How much time and money should Seed and Series A startups spend on market research?

When you’re an entrepreneur who’s focused on doing as much as you can to raise investment, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and get obsessed by the details at the expense of your success.

For a while now, we’ve been wondering if one of those areas might be an under or over-reliance on market research within a founder’s business plan or pitch. After all, research in any form can be both a blessing and a curse.

If you research wisely, and only do as much research as you need to support your pitch or fine-tune your offering to strengthen it, it can be a fantastic tool. But, if you do too much market research or become so overwhelmed by what the research is telling you, this can lead you to doubt your own business decisions. Thus, creating more problems than solutions.

We wanted to know what founders and investors thought about this subject, so I reached out to my network, asking the following question:

With market research (incl. TAM, SAM, SOM), should Seed or Series A founders:

• Use free/low-cost resources?
• Pay for access to premium data?
• Commission bespoke research?