How to Define Your ICP When You Have Zero Customers

You can’t wait for customers to tell you who your buyer is. You have to make an educated first move and let conversations prove you right or wrong.

A founder I worked with spent 3 months building a financial reporting tool for SaaS companies. Before launch, he wrote a detailed buyer profile. “CFOs at SaaS companies with 50 to 200 employees.“

He built his landing page for CFOs. Wrote outreach messages for CFOs. Ran ads targeting CFOs.

Nobody responded.

After 6 weeks of silence, he called me. I asked him one question. “Have you talked to a single CFO about this problem?” He hadn’t. He had built his entire target profile based on who he thought should care about his product.

When he finally got on calls, he discovered something. CFOs at that company size didn’t manage financial reporting themselves. That work was done by Directors of Finance or VP of Operations. The person who felt the pain every day was two levels below the person he was targeting.

He changed his outreach. Within 3 weeks, he had 8 conversations and 2 paying customers.

Here is the bottom line.
When you have zero customers, you can’t build your buyer profile from data. You build it from conversations. Make your best guess, talk to 15 to 20 people in that segment, and let their responses tell you whether your guess was right or wrong.

Your first buyer profile is a hypothesis, not a fact

Founders treat their initial buyer profile as a finished document. They invest weeks refining it, writing detailed descriptions of who the buyer is, what they care about, what their day looks like.

That’s wasted time. At zero customers, you don’t have data. You have assumptions.

Your first buyer profile should take 30 minutes to write. It should answer four questions. What type of company has the problem you solve. How big are these companies. Who inside the company feels the pain most. What are they doing about it today.

Write your best answers. Accept that most of them are probably wrong. Then go test them.

Run 15 to 20 conversations before you commit

The only way to validate your buyer guess is to talk to real people. Not surveys. Not market research reports. Live conversations where you hear their words and watch their reactions.

Find 15 to 20 people who match your initial profile. Use LinkedIn to find them. Send connection requests with a short note about the problem you’re exploring. Not a pitch. A note that shows you understand their world.

“I’m researching how mid-size SaaS companies handle financial reporting. If that’s part of your day, I’d love to hear how you’re doing it.”

On the call, ask about their problem. Not your product. Their problem.

“What’s the most painful part of your current process?” “How much time does your team spend on this every week?” “Have you tried to solve this before? What happened?“

Listen for two things. First, do they actually have the problem. Second, do they describe it with urgency and frustration, or is it a mild annoyance they’ve accepted. You want the first type. Mild annoyances don’t become buying decisions.

What the conversations will tell you

After 15 conversations, you’ll land in one of three places.

• Most people confirmed the problem. They described it with energy. They asked about your product before you mentioned it. They want to know when it’s available. This is your signal to commit to this segment.

• The responses were mixed. Some people had the problem, some didn’t. The ones who did were in a specific sub-segment. Narrow your profile to that sub-segment and run 10 more conversations there.

• Nobody cared. The problem isn’t painful enough, or you’re talking to the wrong people. Go back to your hypothesis and change the segment, the role, or the problem. This isn’t failure. This is the process working.

The founder I mentioned earlier thought his buyer was a CFO. Conversations proved it was a Director of Finance. That one adjustment changed everything. He didn’t change his product. He changed who he was talking to.

Build your buyer profile from what you heard

After your conversations, write your buyer profile again. This time, use the data from those calls.

• Company type. Which companies had the strongest reaction to the problem. What industry were they in. What size range.

• Role. Who inside the company felt the pain most. Who brought up the problem with the most urgency. That’s your buyer.

• Problem. Write the problem using the exact words your prospects used. Not your version. Theirs. If three people said “I spend 4 hours every Friday pulling numbers into spreadsheets,” that’s your problem statement.

• Current solution. What are they doing today to handle the problem. Are they using a competitor, a manual process, or nothing at all. This tells you what you’re replacing.

• Buying trigger. What would make them look for a solution right now. A new compliance requirement, a team change, a funding round, a bad quarter. Understanding the trigger helps you time your outreach.

This profile is version one. It will change as you close your first customers. But it’s built on real conversations, not assumptions.

For the complete framework on finding and closing those first deals, read The Founder’s Guide to Finding the Right Buyers for Your B2B Product.

Frequently Asked Questions

You don’t need customers to build a buyer profile. You need conversations. Make your best guess, talk to 15 to 20 people, and let their responses shape your targeting.