The TAM/SAM/SOM slide is one of the most misunderstood, awkward slides in the pre-seed decks I review. Most are confusing and hastily put together as most founders furiously Google nuances between “addressable” and “obtainable” or cut and paste charts and stats from McKinsey Quarterly without any context.

When these are bad, investors ask questions like, “Is this really a venture scale business?” or “Do you really think you can execute your long-term go-to-market?”

It’s not a great place to be in a pitch, and to be honest, this question is asked more of underrepresented founders than their counterparts.

My advice: Don’t overthink it. Tell your story. Clearly, logically, and vulnerably. Yes, it’s scary to say you are going to change the world or take down an industry when you are struggling to make your next payroll. Do it anyway, but do it with structure.

This is the role of the TAM/SAM/SOM slide.

If you are looking for help, you may find an unexpected hand from Jay-Z. I heard this during an outro of one of his songs. It went:

“Hustler, Rapper, C-E-O … Hustler, Rapper, C-E-O …”

(N.B. I cannot find a documented set of this lyric, but I know I chanted with a crowd. Hit me up if you can find it.)

While Jay-Z has written some amazing lyrics, I've told countless founders he may have unknowingly crafted one of the best TAM/SAM/SOM slides ever written.

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Jay Z Presents The Blueprint 4: TAM/SAM/SOM

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Here’s why I love it as an investor:

1. It’s simple because I can read it in plain English. I don’t need any big numbers that describe markets I don’t understand.
2. It’s public because he actually demonstrated and publicly iterated his way through each phase. Every album was there for the world to see. Every investment has been covered by the press - most were good, some were bad, but he wins far more than he loses, Successfully working in public de-risks investors.
3. It's bold. No small ball here, for sure.
4. It gives me the permission to “logically dream.” With Jay, the sky’s the limit. He got there by building a track record of publicly doing simply stated things over and over. Founders need to do the same to dispel the numerous doubts investors have to believe they can build a unicorn.

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SoleSafe: The Blueprint in Action

Here’s how we used Jay’s words with one of our portfolio companies SoleSafe, which provides insurance for sneakerheads.

When I pitch other investors on SoleSafe, some come with the objection, “That seems nitchy. Too small.”

What if I were to tell you that:

• 2 out of 3 homes in the US are underinsured overall
• Black homeowners are even more underinsured and are discriminated against by the current insurance industry.
• If SoleSafe is trusted for sneaker insurance, we bet they will be trusted for home insurance by Black Americans.

We used that logic to help phil terrill, SoleSafe’s CEO and founder to build his TAM/SAM/SOM Blueprint:

• If we can insure the shoe, we can insure the closet.
• If we can insure the closet, we can insure the home.
• It’s a $1.6T market.

The draft looked like this:

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OK, “Sneaker, Closet, Home ...” doesn’t have the same hook as “Rapper, Hustler, C-E-O …” but I’ll take it.

The final slide looked like this:

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Traction Legitimizs the SOM:

Armed with this TAM/SAM/SOM narrative, investors can contextualize his traction as he builds the sneaker side of his business through his embedded finance integration to Shopify this holiday season. This legitimizes his SOM is real and SoleSafe has traction (see what I did there?).

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Experimentation Validates the SAM

This slide also rationalizes some of the other aspects of SoleSafe’s product offering, which is around building lightweight communities in the sneakerhead community. Said simply, if you can insure one sneaker, how can you insure the second, and eventually insure a whole room, or closet? This is an appropriate use of resources to start chipping away at your SAM.

While this isn’t the bread and butter of this round, we like that he is doing some capital-light and sensible experiments to ensure that SoleSafe’s long-term growth thesis is sound.

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Don’t Tackle the TAM

Lastly, for pre-seed companies, most investors don’t need to see different traction efforts in chipping away at your TAM beyond the above efforts. Go any further, many investors will think you are unfocused and unaware of your stage.

You should check out SoleSafe’s entire pitch from Demo Day here. Phil killed it:

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Conclusion: Rhyme Like Hov

In sum, don’t get flustered by the TAM/SAM/SOM slide and put a bunch of nonsense in there like 99% of founders.

To be honest, when I see a lot of these slides, I see founders scared to put their true selves out there. They hide behind lower targets, someone else's metrics, or some multi-syllabic term a management consultant wrote. Just be you.

I really believe the TAM/SAM/SOM slide can be your manifesto where personal missions and professional guts meet - and I think no one did it better than Jay-Z.

In fact, he just recently reiterated this point last month on CBS when talking about how his music mimics his life. No mistake why he made a multi-platinum trilogy called The Blueprint.

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“Listen to the albums. It’s all there if you piece it together and really listen to the music for the words, for what it is — it’s all there. Everything that I said was gonna happen, happened. Everything I said I wanted to do, I’ve done, and there’s The Blueprint. The blueprint, literally, to me and my life and my journey is there already.”

He said what he was going to do, and he did it. Only a fool wouldn’t invest if they had the chance.

So, stop struggling with your TAM/SAM/SOM slide. Share your Blueprint simply, logically, and clearly.  Or as Jay-Z himself may say,

‍“Hov did that / So hopefully you don’t have to go through that.”