Bottom-Up Market Sizing That Survives Reality
Bottom-up market sizing starts with a defined buyer and transaction, then counts eligible buyers, buying frequency and net price.
Stern Capital
We find working businesses. Then we make them work.
We help owners, companies and investors find the next business worth building, test the assumptions with real data, and carry the strong ideas into operation.
20+
years operating
9M
daily visitors at peak
500M+
monthly views powered
1,000
domains run at once
What we do
Research to execution, one practice
Opportunity Research
We map what people already search for, pay for and complain about. Who earns the margin, what protects them, and what it really costs to be found.
Learn moreValidation
The smallest honest test for every assumption that carries weight. Kill criteria agreed in writing before results arrive. Weak ideas die cheap.
Learn moreBuild & Execution
Product, infrastructure, automation and team design. We carry the decision through vendors, hiring and launch until the operation runs.
Learn moreScale & Optimization
The levers that move unit economics, and the safeguards that protect them. Growth that compounds instead of breaking things.
Learn moreHow we work
Four principles, earned the hard way
01
Start with reality
How the business, users and platforms actually behave. Not how anyone wishes they behaved.
02
Find the leverage point
One constraint changes the economics. The rest is noise that looks like work.
03
People at the center
Technology gives strong people leverage. It does not replace their judgment.
04
Carry it through
From decision to running operation. We stay until it survives real life.
Specialist practice
Platform integrity, from someone who knows the attacker playbook
Most abuse defense is built by people who have only ever seen the defensive side. We have spent twenty years operating high scale traffic, engagement and publishing systems, which means we understand attacker economics and evasion from the inside.
We help platforms find fake accounts, break up bot farms, harden age and content controls, and design systems that are hard to abuse in the first place. Including the hardest problem of all, keeping harmful content away from the people it can hurt most.
See the Trust & Safety practiceFake account & bot detection
Find the signals that separate real users from automated and coordinated accounts.
Bot farm disruption
Understand the economics behind large scale abuse, then make it too expensive to run.
Content & age integrity
Close the gaps that let harmful or adult content reach underage users.
Abuse-resistant design
Build systems where abuse is hard from day one, not patched after launch.
Insights
Latest thinking
Build vs. Buy Software: A 36-Month Cost Model
Build software when a capability creates real margin, speed, trust, or something hard for a competitor to copy, and the expected advantage justifies…
Business Metrics From Day One: Build the Decision Loop
A new business should measure demand, delivery, cash, and quality from day one. Start with the decisions each number must change.
Customer Concentration Risk: Beyond Revenue Share
Customer concentration risk is dependence on a small part of your customer base.
Why Fake Accounts Still Beat Detection
Fake accounts still get through because detection and evasion are a moving fight, and most defenses catch last quarter's attack.
Keeping Adult Content Away From Minors
Adult or harmful content reaches minors not because of one broken control but because of a chain of weak links.
Have a decision that deserves evidence?
Write a few lines about your situation. You will get a considered reply, not a sales sequence.
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