SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market)

Intermediate 🚀 Startup / VC

Definition

The realistic revenue you can capture in the next 5-10 years—the number that makes your board members slightly less nervous than TAM.

Example Usage

Our SOM is $100M based on conservative assumptions, which if we achieve will make Series A investors look like geniuses.

Origin

Subset of TAM/SAM analysis terminology

Fun Fact

The best pitch decks focus heavily on SOM rather than TAM.

Source: Standard market analysis terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

vintage year

The year a venture capital fund closes and begins making investments, used to compare fund performance across similar time periods. It's like birth year for wine or funds—context that matters for quality assessment.

🚀 Startup / VC
Beginner

fundraising

The noble art of convincing individuals, corporations, and foundations to part with their money for your cause, institution, or startup dream. In education, it's what keeps universities building new buildings with donors' names on them. In nonprofits and startups, it's a full-time job disguised as networking events and carefully crafted pitch decks.

🚀 Startup / VC
Intermediate

TAM/SAM/SOM

Total Addressable Market, Serviceable Addressable Market, and Serviceable Obtainable Market—three increasingly pessimistic estimates of how much money you might theoretically make. The trilogy of optimism, realism, and 'if everything goes perfectly.'

🚀 Startup / VC
Advanced

drag-along

Rights allowing majority shareholders to force minority shareholders to join in selling the company. Corporate democracy's escape hatch, where your vote doesn't matter if enough people with more shares decide differently.

🚀 Startup / VC
Advanced

warrants

Options for investors to purchase additional equity at a predetermined price, typically sweetening deals when a startup is desperate or when investors have serious FOMO about missing upside. The financial equivalent of a rain check.

🚀 Startup / VC
Intermediate

dead equity

Equity allocated to former employees, advisors, or early team members who are no longer contributing to the company but still own shares. It's the corporate equivalent of paying rent for a ghost tenant.

🚀 Startup / VC

Translate This Term

See “SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market)” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on XShare on FacebookShare on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Intermediate

slash

A dramatic budget cut or reduction in workforce, usually announced with corporate euphemisms like 'rightsizing' or 'stra...