Essay · 9 min read

Your ICP Starts as an Aspiration and Becomes a Regression

Dave Kellogg · Kellblog Free Advanced

Kellogg's framing, that the ICP begins as a founder hypothesis and should end as a regression on renewal, expansion and win rate, is the whole argument for data over opinion in one sentence. He also makes you define what best means before you model anything.

  • An ICP should name firmographics, role and problem together, for example VPs of sales at technology companies with 500 million to 2 billion in revenue.
  • Use a bullseye: ring 0 is the ideal customer, outer rings are progressively worse fits, rather than one flat list.
  • By 50 to 100 million ARR your ICP should come from regression on your own data, not founder intuition.
  • Regression often moves the line: the real break may be at 250 employees when you had drawn the segment at 0 to 500.
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The question it answers

  1. How do the best companies replace ICP opinion with a scoring model built on their own data?

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