Pick NAICS Codes Like a Pro (Without Opening the Code Book)

NAICS codes power every market‑sizing model that matters, yet most founders discover them only when an investor or grant application demands a six‑digit number they have never heard of before. Instead of downloading a 500‑page PDF and guessing, you can identify exactly which codes align with your buyers—then group them into a single, investor‑ready industry definition—all inside Olympus Intel’s Model Builder in less than five minutes.

Why NAICS still matters in 2025

The North American Industry Classification System might feel like bureaucratic baggage, but its structure is woven into the census data, investor benchmarks, and competitive‑analysis reports that fuel modern go‑to‑market planning. Using NAICS codes means your top‑down or bottom‑up market sizing can be reconciled with publicly available revenue figures, which makes it dramatically easier for a venture capitalist or strategic partner to compare your numbers to other pitches on their desk. Olympus Intel taps directly into the U.S. Economic Census and County Business Patterns, so when you pick the correct codes the platform can instantly return establishment counts, revenue totals, and firmographics that match official federal statistics. If you skip the coding step—or pick something “close enough”—you risk inflating TAM or overlooking a lucrative niche that sits one code digit to the left.

Three fast ways to find your codes in Olympus Intel

Model Builder offers three discovery modes because founders enter with different levels of industry knowledge. Choose the one that gets you to a confident answer quickest, knowing you can always refine or mix methods later.

1. Use the AI Segment Generator for an instant starting point

Paste your two‑sentence elevator pitch—“We build AI‑powered accounting software for boutique law firms”—and let the platform suggest primary and secondary NAICS codes. Behind the scenes, Olympus Intel maps your description to its training corpus of business profiles, then returns the most statistically relevant segments. Founders tell us this shaves hours off the research phase and prevents blind spots that creep in when you rely purely on gut instinct.

2. Browse the pre‑defined library when you already know your vertical

If your team comes from commercial banking or consumer packaged goods, scrolling the platform’s structured library is faster than AI text matching. You can multi‑select as many industries as you like, including the nuclear option—“Full U.S. Economy”—although we rarely recommend that sledgehammer approach. Remember that each additional code adds revenue but also adds noise to your ideal‑customer profile, so be deliberate.

3. Deploy the company look‑up trick for crystal‑clear alignment

Type “Apple,” “Qualcomm,” or any other publicly traded peer, and Model Builder will reveal the NAICS codes those companies self‑report. This is invaluable when you sell into an emerging category where the official label feels outdated; you can triangulate several real‑world brands and pick the codes they cluster around. For instance, searching Apple exposes 334111 Electronic Computer Manufacturing while pulling up 334220 Radio and Television Broadcasting and Wireless Communications Equipment Manufacturing. Selecting the first code but leaving the second unchecked might better capture your software‑hardware hybrid’s customer base and avoid ballooning TAM numbers with irrelevant broadcast infrastructure dollars.

When to combine multiple codes into an “industry group”

Many early‑stage products straddle adjacent industries, especially if you offer a horizontal SaaS tool or serve both service providers and their end clients. Olympus Intel lets you stack several NAICS codes into one industry group and treats that group as a single line item in reports, which keeps charts clean while still capturing the full revenue opportunity. A common pattern is pairing a high‑revenue, low‑establishment enterprise code with a mid‑market code that has more firms but lower spend. Doing so mirrors the example in our AI‑Powered Market Insights post, where Commercial Printing eclipses Commercial Banking once establishment counts enter the equation.

Five common pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

1. Picking a code because it “sounds” right. Always verify with real company examples or census revenue figures.
2. Using 2‑digit or 3‑digit roll‑ups. They inflate TAM and mask sub‑industry nuances investors probe for.
3. Ignoring services vs. manufacturing splits. Software businesses often default to 5415x codes, but your ICP might sit in a “manufacturing” niche if you enable IoT workflows.
4. Copy‑pasting from an old pitch deck. NAICS codes are refreshed every five years; double‑check the 2022 update if your material predates it. For context, see our data primer Which datasets should I use?.
5. Forgetting geographic overlap. Combining state‑specific codes without adjusting for multistate operations can double‑count establishments. Olympus Intel automatically handles this when you apply geography constraints in the next step of Model Builder.

Want to understand how NAICS choices ripple through bottom‑up calculations? Review our Bottoms‑Up Market Sizing Guide after you finish this walkthrough.

Next steps

By now you’ve seen that NAICS codes are less about memorizing six digits and more about framing your opportunity in a language investors, lenders, and government databases already understand. Open Model Builder, choose a discovery method, and watch your preliminary TAM appear before the coffee cools. The sooner you lock in the right codes, the sooner you can test pricing scenarios, apply constraints, and export the investor‑ready visuals highlighted in our Market Opportunity Simulator.