Product Strategy: Sizing the Market for Machine Smell Detection and Choosing a Beachhead

An outside company has developed technology that detects smells. How would you size up the business opportunity it creates, and which customer segment would you go after first? ```hint Start from paid-for decisions Look for situations where someone already spends money to answer a question that a smell reading could answer, then ask how accurate the reading must be to replace what they use today. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What can the technology do today: identify specific odors, measure their intensity, pick up compounds people cannot smell, and how accurate is it outside a lab? - What is the form factor and unit cost: a chip small enough for a phone, a portable handheld, or a fixed instrument? - Am I assessing this for the company that owns the technology, or for Google deciding whether to partner with, license or acquire it? - Is any geography or industry out of scope, such as medical uses that would need regulatory approval? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A structured map of use cases across consumer, commercial, industrial, safety and health settings, tied to what the sensor can actually detect - A sizing method, top-down and bottom-up, with labeled assumptions rather than a single headline number - Explicit criteria for comparing segments: pain and willingness to pay, incumbent alternatives, accuracy bar, regulatory path and time to revenue - A clear first segment with reasons, and a path to the next ones - The main risks: real-world reliability, false positives and negatives, and liability ### Follow-up Questions - What evidence would you collect in the first few months to confirm or abandon your segment choice? - If Google partnered with this company, where could the technology fit in its products, and would that change your choice? - How would you price it in your chosen segment: per device, per subscription or per detection?