The TAM Lie Detector reconciles top-down fantasy with bottom-up evidence, validates customer counts against real data, and stress-tests every assumption your revenue model depends on.
Every pitch deck has a TAM slide. Almost none of them are honest. The number comes from an analyst report, gets rounded up in a board meeting, and becomes gospel — a number nobody questions because questioning it would mean questioning the entire growth story.
The problem isn’t ambition. The problem is that decisions are being made — hiring plans, fundraise targets, product roadmaps, territory assignments — based on a market size that has never been reconciled against reality. When the number is wrong, everything downstream is wrong.
The TAM starts with an analyst report and only gets bigger. Each stakeholder adds their own optimistic assumption until the number is unrecognizable from any bottom-up calculation.
The customer count includes companies that technically fit the ICP but have never been contacted, validated, or confirmed as reachable. The denominator is a fantasy.
The TAM multiplies customer count by a price that hasn’t been validated with actual willingness-to-pay data. The price on the slide and the price the market will bear are different numbers.
TAM includes markets the company cannot realistically serve — geographies without GTM infrastructure, segments without product-market fit, verticals that require capabilities the team doesn’t have.
The TAM Integrity Test runs your market size through four validation layers. Each layer strips away a layer of assumption and replaces it with evidence. What remains is the number you can actually defend — to investors, to your board, and to yourself.
Most companies skip straight from analyst report to pitch deck. This framework forces the work that should happen in between: reconciliation, validation, stress testing, and honest filtering.
Build the TAM from two directions simultaneously. Start with the analyst number, then build independently from customer counts and deal sizes. Measure the gap. The size of the gap is the size of the lie.
Audit every assumption in the denominator. How many customers actually exist? How many are reachable? How many fit your ICP when you apply real qualification criteria instead of wishful ones?
Test the price assumption against real willingness-to-pay data. Not what customers say in surveys — what they actually pay, what deals close at, and where price resistance kills the conversation.
Apply the constraints nobody wants to apply. Geography, channel reach, product capability, implementation capacity. What’s left after honest filtering is your real addressable market.
We collect your existing TAM materials, revenue data, customer lists, and pricing history before the session. The workshop starts with your actual numbers on the table — not hypotheticals.
Your leadership team builds the bottom-up TAM together in the room. Not a consultant delivering a number — your team doing the math, seeing the gaps, and understanding every assumption the final number depends on.
The TAM Scorecard is designed to survive due diligence. Every number has a documented source, every assumption is flagged, and the confidence level is honest. Take it into your next board meeting or fundraise without flinching.
CEO · CFO · VP Sales · VP Product
Maximum 6 decision-makers. Everyone who touches the TAM slide or revenue model.
A structured diagnostic that stress-tests every assumption in your total addressable market calculation. It reconciles top-down and bottom-up sizing, validates customer counts against real data, tests willingness-to-pay, and filters for the market you can actually serve.
Four integrity dimensions: Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Reconciliation (do both methods agree?), Customer Count Validation (are the customers real and reachable?), Price Sensitivity Reality Check (will they pay what you assume?), and Serviceable Market Filtering (can you actually serve them?).
$7,500 for a 2.5-hour facilitated session including pre-workshop data collection, all workshop materials, and 5 post-workshop deliverables within 48 hours.
CEO, CFO, VP Sales, and VP Product. Maximum 6 decision-makers. Everyone who touches the TAM slide or the revenue model needs to be in the room.
TAM Integrity Report, Bottom-Up Market Sizing, Customer Willingness-to-Pay Validation, Revenue Model Stress Test, and a shareable TAM Scorecard.
Pre-fundraise when your TAM needs to survive investor scrutiny, after missing revenue targets for 2+ quarters, when your TAM slide hasn’t been validated with real customer data, or when board members start questioning market size assumptions.
Within 48 hours you receive all 5 deliverables. The TAM Scorecard gives you an honest, defensible market size you can present to investors, your board, or your own planning team. Petrichor follows up at 30 days to check whether the validated TAM has changed planning assumptions.
Market research firms give you a number. We make your leadership team build it from the ground up in real time, so you understand every assumption it depends on. The TAM Integrity Test exposes which assumptions are validated, which are guesses, and which are convenient fictions.
Complete facilitator guide, slide deck, interactive worksheets, scorecard template, and pre-work document. Everything you need to run a structured session with your leadership team.
Or book a facilitated session for the full experience.
We’ll discuss whether this workshop fits your situation — and how far your current TAM is from a number that survives scrutiny.
Book a Workshop