand what must be true for your idea to win. And that’s it.

What we did here with burgers in Erbil isn’t just about food, it’s a thinking model.
Whether you’re selling apps, clothing, or ice cream, the logic stays the same:

Define who’s in the market, estimate how often they buy, and calculate what that means in real money.