PE Playbooks · Optional
Market & Competitor Research
Use Claude to map a target's market and competitors, and learn when to rely on its knowledge versus your own sources.
Every CIM claims a large and fast-growing market, and the sizing slide is usually the most generous page in the book. Before you back a target you need your own view: how big the market really is, how fast it grows, who else is competing, and what could change the picture. Claude is a strong thinking partner for this. It can structure a market map, frame the competitive landscape, and pressure-test the assumptions behind that “huge addressable market” slide. The important discipline is knowing which parts of this it can do from its own knowledge and which parts need a real source.
When to use this
Use this early, when you are forming a view on whether a market is attractive enough to commit diligence time, and again later to sanity-check the market section of a CIM. Claude is best at the structuring and the framing: turning a vague sense of a sector into a clear map of segments, drivers, and competitors, and giving you sharp questions to take into expert calls or commercial diligence.
The workflow
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Frame the market with a structured prompt
Ask Claude to map the market around your target into segments, size, growth drivers, and headwinds. A structured frame is far more useful than an open “tell me about this market” request, and it gives you something to react to.
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Map the competitive landscape
Ask for the competitive set grouped by type (incumbents, challengers, adjacent threats), with the basis of competition spelled out. This tells you where your target actually sits and where the pressure comes from.
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Pressure-test the CIM's market claims
A CIM will present the most flattering market story. Upload the relevant pages and ask Claude to challenge the sizing logic and the growth assumptions, not just summarize them.
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Turn the map into expert-call questions
The output you want is not a finished market section; it is a set of sharp questions for the people who actually know the sector. Ask Claude to convert the gaps and assumptions into a call agenda.
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Verify any specific figure against a real source
Claude’s general market framing is useful; its specific numbers are not a citation. Treat any market-size or growth figure it offers as a hypothesis to confirm against a named report or expert, never as a fact to quote.
Framing the market
This prompt produces a structured market map you can react to and refine, rather than a vague essay.
You are assisting a private equity associate assessing Project Atlas, a mid-market B2B field-service management software business serving small and mid-sized service contractors in the US.
Task: map the market this business operates in, so I can judge whether it is attractive enough to commit diligence time.
Format: use these headings.
- Market definition and segments: how you would segment this market and where Project Atlas sits.
- Demand drivers: what is growing demand for this software, and how durable each driver is.
- Headwinds and risks: what could slow or shrink the market.
- Structure and competition: is this fragmented or consolidating, and what does that imply for a buyer.
Be explicit about confidence: where you are reasoning from general sector knowledge rather than a specific source, say so. Do not present an estimated market size as if it were a cited figure. End with the three things I most need to validate with an external source or an expert call.
Challenging the CIM’s market story
Sellers size markets generously. This prompt has Claude interrogate the logic rather than repeat it.
I have attached the market section of Project Atlas’s CIM. It claims a large and fast-growing addressable market.
Task: challenge the sizing and growth logic rather than summarizing it.
Cover: how the addressable market appears to have been defined and whether that definition is generous, which assumptions the growth rate depends on, and what a more conservative framing would look like.
Use only the attached pages for what the CIM claims, and flag clearly where the CIM gives a number without showing how it was derived. End with the specific questions I should put to management or to a commercial diligence provider to test the market story.
Reliable framing versus figures to verify
What to trust and what to check
| Rely on Claude for | Always verify elsewhere |
|---|---|
| Segmenting the market and placing the target within it | The actual market size and growth rate |
| Identifying likely demand drivers and headwinds | Specific competitor revenues or market shares |
| Framing the competitive structure and its implications | Any figure you intend to quote in the memo |
| Drafting sharp questions for expert calls | Whether a named competitor still exists in that form |
Lean on Claude for the shape of the market. Source every hard number elsewhere.
Where to go next
The reward here is a market view you can defend: a clear map, sharp questions for the experts, and every hard number sourced rather than assumed. Market framing is exactly the kind of open-ended reasoning that rewards more deliberation, so for the tougher sizing questions turn up Thinking & Effort. And because a market section stands or falls on its figures, hold every number to Verify Everything before it reaches the memo.