[HN Gopher] The Initial Ideal Customer Profile Worksheet
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The Initial Ideal Customer Profile Worksheet
Author : mrbbk
Score : 79 points
Date : 2025-11-03 17:27 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reifyworks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reifyworks.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| [random remarks from the internet]
|
| I think _maybe_ having one ideal customer might be a useful a
| place to start. But probably it isn 't a good idea to invest a
| lot of time in tailoring experiences/services/products to that
| ideal customer until you have actual customers.
|
| Because without a lot of relevant experience, the ideal customers
| in your imagination don't correspond to actual ideal customers in
| the real world:
|
| + People do what they do for a lot of reasons. Some walk
| tightropes, others wear belts and suspenders.
|
| + People view money in a lot of different ways. $1000 is
| unrealistic for many people and pocket change for others.
| $10/year is great for people who don't care if you stay in
| business and a red flag for people who do care.
|
| + In general we tend to imagine people are similar to us (mostly
| because it is easier that way). But selling to people who are not
| like you is what selling to strangers consists of.
| mrbbk wrote:
| Interesting points! Starting from a narrow perspective gives
| you feedback that is valuable, not noise that you can ignore.
| Most founders set their sights on an audience that is overfit
| (too narrow) or underfit (they have no experience). Striking a
| balance is key.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Consulting is one thing, but in the startup ecosystem I'm in
| I have (during the last 15 years) never ever seen a startup
| having a too narrow target segment (and I know several
| investors with the same mindset).
| hbiner wrote:
| I agree. For example, I can think of creative people that have
| been successful that just produced what they loved, without a
| customer in mind. If they had started off by thinking "how can
| I optimize for theoretical customer X?", they never would've
| been as successful.
|
| Don't make a product for others. Make one for yourself that you
| can dogfood. If you can't do that, you're on shaky ground.
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| Your first customer is always you. If you don't have a
| problem to solve that you know something about, you aren't
| going to make a useful product. A useful product can be a
| successful product.
| j45 wrote:
| Absolutely, must be problem centric and problem obsessed.
|
| The value of the problem being solved is what attracts and
| retains users.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I worked for a company that fell into the trap of over fitting
| their product for their first customer.
|
| The customer seemed ideal in every way; they really needed the
| product, they were willing to be beta users while the product
| was going from prototype to real deal, and they were paying for
| the privilege.
|
| Unfortunately, this customer had a ton of other internal
| issues. Rather than being forced to fix their internal issues
| in response to using the new product, they insisted the product
| conform to their broken processes.
|
| In the end, the product wasn't a great fit for other customers
| without a ton of additional work. Now that I type this out, I
| realize two other companies I've worked at fell into the same
| or similar trap.
| lokimedes wrote:
| For me it helps to simply search for willingness to pay. The
| push-pull between your conceived offering and the customer's
| perceived value, tend to turn these persona assumptions into
| something testable. Then, once true WtP is established, you can
| model a persona, but in my experience, too much wishful thinking
| goes into world modeling unless you go outside right away.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Distribution Strategy - Assuming this is the right persona,
| how are you going to reach them, and can you communicate with
| them authentically?_
|
| The author's use of "communicate with them authentically" where
| I'd expect "persuade them", seems to be building on:
|
| https://www.reifyworks.com/writing/2020-11-04-what-is-a-valu...
|
| Where they write:
|
| > _When someone asks me what makes good marketing, and I'm in the
| mood to boil it down, I usually say something like "Good
| marketing is authentic." What I mean by that is that good
| marketing is genuine, it derives its essential principles from a
| core that is pure and has a real purpose. This might sound
| counterintuitive if you're someone who generally believes that
| marketing is phony and can't be trusted. Well, as marketers, we
| can tell you - sometimes it is phony. But also, like anything
| else, most marketing isn't great, and can be improved. How to
| improve it? That's right, make it more genuine._
| ahaucnx wrote:
| I actually think this could be the completely wrong approach.
|
| By focusing on only one persona, you might focus on one that for
| reasons NOT covered in this questionnaire does not work out.
|
| Practical example from us at AirGradient. Initially, we had a
| strong focus on selling air quality monitoring to schools.
|
| Our strategy would have ticked all boxes in this article but
| selling to schools turned out to be extremely difficult. In our
| case, the problem was that decision makers are often not the
| people benefiting from the solution. Another reason for that
| persona being very difficult was that air quality is not a core
| competency of a school.
|
| So I actually think that you should have a relatively broad
| approach because often the customer that you will be successful
| with you actually might not know when you start.
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