Startup GTM Mistakes and How to Avoid Them: Part 2 of 5
The advice you’ve probably heard: Figure out your Ideal Customer Profile as quickly as possible.?
Try this instead: Identifying your ICP is a gradient. You’re always somewhere between white and black and it’s a moving target that can change as you grow.
Ideal Customer Profiles are like dating for startups. Options are endless and people are rarely as simple as their Hinge profile makes them out to be. Locking in too early on what you believe to be your ICP can really derail your progress if you’re incorporating feedback from the wrong customers. ICPs are shapeshifters in the early stage of any company … they will evolve as your business does, and vice versa, so building before you understand who you’re building for can throw your product, marketing and sales orgs way off-track.
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For example, a software company could say that it sells to auto repair shops in North America and that their ICP is the shop owner. That’s a great start, but there are still several layers of segmentation required in order to truly define the ICP. Are there specific geographies where our product wins and/or our competitors aren’t? Are shops of a certain size a better fit (hint: bigger is not always better)? Is there any sub-segmentation of shop owners that affects our win rate? Are there requirements that our product can’t yet meet for customers who are in certain segments of the market?
So before you go exclusive, play the field a bit. Ask yourself the tough questions. Make sure your goals are aligned. It’s incredibly important to know who your customers are but also, who are not.? Experimentation (and to an extent, data) is equally important to refine the profile of your ICP and test your thesis, prior to scaling. I would note that Seed companies working towards their Series A are in the bull’s eye of this difficult paradox.
Reimagining global eyewear manufacturing and retail through generative AI @VARAi
1 年Keep up the amazing posts - in truth the ICP evolves as your business and product offerings do! Answerable can serve both SMBs & enterprise in one unified platform but only one of the two gives you the velocity early-stage investors are looking for. Not coincidentally, our new Shopify app allows brands of all sizes to take advantage of our platform sitting on the Google Cloud - 1 platform across Shopify, IOS, Android, Web, and Chrome Browser extension.
Great thoughts Shawn Chance - the ability to go across customer types and within each be able to segment at a great gratuity is very true. Additionally I think this applies to mature businesses as well - you need to constantly keep testing if your ICP still relevant, has the same buying behavior and / or has changed. If changed does that make the most about of sense to your business model. Look forward to move parts to the series.
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1 年Shawn your line about "there are still several layers of segmentation required in order to truly define the ICP" is so true ?? There's short term comfort in big, vague definitions - but it always makes decisions & alignment harder down the road. Making sure you play to the field and ask the tough questions to find those extra layers of segmentation will be well worth it in the long run ??
Strategic Brand Marketing
1 年Jason McPhail :)
Data Science and Technology Leader
1 年Loving the bite sized journey here Shawn!!!