Video

Inside the Group Partner Lounge: The ideal customer

Y Combinator Startup Library Free Intermediate

Three YC Group Partners argue through the tradeoffs of who counts as an ideal customer, using the specific case of startups selling to other startups. It's useful because it shows disagreement and nuance in real time, ICP is a judgment call, not a formula, and this video makes that visible. Short and worth watching once you have a candidate ICP to stress test.

  • Your ideal customer should have both budget and urgency, not just a matching job title.
  • Selling to other early-stage startups can look like traction while quietly capping your ICP.
  • Land on your segment quickly rather than trying to serve everyone at once.
Open on ycombinator.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. What's the difference between an ICP, a buyer persona, and a target market?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. Market size is meaningless until you know exactly who you're for, and Lenny turns that into a concrete, repeatable ICP exercise... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP) Lenny Rachitsky
  4. A clear, operator-written guide from a respected SaaS-analytics company on defining and using an ICP to focus scarce startup... ChartMogul Blog Article · ~12 min read Without an ideal customer profile (ICP), your growth is just guesswork ChartMogul
  5. One of the few pieces that clearly untangles ICP vs persona vs JTBD without jargon, so founders stop conflating them. Useful as... netretention.io Article · ~14 min read Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), ABM, JTBD and Personas: knowing your customer Net Retention
  6. The author of Crossing the Chasm explaining beachhead selection in plain, modern language, the fastest way to absorb the... Lenny's Podcast / Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market Lenny Rachitsky & Geoffrey Moore
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