Rylan Hamilton, cofounder of Blue Water Autonomy, discusses the importance of market sizing for startups. Watch the full video — free, no account needed.
Rylan Hamilton, cofounder of Blue Water Autonomy, discusses the importance of market sizing for startups. He shares insights from his experience building a company that revitalizes US shipbuilding through autonomous warships.
Now, one thing that I'm sure that there's a lot of founders listening here is market sizing and how how to think about that really when you decide to embark on a journey with launching a new business, how how important it is and how should founders think about it. >> Yeah. So, I think when you think about an opportunity uh or starting a company, you should think about where you're aiming and you want to make sure that you aim as high as you can and you're as ambitious as you can be because if you're off a little, that's okay. But if you don't aim very high and then you're off a little, then it's just the market opportunity is a lot smaller and it's going to be harder to raise money. And so, um, you know, and I think obviously in the early days as you kind of ideate with your co-founders, figure out what you want to do, you're always learning, but just try to be ambitious because
you only get a couple of times to start a company. When you start a company, you also have to have this view that like you're going to be working at that company for the next 10 years. Unlike joining a company where maybe you know you work for four years and four years is a good amount of time at any company. when you start a company, you don't have an opportunity just to leave and pass the baton to someone else. Like you're in it for a very long amount of time. And so, uh, you just have to be very thoughtful. And I think one of the other challenges that people have is that we're all busy with our careers. And then if you're trying to start a company while also working at another company, sometimes you don't just give yourself enough sort of mental space to think about what's the best opportunity I want to go work at. And so sometimes I think the best companies are when you leave a
company or maybe you get fired or something and you find yourself kind of unemployed and you just give yourself like six months of exploration because then you can pick the best opportunity for you versus just trying to jump to a startup because it sounds cool and you start working on it. So I think if you know kind of uh synthesizing what I just said like think about the best opportunity that you can go work on and give yourself a little bit of time. Don't just jump to the flashy thing that's in front of you.