Customers & Research

How do I define an ideal customer for a product no one is searching for yet?

A starting point

When there's no existing search demand, you can't define your ICP by category, so define it by the underlying pain and the moment it becomes urgent for someone. Find the people who have hacked together an ugly workaround (spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups, a manual process): that workaround is proof they feel the problem enough to act. Your first ICP is the narrowest group already spending time or money to solve this badly. Expect to be wrong at first and let the people who say yes redraw the boundary for you.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time.

3 resources 3 link-checked Watch Read

Watch

▶️ Video
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Vohra shows a repeatable method for narrowing to the customers who most want a product that had weak initial pull. He surveys users, isolates the ones who would be "very disappointed" without the product, and builds a profile of that segment, then doubles down on them. It is one of the clearest walk-throughs of turning fuzzy early signal into a specific customer definition.

Rahul Vohra (Founder/CEO, Superhuman) - The Product-Market Fit Engine

On Business of Software (YouTube) by Rahul Vohra About 30 minutes

Rahul Vohra (Founder/CEO, Superhuman) - The Product-Market Fit Engine
  • Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer use the product, and treat the "very disappointed" group as the seed of your ideal customer.
  • Build a profile from that high-intent segment first, then decide what to strengthen and which objections to remove.
  • A caution worth holding: your highest-expectation early users and your eventual broad ICP are not always the same, so revisit the definition as you grow.
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →

Read

✍️ Essay
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it The definitive essay on where good ideas come from: notice problems you personally have, don't force it. Use it as the lens for judging whether your idea is a real problem or a solution in search of one.

How to Get Startup Ideas

From paulgraham.com by Paul Graham ~20 min read

  • Live in the future and build what's missing.
  • The best ideas look like bad ideas at first (schleps and hard-to-explain).
  • Start with problems you have, in a domain you actually know.
Open paulgraham.com →
📖 Book
✓ Link checked Paid Intermediate

Why we picked it This is the book that named customer development and, indirectly, launched the Lean Startup movement. Its examples lean heavily enterprise (procurement cycles, multiple decision makers, solution selling), which makes it the strongest single read for someone validating a B2B idea rather than a consumer app. Treat it as the foundational playbook: dense and dated in places, but the discovery-then-validation spine still holds up.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win

From Steve Blank by Steve Blank ~370 pages

  • The biggest risk is not building the wrong product, it is building a product nobody wants, so you search for customers in parallel with building.
  • Customer discovery and validation are separate steps: first confirm the problem and buyer exist, then confirm they will actually pay before you scale.
  • B2B buying involves several stakeholders and a real sales process, so validation means understanding the whole org, not just the end user.
Open goodreads.com →

People also ask

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 ... Beginner 2 resources → How specific should my target customer be when I'm just starting? Absurdly specific, a single, describable type of person or company in a single situation. 'Small B2B SaaS founders in India doing their first cold ... Beginner 3 resources → What's the difference between an ICP, a buyer persona, and a target market? Target market is the pool, ICP is the best-fit company/account you go after, and a persona is the individual human inside it who feels the pain and... Intermediate 2 resources → How do I know if I'm targeting the wrong customer? Watch your best customers, not your loudest. If the people who onboard fastest, churn least, and refer most look nothing like who you're marketing ... Intermediate 2 resources → Should I focus on one customer segment or serve everyone who'll pay? One, ruthlessly. Serving everyone means your product, messaging, and support get pulled in ten directions and you win nobody's heart. Dominate a si... Intermediate 2 resources → How do I build customer personas that are actually useful and not fiction? Base every persona on real interviews, not your imagination, real quotes, real jobs, real objections. A useful persona changes a decision you'd oth... Intermediate 2 resources →