What counts as market evidence in a grant application?

Evidence about buyers rather than about the market: who they are, what they currently pay for the problem or its workaround, a reason they would switch, and something a stranger can check for each of those claims. Public complaint and workaround evidence, dated buyer conversations, paid pilots and signed orders all count. A market-size figure on its own does not.

How do I show viability and scalability for an endorsement application?

Viability is a buyer who pays and a route that reaches more of them at a cost the business can bear. Scalability is evidence that the route repeats beyond the first customers. Show both as graded claims with sources, name the ones still open, and state the proof you will seek for each. An assessor is reading for whether you know what you have not yet proved.

Is market size enough evidence for an Innovate UK application?

Market size tells an assessor the category exists. It does not tell them anyone will choose your offer within it. Applications that lean on the market size for the viability section are leaning on the one claim that says nothing about buyers. Keep the figure, label it as context, and build the section on buyer evidence.

How do I get letters of intent from customers before I have a product?

By putting a specific offer and a price in front of a specific buyer and asking for a dated, conditional commitment rather than a kind word. A letter that names the problem, the offer, the price and the conditions under which they would buy is evidence. A letter that says they support the founder is a reference.

What do assessors look for in the commercial section of an application?

Whether each claim can be checked, whether the founder knows which claims are still open, whether there is a plan to close them, and whether that plan is specific. Certainty with no sources reads as a risk. A smaller, sourced case with named gaps reads as competence, which is the thing the section is really testing.

How do I turn a pitch deck into an evidence-based business case?

Delete every adjective and replace it with a number and its source. Where no source exists, write the claim as a hypothesis with a proof plan. Separate what customers have done from what investors or supporters have said. The result is shorter than the deck and survives a sceptical reader, which is the point.

Before a grant, accelerator or endorsement deadline

The form asks for market evidence. A market-size slide is not it.

Every application form has a box labelled market evidence. Most founders fill it with the market size.

Market size is a fact about the market. Evidence is a fact about your buyers: who they are, what they pay for now, why they would switch, and what you can show a stranger to support each claim.

Take the viability section, delete every adjective and replace each one with a number and its source. What survives is your evidence. The gaps are your proof plan, and you can write that in.

What just happened

The form asks who will buy, what they pay now and why they would switch. The deck says the market is large and growing. You have conviction, a market-size slide and three weeks to the deadline.

You are tempted to fill the viability section with the market size, and you suspect that is what every rejected applicant does.

What you are probably about to do

I need to write a stronger application.

Hire a grant writer.
Enlarge the market size.
Collect letters of support from people who like you.
Polish the wording until it sounds certain.

Why that does not settle it

Writing polishes claims. It does not evidence them. A grant writer writes what you give them, and without evidence they are writing adjectives too.

A bigger market size is still a fact about the market. Friendly letters say the writer likes you, and an assessor has read thousands of them. The application turns your story into a list of claims a sceptical reader will test, and every adjective is a line you cannot evidence.

The question underneath

Which commercial claims in the case are evidenced, which risks are open, and what is the proof plan an assessor can inspect?

The GTM Right question this belongs to

Proceed, revise, or stop before more spend?

Secondary: Can a stranger become a paying customer?

Before the deadline, this week

01
Take the viability or market section and delete every adjective. Read what is left. That is the case as an assessor will read it.
02
For each remaining claim, write the number and the source you would show if asked. A claim with no source is a hypothesis, and it is allowed to be one, as long as it is labelled.
03
Where the evidence is thin, say so and write the next proof you will seek. Assessors read a named gap with a plan as competence. They read a confident sentence with no source as a risk.
04
Spend some of the remaining time on one buyer investigation rather than all of it on wording. Any new evidence goes in honestly, including the possibility that it complicates the case.

Market size is a fact about the market. Evidence is a fact about your buyers.

Where GTM Right fits, and where it stops

In this situation the free Stage 1 check reads the public market evidence for the problem: whether strangers describe it, unprompted, as real, visible and urgent, with the sources it reviewed and the limits of what it found. That is the first claim in any viability section, with a source attached.

True Validation tests public market evidence only: whether the problem is real, visible and urgent. It does not prove buyer budget, willingness to pay, offer fit, acquisition economics or full commercial viability.

Completing all six stages produces the Commercial Readiness Pack: evidence grades for each commercial claim, open risks named rather than hidden, and a proof plan, in a form a third party can inspect. For an application, that record is the market-evidence section, written to be checked rather than believed.

Stages 2 to 6 test the later commercial assumptions: Buyer Precision, Buyer + Offer, Revenue Funnel, Market + Funnel, Commercial Decision. They do not change the fact that Stage 1 is market validation only.

Nothing here can tell you what an assessor or endorsing body will decide, and a graded record is not a certification, a valuation, an investment recommendation or a substitute for professional advice on the programme's criteria. What it does is let you submit something honest that reads as a case rather than a pitch, whatever the outcome.

Run the free Stage 1 check

Stage 1 of 6. Free. No account required. Usually under 90 seconds.

Questions founders ask in this situation

What counts as market evidence in a grant application?: Evidence about buyers rather than about the market: who they are, what they currently pay for the problem or its workaround, a reason they would switch, and something a stranger can check for each of those claims. Public complaint and workaround evidence, dated buyer conversations, paid pilots and signed orders all count. A market-size figure on its own does not.
How do I show viability and scalability for an endorsement application?: Viability is a buyer who pays and a route that reaches more of them at a cost the business can bear. Scalability is evidence that the route repeats beyond the first customers. Show both as graded claims with sources, name the ones still open, and state the proof you will seek for each. An assessor is reading for whether you know what you have not yet proved.
Is market size enough evidence for an Innovate UK application?: Market size tells an assessor the category exists. It does not tell them anyone will choose your offer within it. Applications that lean on the market size for the viability section are leaning on the one claim that says nothing about buyers. Keep the figure, label it as context, and build the section on buyer evidence.
How do I get letters of intent from customers before I have a product?: By putting a specific offer and a price in front of a specific buyer and asking for a dated, conditional commitment rather than a kind word. A letter that names the problem, the offer, the price and the conditions under which they would buy is evidence. A letter that says they support the founder is a reference.
What do assessors look for in the commercial section of an application?: Whether each claim can be checked, whether the founder knows which claims are still open, whether there is a plan to close them, and whether that plan is specific. Certainty with no sources reads as a risk. A smaller, sourced case with named gaps reads as competence, which is the thing the section is really testing.
How do I turn a pitch deck into an evidence-based business case?: Delete every adjective and replace it with a number and its source. Where no source exists, write the claim as a hypothesis with a proof plan. Separate what customers have done from what investors or supporters have said. The result is shorter than the deck and survives a sceptical reader, which is the point.

The Commercial Readiness Pack

One record of the evidence, assumptions, grades and the commercial decision, written to be read by a third party.

A pitch and a commercial case are not the same thing

What a deck asks a reader to believe, and what a commercial case lets them check.

Market validation examples

Four sourced cases where evidence supported, weakened or left a market thesis unresolved.

All 25 founder decisions · Forward this to: The assessor or the endorsing body. The record is written to be read by them.

This page was written from an illustrative founder story, "The application box that would not accept conviction". The characters and events in it are invented; it is not a customer testimonial or an account of a verified GTM Right result.