Leading a GTM team

We are a marketplace with buyers on one side and sellers on the other. Which side is the ICP?

The short answer

Both eventually, but only one at a time, and it is whichever side is scarce. Pick the constrained side and make it your ICP for now, because the other side will follow liquidity and no amount of marketing will substitute for it. In practice that usually means supply early, defined narrowly (one city, one category, one kind of seller) so you can actually fill a page with real choices rather than a thin national list. The mistake is treating both sides as equal ICPs and running two half-strength go-to-market motions, which is how marketplaces stall with plenty of signups and no transactions.

Go deeper, your way

4 hand-picked resources, 2 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

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✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it Before you can pick a side you need the vocabulary: liquidity, constrained side, multi-tenanting, matching architecture. This is the reference that makes the rest of the marketplace literature readable.

The Marketplace Glossary

From Andreessen Horowitz by Li Jin 20 min read

Open a16z.com →

The same ground, at another level

How who you sell to reads from a different seat.

What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing. An ICP describes the company you want as a customer: size, industry, what they already use, what has to be true for your product to matter. A perso... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I qualify a deal properly instead of just hoping the enthusiastic person can buy? Enthusiasm is not authority. Before you invest another hour, you want four things: a named pain the buyer can quantify, the person who controls the... Doing the work 4 resources → How do the best companies keep their ICP sharp as they grow instead of letting it blur into everyone? They re-derive it on a schedule from data they already have: which segments renew, which expand, which churn, which cost the most to serve. Then th... How the best do it 4 resources →

Terms in this answer

Ideal Customer Profile Go-to-Market Marketplace

People also ask

What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing. An ICP describes the company you want as a customer: size, industry, what they already use, what has to be true for your product to matter. A perso... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → We have about fifteen customers and they are all different. How do I find an ICP out of that? Do not look at who bought, look at who is happy. Rank the fifteen by usage and by whether they would be annoyed if you disappeared, then take the t... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I qualify a deal properly instead of just hoping the enthusiastic person can buy? Enthusiasm is not authority. Before you invest another hour, you want four things: a named pain the buyer can quantify, the person who controls the... Doing the work 4 resources → Half my pipeline is outside our ICP because those are the leads that came in. Do I chase them? Chase them to learn, close them only if they close fast. Off-ICP deals are seductive because they are there and someone said yes to a meeting, and ... Doing the work 4 resources → How do I get the team to actually use the ICP instead of nodding at a slide and then doing what they want? An ICP that lives in a deck is decoration. Make it operational: turn it into fields in the CRM, into the lead scoring, into the list an SDR is allo... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → Should we sell to Indian SMBs, Indian enterprises, or skip India and go straight at US buyers? Pick on payback and on where your product is genuinely better, not on prestige. Indian SMB gives volume, fast feedback and brutal price sensitivity... Leading a GTM team 5 resources →

Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Understand your customers, our Starting Up track.

How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? Stop pitching and start interrogating their past. Ask about what they actually did last time the problem hit, what it cost them, and what they trie... 24 resources → What is an ideal customer profile and how do I define mine? An ICP is a precise description of the customer who gets the most value from you and gives you the most back, by firmographics, situation, and the ... 2 resources →
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