When I was at Megahertz (later USR, then 3Com), I used to tell folks, that once the big research firms, like IDC, Yankee Group, Frost & Sullivan or Gartner had written a report and done a market forecast for a "new technology", it wasn't NEW anymore! 

I meant that as a reminder that true innovations happen before it's being reported on and before it's being forecast.  Being a technology innovator (which Megahertz/USR/3Com was trying to do), or an innovator in industry leveraging technology, means that you have to look past what the pundits are saying in order to gauge your impact and potential.

This can be hard as you pitch to investors when you're doing a startup.  When we started DoBox, Inc. in 1999, there were about 1 million Broadband customes in North Amercia, but the hockey stick sure looked good!  There were hardly any home networks.  The investors didn't believe the broadband hockey stick (which has, of course, materialzed and roughly half of all internet households in the US are broadband connected) andeven few people believed in home networks (which continue to explode).

I met Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal at the Demo Conference (then in Palm Springs) I think it was the 1999 show.  I remembered that Jeff Hawkins of Palm (after it was acquired by 3Com I got to work with Jeff on cross divisional stuff) talked about how Walt had been crucial in the excitement around the Palm and that, once they got it right, Walt's positive assessment had a huge impact. 

At Demo, I happened to be near Walt at lunch and when I realized who it was, I summoned all my courage to "beard the lion" as it were and see if I could get his attention for DoBox.  I breathlessly told him my story about how home networking was the next big thing and that the "Home Server Gateway" and "Family Firewall" was a next big thing he should care about. 

Walt looked at me and he said something like, 'Home networking, who wants home networking?  The folks in my Connecticut neighborhood are putting in granite countertops, not home networking...." 

Needless to say, Walt was never a DoBox champion, but plenty of other analysts at great research and investment research firms WERE great champions of our and crucial to our ability to be successful. 

Here are some tips on how to create a win-win with analysts in your industry.  Industry analysts are like reporters, only more so.  They get paid big bucks to know everything that is happening in their segment, so they want to know about you!  (remember, their firms really want you to be a paying client, but once you get rolling you will be, so don't worry too much about that!)

1. Make friends with all the analysts in your industry
1. One big research firm limits analysts to one ½ hour interview per year with non-client companies!  (make it count!)  Everybody else is much more excited to hear from you.
   
2. Subscribe to research summaries and press releases and newsletters from all the great research firms in your space (big or small)
   
3. When you go to tradeshows, go visit them, attend their presentations, whatever to get "known"
   
2. Make sure to get on the invitation lists for "potential customers" for free events and briefings - and tell your story to the analysts after their presentations!
3. Use analyst firms' websites to glean market size information of related or relevant markets
1. Piece together forecasts from articles, press releases and summaries
2. Analyst reports can be very expensive....
4. Consider eMarketer's summaries - they can give you a summary of a lot of data at a relatively modest cost