| name | market-research |
| description | Run market research, competitive analysis, investor due diligence, and industry scans. Use when the user wants market sizing, competitor comparisons, fund research, or tech scans. |
| allowed_tools | ["WebSearch","WebFetch","Read"] |
Market Research
Make research that helps decisions, not research for show.
When to Use
- Researching a market, company, investor, or tech trend
- Building TAM/SAM/SOM numbers
- Comparing competitors
- Checking investor fit before outreach
- Testing a thesis before building
Process
1. Pick the Research Type
Figure out which kind of research the user needs:
- Investor / Fund Check
- Competitor Check
- Market Size
- Tech / Tool Research
2. Run Investor / Fund Check
Get:
- Fund size, stage, check size
- Portfolio companies that matter
- Public thesis and recent deals
- Why they fit or don't fit
- Red flags
3. Run Competitor Check
Get:
- What the product really does (not marketing fluff)
- Funding and investors
- Traction if public
- How they get users and what they charge
- Strengths, weaknesses, gaps
4. Run Market Size
Use:
- Top-down from reports
- Bottom-up from real customer numbers
- Show your math. Every guess should be clear.
5. Run Tech / Tool Research
Get:
- How it works
- Trade-offs and who's using it
- How hard to set up
- Lock-in, security, and risk
6. Write It Up
Structure every deliverable as:
- Quick summary (2-3 sentences)
- Key findings
- What this means
- Risks and caveats
- What to do next
- Sources
Rules
- Every big claim needs a source.
- Use recent data. Flag old data.
- Include the bad news too. Show risks.
- End with a decision, not just a summary.
- Keep facts, guesses, and suggestions separate.
- All numbers have sources or are marked as guesses.
- Old data is flagged.
- The suggestion follows from the facts.
- Someone can make a decision from this.
Gotchas
- Top-down TAM is lazy and always wrong. "10% of the $X billion market" is not analysis. Bottom-up from real customer numbers or go home.
- Analyst reports have built-in bias. Reports from vendors (like AWS sizing the cloud market) overstate their own segment. Use independent sources.
- Revenue proxies are unreliable. SimilarWeb traffic estimates can be off by 5x. Combine multiple signals: hiring, social, Crunchbase, app store rankings.
- Don't confuse market size with addressable market. The CRM market is $80B, but if you're building for freelancers, your market is a fraction of that.
- Recency matters. A market growing 40% in 2024 might be flat in 2026. Always check the latest data points, not just the headline number.
Output
Save to the project's 02-research/ folder.
Format each deliverable with: quick summary, key findings, what this means, risks and caveats, next steps, and sources.
