Newsletter · ~12 min read

Defining our ICP is the most important thing we ever did

Andy Vandervell · Product for Engineers (PostHog) Free Beginner

A real company showing its ICP before and after, including the messy middle where they were guessing. The point that narrow ICPs beat broad ones, and that refinement takes 3 to 12 months, is the honest version nobody puts on a slide.

  • PostHog's ICP is high-growth B2B startups past product-market fit where engineers are the decision makers.
  • That single choice drove usage-based transparent pricing, no outbound sales, and a UI built like a dev tool.
  • Expect 3 months to a year to get an ICP right, and treat 5 paying customers who look alike as the first signal, 10 plus as strong.
  • They name defining it late as their own costly mistake.
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It answers 5 questions

  1. What is an ICP and how is it different from a persona? People use both words for the same thing.
  2. We have about fifteen customers and they are all different. How do I find an ICP out of that?
  3. Half my pipeline is outside our ICP because those are the leads that came in. Do I chase them?
  4. How do I get the team to actually use the ICP instead of nodding at a slide and then doing what they want?
  5. How do the best companies keep their ICP sharp as they grow instead of letting it blur into everyone?

Read with it

  1. Five questions you can answer this afternoon from data you already have, including the underused one about what objections... Andreessen Horowitz Article · ~10 min read A Framework for Defining and Refining Your ICP Michael King
  2. Video · ~30 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  3. The clearest single hour on how positioning, segmentation and personas differ and how they connect to the sales call. Dunford... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~60 min April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process April Dunford
  4. A rare account of the specific moments a GTM changed shape, from narrowing to cold email agencies, to reversing the demo, to... First Round Review Article · ~25 min read The GTM Inflection Points That Powered Clay to a $1B+ Valuation Varun Anand
  5. Sorts SaaS businesses into serve-me, guide-me, show-me and enlighten-me based on product and buying complexity, using... SeedToScale (Accel India) Article · ~12 min read Decoding Buyer Matrix and Buyer Journey for your SaaS business Ankit Agarwal
  6. Podcast · ~85 min Building a world-class sales org Jason Lemkin
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