How would you approach estimating the total addressable market for a new smartphone app targeting college students?

In my final year of college, I worked on a market research project where we had to estimate the demand for a new campus service app. I started by identifying the total number of college students in our area, which was about 20,000. Then, I conducted surveys to understand students' preferences and pain points regarding existing services. After analyzing the data, I estimated that around 30% of students would likely use our app, giving us a potential user base of about 6,000. This experience taught me the importance of combining quantitative data with qualitative insights, which would be essential in estimating market sizes for new products.

During my time volunteering for the student council, we organized events that targeted the entire college population. To estimate attendance for each event, I surveyed students about their interests and gathered feedback from previous events. For one tech fair, I found that about 40% of students showed interest in attending based on our surveys. Since we had approximately 15,000 students enrolled, I estimated about 6,000 attendees. This experience helped me understand how to gauge interest levels and apply them to broader market estimations, which would be useful for an app targeting similar demographics.

In my first job at a small startup, I was tasked with conducting a market analysis for a new app aimed at students. I researched the number of colleges in our target region and estimated the student population to be around 200,000. By analyzing competitors and their user engagement metrics, I estimated that if we captured even 5% of this market, we could reach 10,000 users. This experience not only refined my analytical skills but also taught me how to present my findings to stakeholders, emphasizing the importance of understanding the market landscape for effective product positioning.