The Last Big Dumb Dream
On August 8, 2026, Victor Knox opened Vic’s Vegan Café in Fort Worth, Texas—Cowtown, USA. It was a bold move, some said. Others just called it history’s last Big Dumb Dream.
Not to be confused with Big Bong Dreams—like crowdfunding a zeppelin rental or quitting everything to surf inland rivers—or Big Balls Dreams, like starting a bar fight with a rodeo clown or trying to break the sound barrier on a modified riding mower. Nope. Big Dumb Dreams are informed by unshakable passions and the nearly complete absence of the skills and data needed to: launch, scale, operate, finance, brand, insure, or explain the thing in a single coherent sentence—let alone notice it’s secretly a one-way ticket to a dead-end career in kombucha logistics or interpretive historical fencing.
There’s nothing wrong with Big Dumb Dreamers. With multiple sunsetted startups, a stagnant portfolio of patents, and an ill-advised detour through the music industry, I could be the BDD poster child.
Guess what. The days of Big Dumb Dreams are over.
Because it’s mid-2025—and the only acceptable excuse for Big Dumb Dreaming vanished when market-sizing became a five-minute, single-prompt exercise.
Today, you don’t even have to know what "Total Addressable Market" (TAM) means, let alone how to calculate it yourself. TAM is just a fancy term for measuring how many people could realistically buy, use, or benefit from whatever you’re dreaming up. Want to open that vegan café in cattle country? Wondering if a career as a Politics professor or a Data Scientist is a sustainable move? Curious about the viability of building a subdivision of luxury homes? Or even considering smaller-scale ventures like launching a neighborhood composting program, running a garage bakery, or serializing fiction on Substack?
Five years ago, sizing your market required weeks of research, expensive consultants, and maybe some elaborate spreadsheets (cue collective groan). Now, you just ask your favorite AI tool to help frame the perfect prompt: "I want to open a vegan café in Fort Worth—what information do you need from me to estimate my potential market?" The AI replies with clear follow-up questions, grabs recent census figures, polls Yelp reviews, surveys competitor pricing, and cross-references demographic data faster than you can brew your next cup of coffee.
The beauty isn’t just speed; it’s clarity. Within minutes, you're looking at a realistic market ceiling, and maybe even a gentle suggestion that Fort Worth isn’t exactly waiting in line for jackfruit tacos and tempeh brisket sandwiches. Or maybe—just maybe—the numbers say otherwise, and you have the data-backed confidence to march forward, brimming with legitimate, defensible optimism.
Either way, Big Dumb Dreams—the ones pursued blindly, passionately, recklessly—now have to face facts before takeoff. Dreams themselves aren’t going anywhere, but today’s dreamers have an unprecedented superpower: knowing if their passion project has wings or a guaranteed belly-flop.
So keep dreaming big. But dream smart.
Addendum: How to Quickly Get Started with TAM Using an LLM
One quick tip: don’t try to guess how to construct the perfect TAM-sizing prompt. Instead, simply ask the LLM to help you craft it.
Begin with a request like:
“I’m thinking about [opening a vegan café, building luxury homes, launching a compost service—your idea here]. Can you help me create a prompt to estimate the market size? What details do you need from me?”
If you're exploring career moves, your prompt might look like this:
“I'm considering a career as a [Political Science professor, Data Scientist, insert career here]. Can you help me construct a prompt to estimate my potential job market, career outlook, and overall sustainability? What specific information do you need from me?”
The LLM will respond with clear, specific follow-up questions that guide you step-by-step, pinpointing exactly the inputs it needs. This ensures you don’t miss critical context or guess at data points that might skew your results.
From there, you simply answer the questions, and the LLM returns a structured, precise prompt that delivers actionable market-sizing insights—no prior experience or expertise required.
Give it a shot.
For serious business ideas, check out FounderPal at https://founderpal.ai/blog/tam-sam-som.