When discussing the potential of a technology company, one of the most important questions is not simply, “How good is the product?”
Another important question is:
How large is the market opportunity?
For LeeX, this question becomes particularly interesting because the project is not being designed around only one category of information.
LeeX is a city-first discovery and location intelligence ecosystem built around three permanent pillars: Businesses, Events, and Infrastructure.
The long-term objective is to create a connected digital representation of cities where people can discover places, experience locations, interact with them, and eventually gain deeper intelligence about how places connect and how cities function.
That creates a potentially broad market opportunity.
But broad potential should not automatically be presented as a massive market number.
A serious market-sizing discussion should separate TAM, SAM, and SOM and explain what each number actually represents.
What Are TAM, SAM and SOM?
TAM means Total Addressable Market.
It represents the theoretical total revenue opportunity available if a company could serve the entire market relevant to its product.
SAM means Serviceable Addressable Market.
It narrows the opportunity to the portion of the market that the company can realistically serve based on its product, geography, customer segments, business model, distribution, and other constraints.
SOM means Serviceable Obtainable Market.
This represents the portion of the serviceable market that a company could realistically capture within a defined period given its resources, competition, distribution, product maturity, and execution capacity.
The important point is that TAM, SAM, and SOM are not three different ways of saying the same thing.
They answer three different questions:
TAM: How large could the entire opportunity become?
SAM: How much of that opportunity can our model actually serve?
SOM: How much can we realistically capture?
For LeeX, these distinctions are especially important because the vision is global, while the execution strategy is city-first.
TAM: The Bigger LeeX Opportunity
The TAM for LeeX should not simply be described as “everyone who uses the internet.”
That would be too broad.
Instead, the potential market should be connected to the economic activities and information systems that LeeX intends to participate in.
LeeX sits at the intersection of several areas:
City discovery
Local business discovery
Events discovery
Location-based information
Digital presence for physical locations
Local advertising and visibility
Tourism and destination discovery
Location intelligence
Urban information
AI-powered discovery
This creates a much broader potential market than a traditional business directory.
The basic idea is that almost every city contains businesses, events, infrastructure, attractions, institutions, public spaces, and other locations that people need to discover.
And every one of those locations potentially has information associated with it.
That information can create value for different groups.
Consumers want to discover places.
Businesses want visibility.
Event organizers want audiences.
Organizations want digital presence.
Visitors want local information.
Communities want better access to information.
Enterprises may eventually want location intelligence.
This is where the larger LeeX opportunity begins to emerge.
However, the exact global TAM should ultimately be calculated from a defined revenue model rather than simply assigning a large number to the entire location-technology industry.
A defensible approach would identify the number of potential paying organizations, the products they could purchase, expected annual revenue per customer, advertising or transaction opportunities, and other monetization channels.
The basic bottom-up equation is:
TAM = Total Potential Customers × Potential Annual Revenue per Customer
For a platform like LeeX, that calculation can eventually be performed separately for businesses, event organizers, infrastructure-related organizations, advertisers, enterprise customers, and other monetizable segments.
SAM: Where LeeX Can Actually Operate
SAM brings the discussion closer to reality.
LeeX does not need to launch simultaneously in every city and every country.
The LeeX Blueprint establishes a city-first expansion strategy, meaning the ecosystem can build depth and completeness within individual cities before expanding into additional locations.
That changes the way the market should be viewed.
Instead of saying:
“LeeX can serve the entire world.”
The more useful question is:
“Which cities, users, businesses, events, and organizations can LeeX realistically serve with its current product and operating model?”
That is the SAM.
For example, LeeX could initially focus on a defined group of Nigerian cities.
The next stage could expand into additional African markets.
Later, the model could extend to other regions.
This creates a progressively expanding serviceable market.
Nigeria itself already demonstrates the scale of the digital population that can potentially support digital discovery products. DataReportal reported 107 million internet users in Nigeria in January 2025, representing 45.4% internet penetration at that time.
That figure does not mean 107 million people automatically constitute LeeX’s SAM.
Instead, it provides context for the size of the connected population from which a digital discovery platform could potentially acquire users.
The actual SAM would need to narrow this population according to LeeX’s target users, supported cities, product availability, adoption, and monetization model.
The Business Side of SAM
LeeX has another important dimension.
The platform does not only have users.
It can also have locations and organizations.
Consider a city containing:
Restaurants.
Hotels.
Pharmacies.
Banks.
Schools.
Hospitals.
Shopping centers.
Entertainment venues.
Event organizers.
Tourist attractions.
Government facilities.
Transportation hubs.
Parks.
Landmarks.
Community spaces.
And thousands of other locations.
Each can potentially become part of the LeeX ecosystem.
This is important because the supply side of LeeX can become a market in itself.
A business could potentially use LeeX for digital presence, visibility, profile management, discovery, featured placement, event connections, analytics, or future intelligence products.
The exact pricing and monetization structure would need to be established and validated before turning these possibilities into financial projections.
SOM: The Market LeeX Can Actually Capture
SOM is where market sizing becomes much more practical.
A company does not capture a market simply because the market exists.
It needs users.
It needs supply.
It needs product-market fit.
It needs distribution.
It needs retention.
It needs monetization.
It needs infrastructure.
And it needs execution.
For LeeX, SOM should therefore be tied to the actual city-by-city expansion strategy.
Imagine LeeX begins by developing strong coverage in one city.
The objective would not simply be to claim that the city contains thousands of businesses.
The objective would be to actually onboard and organize meaningful numbers of those businesses, events, infrastructure locations, and users.
Once the model works, the same process can be repeated in another city.
Then another.
This creates a compounding expansion model.
City → City → Region → Country → Multiple Countries → Global Network
The advantage of this approach is that every successfully developed city can become another node in the wider LeeX network.
Why City Density Matters
One of the most important ideas behind the LeeX model is location density.
A discovery platform becomes more useful when users can find a meaningful amount of information around them.
Imagine opening LeeX in a city and finding only 100 locations.
The platform may have limited usefulness.
Now imagine finding thousands of businesses, hundreds of events, infrastructure information, attractions, community spaces, experiences, and other relevant locations.
The value of discovery can increase significantly.
This means LeeX’s early growth strategy should not necessarily be about being everywhere.
It can instead be about becoming increasingly useful within the cities where it operates.
This is consistent with the Blueprint’s city-first philosophy: strengthen individual cities before expanding the broader ecosystem.
TAM, SAM and SOM for LeeX Should Evolve
The market size of LeeX should not be treated as one permanent number.
As the company develops, the assumptions can become increasingly precise.
At the earliest stage, LeeX may have estimates.
As cities are launched, real data becomes available.
The company can then measure:
Number of listed businesses.
Number of claimed businesses.
Number of events.
Number of infrastructure locations.
Monthly active users.
Search activity.
Discovery activity.
Check-ins.
Moments.
Featured listings.
Advertising demand.
Business conversion rates.
Customer acquisition costs.
Revenue per business.
Retention.
And other important metrics.
These measurements can gradually replace assumptions.
That makes the market model stronger.
A Practical Bottom-Up LeeX Model
A future LeeX market model could be structured like this:
Business Market
Number of target businesses × annual LeeX revenue per business.
Events Market
Number of target event organizers × annual revenue opportunity per organizer.
Infrastructure Market
Number of organizations or infrastructure-related entities × annual revenue opportunity.
Advertising Market
Number of advertisers × average annual advertising spend through LeeX.
Enterprise / Intelligence Market
Number of potential enterprise customers × annual intelligence revenue.
The combined opportunity can then provide a more defensible picture of LeeX’s commercial market.
The important part is that every assumption should be visible.
Instead of saying:
“LeeX has a $100 billion market.”
A stronger analysis would say:
“We identified X potential customers, estimate Y annual revenue per customer, and therefore calculate Z annual market opportunity.”
That is much easier to test.
The Difference Between Vision and Forecast
There is also an important distinction between the vision of LeeX and its financial forecast.
The vision can be global.
The execution can begin locally.
The TAM can represent a broad long-term opportunity.
The SAM can represent the portion LeeX can serve.
The SOM can represent the portion the company expects to capture during a specific period.
These numbers should not be confused.
A global vision does not mean global revenue immediately.
A large TAM does not guarantee a large SOM.
And a large number of potential users does not automatically translate into revenue.
The strength of the LeeX opportunity will ultimately depend on whether the company can convert the underlying location network into sustainable user value and sustainable business value.
LeeX and the Location Intelligence Opportunity
The most interesting part of the LeeX market opportunity may ultimately extend beyond basic discovery.
Discovery creates the initial network.
Experience adds context.
Presence creates real-world activity signals.
Reputation adds relevance.
Growth expands the network.
Intelligence transforms accumulated information into deeper understanding.
This progression creates the possibility for LeeX to eventually operate across multiple layers of the location economy.
At the beginning, people may simply use LeeX to find places.
Over time, the ecosystem can accumulate structured information about locations, experiences, interactions, and activity.
That accumulated information can potentially support more sophisticated discovery and intelligence products.
The Blueprint describes this long-term direction as the evolution from a city discovery platform toward a location intelligence ecosystem.
The LeeX Market in One Framework
The simplest way to understand the opportunity is:
TAM — The entire potential market for LeeX’s category and monetization opportunities.
↓
SAM — The portion LeeX can serve based on its product, geography, business model, and target customers.
↓
SOM — The portion LeeX can realistically capture within a defined period based on execution capacity and market conditions.
The numbers should become more precise as LeeX develops.
At the beginning, assumptions create the model.
As the platform grows, real-world data improves the model.
Conclusion
LeeX is not simply attempting to build another directory.
The broader concept is to build a structured discovery layer for cities.
Businesses.
Events.
Infrastructure.
Experiences.
Activity.
Reputation.
And eventually intelligence.
That creates multiple potential customer groups and multiple possible monetization paths.
But the opportunity should be measured carefully.
TAM describes the ceiling.
SAM defines the reachable opportunity.
SOM represents the realistically obtainable market.
For LeeX, the journey from TAM to SAM to SOM mirrors the broader company strategy itself:
Global vision → focused cities → strong local ecosystems → repeatable expansion → connected location intelligence network.
The ultimate question is therefore not simply how large the LeeX market could be.
The more important question is how effectively LeeX can build useful city ecosystems, create real user value, establish sustainable monetization, and expand that model from one city to many.
That is where the real market opportunity will be determined.
📍 LeeX — Discover. Experience. Understand.
Top comments (0)