Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

What founders use most, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

1. A clean, direct side by side of the two terms our question is about, written for people who actually have to use both in a... Total Product Marketing Article · Starting Up ICP vs. Buyer Persona: What's the Difference? Total Product Marketing
2. Close built its whole early sales motion around a narrow ICP, and this guide gives you the actual firmographic fields (company... Close Article · Starting Up How to Create an Ideal Customer Profile for B2B Leads (ICP Guide) Close
3. Three YC Group Partners argue through the tradeoffs of who counts as an ideal customer, using the specific case of startups... Y Combinator Startup Library Video · Starting Up Inside the Group Partner Lounge: The ideal customer Y Combinator Startup Library
4. This episode treats ICP as company strategy, not a marketing artifact, and it's specific about how the exercise changes as you... SaaStr Podcast · Starting Up SaaStr Podcast 457: Building Your Ideal Customer Profile: Target Your Product, Sales and Marketing Effectively SaaStr
5. Revella explains her five-question framework for what actually needs to be in a persona, priority, success factors, barriers,... Pragmatic Institute (Adele Revella) Podcast · Starting Up The Five Rings of Buying Insight Pragmatic Institute (Adele Revella)
6. Graham lays out why the users who need you most, not the ones who are easiest to please, are the ones worth building for. It... Paul Graham Essay · Starting Up What I've Learned from Users Paul Graham
7. Blank argues that market definition, not just customer interviews, is the step founders skip, and that getting it wrong is what... Steve Blank Essay · Starting Up How to Find a Market? Use Jobs to be Done as the Front End of Customer Discovery Steve Blank
8. A direct argument for why the customer is not always right for you, with a framework for deciding which accounts are quietly... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up It's Time to Fire Some of Your Customers Anthony K. Tjan
9. Lays out concrete criteria for recognizing a customer relationship that will not get better, so you are not relying on gut feel... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up When and Why to Part Ways with a Customer Lior Arussy
10. Traynor breaks down knowing your customer into two concrete questions, who they are and how they decide, instead of a vague... Intercom Article · Starting Up Know Your Customers and How They Decide Des Traynor
11. This lays out the bullseye idea explicitly: most durable products start at the center of a tight, specific market and expand... Reforge Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The 4 Growth Frameworks You Need to Build a $100M Product Reforge
12. Written from the perspective of bootstrapped founders who do not have the luxury of burning cash to reach a broad market, this... Indie Hackers Article · 10 min read · Starting Up How to Identify a Micro-Niche That's Perfect for SaaS Founders Indie Hackers
13. The clearest definition of what a persona actually is and is not, from the field that invented the term. It draws the line... Nielsen Norman Group Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Personas Make Users Memorable Nielsen Norman Group
14. A two minute primer you can watch before a team meeting to get everyone aligned on what a persona is for. Useful as the thing... Nielsen Norman Group Video · 2 min · Starting Up What Are Personas and Why Should I Care? Kim Flaherty
15. A deeper follow-up conversation on the same theory, with more of the reasoning behind why circumstance matters more than... HBR IdeaCast Podcast · ~25 min · Starting Up Revisiting Jobs to Be Done with Clayton Christensen Clayton Christensen
16. Video · ~35 min · Starting Up Sales Safari Demo, La Conf Paris 2013 Amy Hoy
17. Written by a company that built its CRM specifically for SMB focused sales teams, this is blunt about what changes when your... Close blog Article · 15 min read · Starting Up SMB Sales Strategy: How to Sell to SMB Customers Close
18. Video · ~10 min · Starting Up ET Now Interview with Mr. Harsh Pokharna, Founder of OkCredit Harsh Pokharna
19. Blume pulled lessons from vertical SaaS companies that succeeded by narrowing to one workflow within one type of small... Blume Ventures Essay · 20 min read · Starting Up The Vertical SaaS Secret Playsheet Blume Ventures
20. This is close to a direct answer to your exact question, written by a product discovery coach who works with B2B teams every... Product Talk Essay · Starting Up Ask Teresa: What if Your Buyers Aren't Your Users? Teresa Torres
21. Yoon gives you three concrete tactics for the exact gap in your question: reaching a buyer who is not the one feeling the daily... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up How to Market a Product When Your Buyer Isn't Your User Eddie Yoon
22. Written for exactly the founder-market moment you are in: a developer or junior employee uses your product, someone above them... Founder Labs (Substack) Essay · Starting Up How to Sell if Your User is not the Buyer Nate Ritter
23. Rothman untangles three roles founders often blur together: buyer, user, and customer (the one who signs a contract but never... jrothman.com Essay · Starting Up Who to Satisfy? Differentiate Buyers, Users, and Customers for Effective Product Decisions Johanna Rothman
24. This is the product-led growth counter-argument to old-school enterprise sales: design and market for the user first, and let... OpenView Article · Starting Up Why You Should Sell to Users, Not Buyers: A Product-Led Approach to Marketing Ashley Murphy

Show the next 24