who is your customer now?

A friend recently reminded me of a Seth Godin quote:

People like us do things like this.

It’s a framework for finding a tribe. It’s also a way to find early customers.

I say “early” because it’s important for us to recognize the customers we need to help us grow in our current stage.

Just getting started? Customers at this stage are probably comfortable with risk and taking a bet on a new product or service.

Customer profiles change as our businesses change. “People like us” changes its meaning as a company grows.

But let’s talk early customers. For Accoil, a new company with an experienced team, people like us have a bit more experience and a willingness to invest in tools that help us move faster and be more decisive.

I’ll admit that we don’t have even our early customer profiles nailed down yet. We’re getting close, but there’s work to do.

Part of that work is to really focus on a narrow set of customers and use cases that will help us build momentum.

It's so tempting to go broad and solve for as many use cases as possible. Different teams. Different business goals. Etc.

But momentum (revenue momentum in particular) is so important that we can’t overlook this idea of finding people like us.

What does that mean?

• Narrowing our focus for now. Not forever.

• Targeting more people like us.

• Optimizing our go-to-market for those people and building momentum.

When we grow, we become different people in a sense. So people like us changes too.

But we’re starting with the ones who look most like us today, because odds are they’re also the most likely to do things like us.

If you’re getting started on a new business or even a new project or product, who are the people who are most likely you?

Peter

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