Find your customer

Get specific about who feels the pain

If you defined the problem in Define the problem, you probably already have a customer in mind. Now we need to pressure-test whether they're the right customer to start with.

Early on, you need one clear starting segment: the group most likely to feel the pain, be reachable, and have a believable path to payment.

"Small businesses." "Busy professionals." "Developers." These are categories, not customers.

By the end, you should have:

• a clear starting customer segment
• who buys vs. who uses the product
• what makes someone a good fit
• what makes someone a bad fit
• where to find early customers
• three real people or companies who match

1. Pressure-test your likely customer

Start with the customer you already have in mind, then list the adjacent segments that might also have the problem you defined earlier.

You're not choosing yet. You're creating a shortlist.

For example, if the problem is "customer issues keep slipping through the cracks," your likely customer might be support teams. Adjacent segments could include customer success teams, solo SaaS founders, ecommerce ops managers, or agencies managing client support.

2. Start smaller than feels comfortable

The broader your audience, the harder it is to sell your app. Your messaging gets broader, your pricing gets vaguer, and your marketing gets more expensive.

Niching down makes validation easier because you know who to talk to, what language they use, and where to find them. It also makes the product feel like it was built for their actual situation, not a vague audience segment.

The fastest-moving founders usually start smaller: one specific type of person, one specific painful problem, then expand from there.

You are choosing your first useful customer. Not your forever customer.

3. Narrow by situation, not just title

A useful customer segment is more than a job title.

"Customer support lead" is a start. "Customer support lead at a B2B SaaS company managing high-volume support across Intercom, Slack, and product feedback tools" is much easier to build for.

Situation tells you what a title can't: where the pain shows up, what tools they use, how the workflow breaks, and whether they care enough to fix it.

A support lead, ecommerce ops manager, and agency owner might all deal with scattered customer requests, but they are not the same customer. Different tools, different workflows, different willingness to pay.

Segment examples

B2B SaaS support lead

• Situation: Managing high-volume customer issues across support and product feedback.
• Pain: Loses track of recurring bugs, requests, and customer context.
• Current workflow: Intercom, Slack, Linear, product calls, spreadsheets.
• Urgency: High when issues repeat or affect key accounts.

Ecommerce ops manager

• Situation: Managing order issues, support requests, and fulfillment problems.
• Pain: Struggles to spot recurring operational issues before they become customer complaints.
• Current workflow: Shopify, Gorgias, spreadsheets, warehouse emails.
• Urgency: High during launches, sales, or fulfillment delays.

Agency owner

• Situation: Managing client requests across multiple retainers.
• Pain: Loses track of deliverables, approvals, and follow-ups.
• Current workflow: Slack, email, ClickUp, Google Docs, client calls.
• Urgency: High near reporting deadlines or renewal conversations.

You're not trying to make every segment look equally good. You're looking for the clearest pain, workflow, urgency, and path to reach them.

4. Separate the buyer from the user

The buyer is not always the end user. Sometimes they're the same person, like a solo founder who buys the tool, uses it every day, and pays for it. Great. Clean. But in B2B, the person using the product and the person approving the spend are often different.

Buyers care about budget, risk, trust, and business value. Users care about whether the app makes their day less annoying.

If you mix them up, your product and messaging can get weird fast.

5. Check buying power

A painful problem still needs a believable path to payment.

Ask whether this customer can actually buy, approve, or influence the purchase. In B2B, the end user might feel the pain, but someone else may control the budget.

This is especially important when the same broad problem could apply to very different customer types.

Don't spend weeks building for people who love the idea but have no budget, no authority, and no urgency.

6. Compare the segments

Now compare the customer groups against the things that actually matter:

• pain
• reachability
• current workaround
• buying power
• urgency

Pain without reachability is hard to validate. Reachability without urgency becomes polite interest. Urgency without buying power turns into a waitlist full of people who can't pay.

Starting customer scorecard

B2B SaaS support leads

• Pain: High
• Reachability: Medium
• Buying power: High
• Why it works: Clear workflow, strong business pain, likely budget owner nearby.
• Verdict: Strong option.

Ecommerce ops managers

• Pain: High
• Reachability: Medium
• Buying power: High
• Why it works: Pain spikes during launches, sales, and fulfillment issues.
• Verdict: Good option.

Solo SaaS founders

• Pain: Medium
• Reachability: High
• Buying power: Medium
• Why it works: Easy to reach, but buying power and urgency may vary.
• Verdict: Maybe.

Generic support teams

• Pain: Medium
• Reachability: Medium
• Buying power: Medium
• Why it works: Too broad, unclear workflow and buyer.
• Verdict: Not yet.

The best starting segment is not always the biggest. It's the one with the clearest path to learning and revenue.

7. Make sure they're findable

Your customer definition should point to real people, not just a tidy label.

You should be able to name three people or companies and say:

Yes. This is exactly who I mean.

Your first customer group should also be findable. A 200-person Slack group full of the exact customer is more useful than a 50,000-person generic entrepreneur community.

Find the specific room, not the biggest one.

Where they might hang out

B2B SaaS support leads

Support Driven, LinkedIn, CX Slack groups, Intercom/Zendesk communities.

Ecommerce ops managers

Shopify Community, ecommerce Slack groups, LinkedIn, operations newsletters.

Agency owners managing retainers

LinkedIn, agency Slack groups, Facebook groups, niche founder communities.

Solo SaaS founders

Indie hacker groups, X/Twitter, Reddit, founder Slack groups, Discord.

Product marketers at early-stage startups

PMA, LinkedIn, marketing Slack groups, SaaS communities.

If you can't find three people who match, the segment might be too vague, too imaginary, or too hard to reach.

Better to find that out now than after you build.

Prompt

This prompt is not here to invent a fake persona. It's here to sharpen your customer definition and poke holes in it.

Starting customer profile

Take all of my notes and organize them into a clear starting customer profile.

Please structure it into:

1. Possible customer groups
2. Best starting customer segment
3. End user
4. Buyer, if different
5. Situation they are in
6. Pain they feel most strongly
7. Current workflow, workaround, or alternative
8. Why this group is a strong starting point
9. What makes someone a good fit
10. What makes someone a bad fit
11. Where I can find real people who match
12. Three example people or companies who would match

Then compare the customer groups using:

- pain level
- reachability
- buying power
- urgency
- current workaround
- path to payment

Then audit the customer definition.

Please flag:

- where the customer group is still too broad
- where I'm describing a category instead of a real customer
- where the buyer and user might be different
- whether this customer seems reachable
- whether this customer has a believable path to payment
- whether they seem likely to care urgently
- what assumptions I still need to validate
- what evidence I should look for next
- what questions I should ask real users

Be direct. If the customer definition is too vague to build or market against, tell me.

Before you move on