Article · ~10 min read

How Chargebee Made its First Million

Shekhar Kirani · SeedToScale (Accel India) Free Beginner India

The story of an Indian company arriving at a very specific ICP, founder-developers at zero-to-one startups facing a build versus buy decision. Shows ICP discovery as a series of uncomfortable questions rather than a workshop.

  • Chargebee's ICP was the founder and founding team of young startups, with subscription management as the core value proposition.
  • Accel invested in 2013 after about nine months of conversations.
  • The team obsessed over server availability and webhook speed, with co-founder KP Saravanan's rule that an API should flow like poetry.
Open on seedtoscale.com ↗

It answers 2 questions

  1. I am a founder and I have never sold anything in my life. Where do I actually start?
  2. We have about fifteen customers and they are all different. How do I find an ICP out of that?

Read with it

  1. Video · ~30 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  2. Video · ~30 min How to Get Your First Customers Gustaf Alstromer
  3. Abel has coached 300+ early founders through their first sales, and this walks the whole path from cold outreach to procurement... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~90 min The ultimate guide to founder-led sales Jen Abel
  4. A real company showing its ICP before and after, including the messy middle where they were guessing. The point that narrow... Product for Engineers (PostHog) Newsletter · ~12 min read Defining our ICP is the most important thing we ever did Andy Vandervell
  5. 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
  6. The whole 400 page book is readable free chapter by chapter, written specifically for founders and first-time sellers rather... foundingsales.com Book · full book, free online Founding Sales: the early stage go-to-market handbook Pete Kazanjy
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →