01 / The issue
Why this decision deserves attention.
ProfitKit’s founders conducted their first interviews by phone and Skype, treating each conversation as a story about past behavior instead of a sequence of hypothetical product questions.
The conversations did more than validate feature ideas. They exposed a second potential audience—accountants working for subscription companies—alongside the original SaaS-founder segment.
A useful persona is therefore not a fictional profile with an age and favorite apps. It is a group with a shared situation, workflow, urgency, buying authority and language.
02 / The principle
What the evidence tells us.
Early positioning fails when the audience is defined by a broad identity instead of an observable buying situation. Separate the user, beneficiary and buyer, then compare which segment has the strongest pain and easiest path to reach.
03 / The decision
What to change in the way you work.
- 01
Add accountants as a testable segment instead of assuming one universal homepage.
- 02
Use interview language to refine the problem statement and outreach copy.
- 03
Create a direct path for interested users to book a call or start a conversation.
04 / How Ten Million helps
ICP & positioning
For a product at this stage, we turn the lesson into concrete working material:
- A primary ICP and a clearly deprioritized secondary ICP
- Jobs, triggers, objections and current alternatives
- A one-page persona grounded in evidence, not demographics
- Positioning and landing-page copy for the selected segment
05 / Builder playbook
What to do this week.
- 01
List every role involved in feeling, solving and paying for the problem.
- 02
Score segments on urgency, frequency, budget, reachability and product fit.
- 03
Interview the two highest-scoring segments using the same core questions.
- 04
Pick one first customer and write the homepage only for that buying situation.