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The Market Research Template With a Sources Column
By Hao Xu · Founder, WedgeScout · Updated July 27, 2026 · Free — the full template is on this page, no email required
TL;DR — Most market research templates give you a cell for every claim and no cell for where the claim came from. This one pairs every factual cell with a source cell, logs counter-signals next to supporting evidence, and ends in a two-way verdict with a flip condition. Every section below is filled from one real scan we ran in July 2026 — and two of the six came back empty, which we left empty. Free, visible in full on this page, no email.
Most market research templates are a table with a guess in every cell: "market size: $XB (source: vibes)." This one is built around a single rule — every factual cell has a neighbor cell asking where the fact came from. A market research document with an empty sources column isn't research; it's a guess wearing a spreadsheet.
Below, every section is filled from one real scan I ran in July 2026 — explainable expense-categorization exceptions for small accounting firms, across r/Bookkeeping, r/quickbooksonline and r/smallbusiness, naming QuickBooks, Keeper and Uncat as they came up. Two of the six sections came back empty, and we left them empty. That is the more useful demonstration: a template that can only be shown fully filled is a template nobody has actually used.
Copy it straight off the page, or grab the Google Sheets / Notion versions — free either way.
What's in the template (and why six sections)
The six sections mirror how validation actually flows — from what you believe, to what the world says, to what you decide:
| # | Section | Answers | | --- | ------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | | 1 | Goal & hypotheses | What exactly are we testing? | | 2 | Market snapshot | How big, bottom-up, with sources? | | 3 | Complaint scan log | What do real users say in public? | | 4 | Interview tracker | What did they say when we asked properly? | | 5 | Competitor snapshot | Who's already serving this, and where do they fail? | | 6 | Synthesis & verdict | Worth pursuing, or not enough evidence yet? |
Use them in order. Teams that jump straight to section 5 end up positioning against competitors for a problem they never verified exists.
Section 1 — Goal & hypotheses
State the idea in one sentence, then split it into the four hypotheses tested in our customer discovery guide:
| Field | Prompt | Filled — our July 2026 run | | ------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Idea | One sentence, no adjectives | Explainable expense-categorization exceptions for small accounting firms | | Problem hypothesis | What breaks, how often, for whom | Bookkeepers cannot resolve uncategorized transactions without client input, monthly | | User hypothesis | Who hurts most (specific enough to find) | Bookkeepers serving 2–10 person client firms, on QuickBooks Online | | Solution hypothesis | Why this approach relieves it | Explaining why a transaction is ambiguous cuts the client round-trip | | Value hypothesis | Evidence they'd pay | They already pay in hours — spreadsheets sent to clients, chased manually | | Riskiest assumption | The one that kills the idea if false | That the blocker is the tool. Section 3 says it is client compliance |
Notice the last row changed during the scan. I went into r/Bookkeeping assuming the riskiest assumption was "will bookkeepers trust automated categorisation." A single line about Keeper replaced it with something else entirely — see Section 3.
Section 2 — Market snapshot (bottom-up only)
Three rows, no analyst-report theater (our TAM, SAM, and SOM guide explains why):
| Field | Value | Source | | ---------------------- | -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | | Countable buyers | e.g. 29,500 US laundromats | CLA industry overview (URL, accessed date) | | Your annual price | $ | your pricing page / assumption — label it | | TAM (= buyers × price) | $ | arithmetic of the two rows above | | SAM filter & result | % + $ | assumption — label it | | SOM target & result | % + $ | assumption — label it |
The template refuses "1% of a $5B industry" by construction: there's no cell for someone else's revenue.
Section 2, on our run: empty
We never filled it. Our scan reads public discussions; it does not count firms, and we are not going to estimate a number we did not count. Filling it would have meant taking an IRS or AICPA headcount for US bookkeeping firms and dividing — arithmetic on somebody else's number, which is the exact thing this section exists to prevent.
An empty Section 2 is a legitimate state. It says: we know the problem is real and we do not yet know how many people have it. Those are different claims and this template keeps them apart.
Section 3 — Complaint scan log
The section most templates don't have, and the one that does the most work. Log public complaints from the segment's communities — one row per finding:
| Field | Prompt | | ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Source | Community/forum + URL | | Quote (verbatim) | Their words, not your summary | | Date | From the post, not hand-typed | | Specificity grade | Low = vague grumbling · High = named tools + workflow + cost + workaround | | Supports / contradicts | Which hypothesis from Section 1 — and counter-signals get logged too |
Grade specificity, not volume: ten highly specific complaints beat a hundred vague ones.
A filled row, so you can see the bar
| Field | Filled | | ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Source | r/Bookkeeping · Large Catch Up Project — Handling Uncategorized Transactions in Bulk? | | Quote (verbatim) | "Since the client's time is at a premium, would the correct workflow be to park transactions without backup or clear indica of what they are (say mysterious E-TRANSFER to JIM BOB) to Uncat Income or Uncat Expense, complete the bank recs, and then send a list of all the uncats to the customer and then simply correct them after the fact?" | | Date | | | Specificity grade | High — names the accounts (Uncat Income/Expense), the sequence (park → reconcile → chase → correct), and the constraint (client time) | | Supports / contradicts | Supports the problem hypothesis; the workaround it describes is also value evidence — this is work someone is already paying a person to do |
That row is what "high specificity" means: a stranger described your product's workflow before you built it. A row that reads "people say bookkeeping is annoying" is a Low grade and should be scored as one.
Two more rows from the same run — including the one that changed the verdict
| Field | Row 2 | Row 3 | | ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Source | r/Bookkeeping | r/quickbooksonline | | Quote (verbatim) | "I've heard of Keeper and such but you need to have a client that is willing to keep up with it." | "I know QBO bank rules can speed up categorization… But my recurring pain isn't the category, it's job/customer assignment." | | Specificity grade | High — names an existing tool and the precise condition under which it fails | High — names the incumbent feature and corrects the problem definition | | Supports / contradicts | Contradicts. The tooling exists; the constraint is client behaviour | Narrows. The pain is not categorisation, it is assignment |
The Keeper line is the most useful thing in the run, and it argues against building. Keeper already does this job; the constraint is that the bookkeeper's clients will not keep up with it. A founder scanning for encouragement skips that line. Log it in the same table or the table is a highlight reel.
Row 3 did something the template is specifically designed to allow: it changed Section 1. The riskiest-assumption cell was rewritten because of a Section 3 finding. If your Section 1 never changes during a scan, you were not reading — you were shopping for agreement.
Section 3 is the section people skip, and it is the only one that produces evidence you did not already believe. See the complaint evidence in our accounting-firm opportunity report.
Section 4 — Interview tracker
For the conversations you run yourself, use the questions and technique in our Mom Test summary. A survey template is the wrong tool here: surveys collect opinions, and this row collects behaviour.
Date · Persona · Severity (their words) · Frequency · Current workaround · Paid/tried before? · Exact quotes · Hypothesis supported (P/U/S/V) · Counter-signal? · Referral
One row per interview, filled the same day — memory rewrites toward optimism within a week.
Section 4, on our run: empty
Zero interviews. Our scan is public evidence only, and public evidence cannot do what an interview does — it cannot ask a follow-up.
This matters for how Section 3 should be read. Every quote above was written for the writer's own reasons, which is its strength; but nobody in r/Bookkeeping was asked "what would you pay to stop doing this," and nobody volunteered it. Section 3 established the problem. Section 4 is where willingness to pay gets tested, and ours is blank.
Section 5 — Competitor snapshot
| Field | Prompt | | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | Competitor | Name + URL | | Wedge they own | What they're genuinely good at | | Where users complain | From Section 3 evidence — link the complaints, don't guess | | Price | Their public pricing | | Gap for you | Only if backed by a complaint row |
Filled from the same run
| Field | QuickBooks Online | Keeper | | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Wedge they own | Bank rules; auto-categorisation of recurring transactions | Purpose-built client-question workflow for exactly this job | | Where users complain | "my recurring pain isn't the category, it's job/customer assignment" — r/quickbooksonline | "you need to have a client that is willing to keep up with it" — r/Bookkeeping | | Price | Public, tiered | Public, per-client | | Gap for you | Job/customer assignment, not categorisation | None established. The complaint is about client behaviour, not about Keeper |
Look at the Keeper column's bottom cell. The rule says the gap cell stays empty unless a Section 3 row justifies it, and here the evidence justifies nothing — it says Keeper works and the bookkeeper's clients do not cooperate. A competitive analysis that fills that cell anyway is how founders talk themselves into building the tool that already exists.
⚠️ What this run failed at. Our own scan issued its competitor queries before it knew who the competitors were, so it searched "expense categorization software" and got vendor landing pages. QuickBooks, Keeper and Uncat all surfaced inside the evidence and none of them was ever queried by name. The table above was assembled by hand afterwards. If you are filling Section 5 from a scan, expect to do the same.
Competitor weaknesses come from their users' complaints, not from your hopes. The "Gap for you" cell stays empty until a Section 3 row justifies it — this is the discipline most competitive analyses skip, and it is why so many of them conclude that every competitor is conveniently bad at exactly the thing you built.
Section 6 — Synthesis & verdict
No scores. Two options, one line each:
| Field | Prompt | | -------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | | Verdict | Worth pursuing / Not enough evidence yet | | Reasoning | 3 sentences max, citing Section 3/4 rows by number | | Flip condition | Exactly what evidence would reverse the verdict | | Next action | One concrete step with a date |
Two verdicts, not three. A middle tier ("promising," "needs more work," a 78/100) is where uncomfortable findings go to be filed and forgotten. And note what the second label says: not enough evidence yet describes the state of your evidence, not the quality of your idea — the fix might be more scanning, not abandonment.
If you can't fill the flip condition, the verdict is a feeling, not a finding.
Filled from the same run
| Field | Filled | | -------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Verdict | Worth pursuing — meaning worth one more test, not start building | | Reasoning | Row 1 and Row 3 corroborate a specific recurring workflow break across two independent communities. Row 2 shows the tooling already exists, so the wedge is not a better categoriser. Sections 2 and 4 are empty, so nothing here establishes size or willingness to pay. | | Flip condition | If the "willing client" constraint appears in more than half of follow-up interviews, this is a client-side habit product, not an accountant-side tool — and we would be building for the wrong buyer. | | Next action | Ten interviews with r/Bookkeeping-sourced bookkeepers, asking what they did the last time a client ignored their spreadsheet. |
Read the reasoning cell again: two of its three sentences are about what the r/Bookkeeping run does not show. That is what the sources column buys you. A verdict written from four filled sections and two honest blanks is worth more than a confident one written from six sections of guesses.
Six sections, four filled
| Section | Our run | Why | | --------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | 1 Goal & hypotheses | ✅ filled, and revised mid-scan | Row 3 rewrote the riskiest assumption | | 2 Market snapshot | ⬜ empty | We read discussions; we do not count firms | | 3 Complaint scan | ✅ 3 rows shown of 36 evidence units | The section that did the work | | 4 Interview tracker | ⬜ empty | Zero interviews; public evidence cannot ask a follow-up | | 5 Competitor snapshot | ✅ filled by hand | Our scan's competitor queries ran before it knew the names | | 6 Verdict | ✅ filled | Two tiers, with the flip condition written first |
Four of six. If a template only ever appears fully filled, nobody has used it on a real question.
Sections 1, 2, 4 and 6 are yours — nobody can automate an interview or a decision. Section 3 is a week of reading, and it is the part we automated. Scout a market with WedgeScout → and it hands back the same log with every quote linked to its original post.
How to use it (about 15 minutes to set up, a week to fill honestly)
Day 1: fill Section 1, write your source plan for Section 3 — which communities (r/Bookkeeping, not r/Entrepreneur), which searches, decided before reading. Days 2–4: fill the complaint log, counter-signals included. Days 3–6: interviews in parallel. Day 7: Sections 5–6 — and write the verdict before re-reading your own hypotheses, so Section 1 can't grade its own homework.
Notice how the week is distributed: four of the seven days are Section 3, and only two are interviews. That ratio is why most people never finish — the reading is front-loaded, unglamorous, and the part where nobody can tell you you're doing it wrong.
Get the template
Copy from this page
Everything above is the full template. No gate, no download step.
Google Sheets
模板工作簿实体 — tabs for all six sections, formulas in Section 2.
Notion
duplicate 链接 — same six sections as a Notion database.
Free, no email gate. If a template asks for your email before showing you its columns, it's a lead magnet, not a tool.
FAQ
What should a market research template include?
A market research template should include six things: your hypotheses, a bottom-up market snapshot, a log of real user complaints with sources, an interview tracker, a competitor snapshot backed by evidence, and a verdict with a flip condition. The full version of each is above.
Is this market research template free?
This market research template is free: the complete version is visible on this page, and the Sheets/Notion copies are free with no email required.
What's the difference between a market research template and a market research report?
A market research template is the container you fill during research; a market research report is the synthesized output you share. Section 6 above is the seed of the report — for a fully sourced, machine-verified version of that output, that's what WedgeScout reports are.
How is this different from other market research templates?
This template differs from other market research templates in one column: sources. Most templates give you cells for claims; this one pairs every claim cell with a source cell, logs counter-signals, and ends in a two-way verdict instead of a summary paragraph.
How long does it take to fill in?
It takes about fifteen minutes to set up and a week to fill honestly. Most of that week is Section 3 — reading the communities where your segment complains.
Do I need a survey?
You usually do not need a survey at this stage. Surveys collect opinions, and Sections 3 and 4 are built to collect behaviour: what people already did, already paid for, already worked around. Add a survey later, when you need to size something you've already qualified.
The short version
This market research template pairs every factual cell with a source cell. Six sections in order: goal and hypotheses, a bottom-up market snapshot, a complaint scan log, an interview tracker, a competitor snapshot, and a verdict. Two things make it different from the templates you have already seen: counter-signals get logged next to supporting evidence, and the competitor section's "gap for you" cell stays empty until a complaint row justifies it. The verdict has two options, not three — a middle tier is where uncomfortable findings go to be filed and forgotten. If you can't fill in the flip condition, your verdict is a feeling, not a finding.