7 resources from A Smart Bear we point founders to, and the questions each answers.
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Why we picked it
This is the clearest piece we found on the actual question: when a tight ICP has become too tight and you are leaving real customers out. Jason Cohen (founder of WP Engine) gives you concrete conditions for when you have earned the right to broaden, plus a matrix for judging which adjacent customers are close enough to serve without breaking your product. It treats over-narrowing as a real risk, not just a virtue, which is the honest framing.
From
A Smart Bearby Jason CohenAbout a 15 minute read
You have likely earned the right to broaden once you have won roughly 5% or more of your defined segment, growth in your current channel is bottlenecked, or you have the profit to fund a second motion.
Score each candidate adjacent segment against six areas (marketing, sales, service, product, engineering, business model): if more than one needs a full overhaul, it is not really adjacent and you are probably chasing the wrong customers.
Expanding a narrow ICP is far easier than refocusing a broad one, so the fix for over-narrowing is a deliberate next segment, not blowing your definition wide open.
Why we picked it
Jason Cohen names the exact mechanism you are trying to size: a big company has a materiality threshold (it needs a new line to clear tens of millions before it is worth a team's attention), so a niche throwing off a million a year is invisible to it and wide open to you. He gives you the number to reason with, not just the vibe. Read it as a lens for judging whether your target sits under that threshold on purpose, not by accident.
Why we picked it
A two time unicorn founder's answer to the exact fear behind giving it away: the belief that a low or zero price wins you customers. Cohen explains why a higher, honest price usually attracts better customers and a clearer signal. Sharp and contrarian in a genuinely useful way.
Why we picked it
Cohen names the perfectionist's core bug: maximizing every decision when good enough would do. He gives you a rule for when to chase the best answer (rare, high stakes, hard to reverse) and when to just pick and move (almost everything else). If polishing is your default setting, this gives you both permission and a filter.
Why we picked it
Cohen, who bootstrapped two unicorns, argues that every line of code is a liability you will have to maintain and change, which is exactly the code you do not want stranded with an agency. It sharpens the instinct to build as little as possible for a validation stage. A strong reminder that owning code you cannot change is a trap.
Why we picked it
A bootstrapped two-time unicorn founder lays out what fit actually felt like versus what founders imagine, drawing on real data. It is grounded and unsentimental about the gap between conviction and evidence. Read it when you want to separate your own belief from what the market is telling you.
Why we picked it
Cohen has run this exact process since before he sold his first company, and he is unusually candid about the mechanics: write your hypothesis down before the call so you cannot rewrite your memory of it afterward, then keep interviewing until the surprises stop. That last part is close to the prediction test in our short answer, stated as a stopping rule you can actually use. He also explains why asking would you buy this fails, every time.
