Welcome to the ICP Discovery Workbook – a self-guided, 30-minute exercise to help you identify and refine your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This workbook is designed for busy startup founders (solo or in teams) to quickly zero in on an early adopter ICP – the type of customer who will love your product right now and give you traction to grow.
What’s an ICP? Your Ideal Customer Profile is a detailed description of the perfect customer for your product – the kind of customer who benefits the most and provides the most value in return. Identifying a clear ICP focuses your limited time on the prospects most likely to buy and benefit, so you can learn faster and iterate your product and messaging . As one expert warns, if you “spray and pray” (try to sell to everyone), you’ll end up with mismatched customers and no clear direction. But a crisp ICP lets you own a specific niche and use it as a beachhead to land more lookalike customers. In short, defining your ICP early helps you resonate with the right audience and avoid wasting effort.
Why focus on an early adopter ICP? In the very beginning, your early adopters are those first few customers willing to try a new product. They often have a burning problem and high willingness to experiment. Early adopter customers are more forgiving of imperfections and eager to find new solutions. Their feedback is invaluable for refining your product for the broader market. In fact, you’ll usually need to win these early enthusiasts before you can successfully sell to more mainstream customers. For example, you might first win a small, tech-savvy user with an urgent pain point, then later attract a larger, “ideal” client who waits for proof that your solution works). Focusing on an early adopter ICP ensures you’re building for someone who needs you most now, setting the stage for broader growth. (And remember: your first ICP is not set in stone – it’s a starting hypothesis that you’ll refine as you learn.)
How to use this workbook: This workbook is interactive and founder-friendly – you can fill in answers, brainstorm ideas, and check off steps as you go. Work through the three phases in order, either on your own or with a teammate/facilitator. The whole exercise is designed to take ~30 minutes for an initial pass (you can always refine further later). For each phase, you’ll find brief explanations, examples, and templates or prompts to fill in. By the end, you’ll have a clear early adopter ICP persona documented.
Before you begin, make a copy of this page in your own Notion space so you can edit it. Grab a timer (if you want to stay under 30 minutes, try ~10 minutes per phase) and get ready to discover your ideal customer!
Use the checklist below to track your progress through the workbook:
Goal: Generate a list of possible customer segments that could be your ICP. Don’t worry about being “right” – the aim is to get all plausible ideas out, then we’ll narrow them down. Think about who has the biggest problem that your product or service solves, and who would be most excited about your solution.