Week 3 of UGA’s Fall 2020 I-Corps cohort explored two crucial components of the I-Corps curriculum: value propositions and market research.

A value proposition is essentially a statement expressing the value of a product to a specific customer segment. Effective value propositions are seen through the customer’s perspective and describe the problems a product aims to solve. I-Corps teams continuously develop different hypotheses about their value propositions, testing them through customer interviews and refining them based on interview feedback.

Conducting market research is especially important when gauging the scope and size of a new product or service. The total addressable market (TAM) describes the overarching opportunity for a particular market if every single potential customer worldwide purchased the product. The served available market (SAM) estimates the number of customers who could use and afford the product. The target market (TM), a much smaller subset of the TAM and SAM, assesses the market opportunity using customer segments that would likely purchase the product today.

The UGA Fall 2020 I-Corps cohort recap next week will spotlight the top three teams that have completed the most customer interviews thus far.