Category: Entrepreneurship

This is a rich insight most founders intuitively sense but rarely articulate. As a founder you need a lens to not just find PMF, but to understand who it’s for at each stage.

Your ICP isn’t static. Most startup frameworks focus on finding product-market fit. Few explain how your ICP evolves as your product takes shape. PMF isn’t just a product problem — it’s a customer clarity problem. In this article, we’ll explore how your Ideal Customer Profile shifts across PMF stages, using the 9-question value logic and real-world signal frameworks.

By connecting the value logic questions, the PMF frameworks, and the ICP evolution, you will gain a lens to not just find PMF, but to understand who it’s for at each stage.

PMF is not Binary. It’s a Spectrum

Most startup content treats PMF as something you “achieve,” like a funding milestone. But in reality, it’s a gradient.

Frameworks like Lenny Rachitsky’s three circles—Desirability, Viability, and Usability—help visualize the components of PMF. First Round’s 4-level model brings nuance by showing PMF as a progression, not a binary. Rob Snyder’s 5-level framework and Jeroen Coelen’s PMF Scale go even further, helping you diagnose the current strength of your fit.

But here’s what most frameworks miss: as your product evolves toward fit, your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) evolves too. Your earliest ICP isn’t your forever ICP. The customer who gives you your first “yes” may not be the one who takes you to scale.

Which brings us to the next insight.

The 4 Stages of ICP Evolution Along the PMF Journey

Let’s walk through the four stages where your ICP matures alongside your product, mapped against both signals and founder pitfalls.

Stage 1: “Who’s in Pain?” (Problem Clarity)

• ICP Characteristics: Very broad. Often described in terms like “SMEs” or “anyone with X need.”
• Your Role: You’re exploring. You’re talking to people. You’re not sure who needs you most yet.
• Value Logic Questions to Use:
  1. Who is your beachhead segment?
  2. What job are they trying to get done?
  3. What’s stopping them?
• Signals to Look For:
  • Insights from exploratory interviews
  • Clarity around Jobs-to-be-Done
  • Repeat mentions of a shared frustration
• Common Mistake:Chasing early interest from too many directions, diluting your narrative and wasting GTM resources.

Stage 2: “Who’s Trying to Solve This Already?” (Alternative Friction)

• ICP Characteristics: Starts to narrow based on workaround behaviors—people actively trying to patch the problem.
• Your Role: Understand their dissatisfaction with existing options. This is about why they haven’t solved the problem yet.
• Value Logic Questions to Use:
  4. What are the dominant alternatives?
  5. What’s broken about them?
  6. What are the consequences of using them?
• Signals to Look For:
  • Frustrations with current tools
  • DIY workarounds
  • Clear consequences of inaction
• Common Mistake:Making the message too generic. Overlooking segment-specific frustrations in favor of mass-market appeal.

Stage 3: “Who Gets the Most Value, Fastest?” (Early Fit)

• ICP Characteristics: Now you start seeing a value-dense subsegment—the 10% that closes faster, retains longer, refers more.
• Your Role: Double down. Tailor everything—your sales narrative, onboarding, case studies—to this group.
• Value Logic Questions to Use:
  7. What’s your one-line pitch?
  8. How does it fix the problem?
• Signals to Look For:
  • Shorter sales cycles
  • Consistent messaging working across calls
  • Warm referrals from a specific customer type
• Common Mistake:Not recognizing the pattern. Still building for too many edge cases or holding onto past ICPs emotionally.

Stage 4: “Who’s Worth Scaling For?” (PMF Confidence)

• ICP Characteristics: Your ICP is redefined for strategic scale. You have conviction. You speak in specifics.
• Your Role: Build systems, marketing assets, and pricing around this clear ICP. You’re no longer hunting—you’re shaping.
• Value Logic Question to Use:
  9. How does your solution outperform the known alternatives and solve known shortcomings?
• Signals to Look For:
  • Same pitch closes repeatedly
  • Case studies from this ICP land hard
  • You’re referred directly to “others just like us”
• Common Mistake:Premature expansion into adjacent segments without strong signal consolidation from your core.

Your Messaging, Channels, and Features Must Match the ICP Stage

Not only does your customer evolve, but their information habits evolve too.

• Early-stage ICPs (Stage 1–2) might be lurking on Reddit, consuming blog posts, or talking in founder groups.
• Mid-fit ICPs (Stage 3) are checking your G2, trying your product, or asking for integrations.
• PMF-ready ICPs (Stage 4) are ready to swipe the card or introduce you at scale.

Misalign these, and even the best product gets ignored. Some Don’ts that you would pay attention to are:

• Don’t run Product Hunt launches when your ICP is still trying to articulate their problem.
• Don’t send cold outbound if your ICP only buys through community trust.
• Don’t laze out on running Discovery calls before you work on cold calls.

Why most Founders miss this?

• They confuse early users with repeatable customers
• They don’t track feedback or behavior by segment
• They assume PMF is about product refinement, not segment-messaging-solution resonance

You may be one ICP decision away from a working GTM.

What to Do Instead: Layer in the Value Logic Questions as a Diagnostic

Jeroen Coelen’s Value Logic framework provides a clear way to assess whether your product, messaging, and ICP are aligned at each stage of your growth. It acts like a mirror showing where you’ve jumped ahead too fast or ignored important feedback.

Offer this to your audience or clients as:

• A self-assessment tool
• A founder reflection journal
• A 30-minute diagnostic exercise before any pivot

Here’s a recap of how the ICP evolves as your PMF strengthens:

What to Do Instead: Layer in the 9 Value Logic Questions as a Diagnostic

The Value Logic framework created by Jeroen Coelen draws from proven principles in Jobs-to-be-Done, customer research, and positioning strategy. These nine questions form a structured conversation that helps founders validate not just their product idea, but the evolution of your Ideal Customer Profile along the Product-Market Fit journey.

Think of these questions as your compass. They don’t just confirm if you’re heading toward PMF they reveal who you’re building for at each step, and whether that segment is maturing with you.

How to interpret this table for your business?

• If you struggle with Questions 1–3, your ICP is underdefined, and you’re likely pre-PMF.
• If your answers to 4–6 are unclear or hypothetical, you’re still in segment exploration and not yet in Early Fit.
• Strong, tested answers to 7–9 suggest you’re entering repeatable GTM territory and can begin to systematize growth.

This framework doesn’t just tell you if you have PMF, it also tells you what type of PMF you’re building, with whom, and whether it’s ready to scale.

Get on a ICP Discovery Session

Clarity Compounds, But Only if You Track the Right Customer

PMF isn’t a feature checklist. It’s a mirror that shows you whether the right kind of customer keeps coming back faster, happier, and louder than the last.

Don’t just iterate on product.

Iterate on who it’s for.

That’s where real traction lives.

My Journey to Finding a Double Niche as a Freelance Content Writer

In late 2013, I was navigating the unpredictable world of freelance writing in India. At the time, I was paid Rs. 500 for an 800-word article. Fast forward to 2018, I won my first $1000 client. It took almost 5 years to realise I deserve better. I had my daughter in 2017, and I told myself, something needs to change. And, that was – “I need to shift my perspective. I need to change my lens.”

Does it take 5 years? NO. You don’t have to wait that long.

I am sharing my story to encourage freelance content writers and make them believe that they can aim high and achieve things that you dream of.

Whatever happened between the gig that paid me peanuts, and the assignment that changed everything. When, I did not know who I was writing for and what I was writing, I felt like a jack-of-all-trades, struggling to carve out a specific niche that could elevate my career.

But when I landed on a $1000 client, I realised the importance of a niche and then doubling down my niche to secure my career.

My Double Niche

My first niche was Marketing Technology (MarTech) and second was Artificial Intelligence (AI).

This story is about how I arrived at them, and how you can arrive at it faster.

MarTech: My First Niche

I have been a marketer since 2006. Marketing as an industry was being changed by technology rapidly in 2017-18. Marketing Automation Platforms were on a rise, finding their sweet spot. Account-based marketing was a sought after strategy to land on enterprise clients. Personalization in customer experience became a must-have. Everyone was recommending a Chatbot to the martech stack. And, the words AI and machine learning were being infused into everything other positioning statement.

In general I got curious about how technology was changing the way people do marketing. I started reading a lot and then started writing about it. This lead me to give critical insights, and owned a PoV with strong opinions about MarTech as an emerging sector. I loved the attention as I got better at it.

That led me to realise that MarTech was as effortless niche that I can empathise with and write for a living. That was a defining moment that led me to choose MarTech as my first niche.

AI: My Second Niche

Everyone is an AI expert, and I wanted to be one too.

But, let me tell you, it was definitely not as easy as I thought.

When I was writing for a digital marketing agency as a ghost writer I stumbled upon the importance of understanding and exploring AI. To begin with AI just meant a chatbot with human names. Then, I started digging deeper.

Eventually, I drilled down my interest to Generative AI (GenAI). Because as a writer I was insecure about being wiped out of work. It seemed too cool to be true, and scary to believe.

But, here I am in the profession of writing prompts and making life easy for many companies. This is a much longer story and something for later.

The Turning Point: Landing a $1000 Client

From the time I decided I need to stick to a niche until I actually found a $1000 client in 2018, it took 6 months. Trust me this could have been shorter, if not for my mistakes and naivety. My journey took a pivotal turn six months later when I landed my first $1000 client. This client was a martech startup, from my first niche.

Let’s pause here.

The Power of a Double Niche

Identifying my double niche in martech and AI was not an overnight process; it was a culmination of months of exploration and learning. Here’s how I pieced it together non-linearly:

1. Self-Assessment and Skill Inventory:
   • Reflecting on my strengths in technical writing and my passion for marketing, I knew I needed to find a niche that leveraged both. Writing about martech and AI seemed like a perfect fit, given my growing expertise in these areas.
2. Market Research:
   • I continuously monitored industry trends and demands. Reports from Gartner, MarTech, Scott Brinker, McKinsey and BCG to understand complex technologies to a broader audience. Reading became an everyday habit. This helped me be in a prescriptive mode rather than a doer mode.
3. Client Feedback:
   • Feedback from my clients helped me simplify technical concepts, making them accessible and engaging. Collaborative brainstorming helped me validate many of my ideas.
4. Networking and Community Involvement:
   • LinkedIn was my universe of meeting new people. While I got 50% of my new gigs from word of mouth, the other 50% was from Linkedin.
5. Content Analysis:
   • Using tools like Google Keyword Planner, I identified high-demand, low-competition keywords related to martech and AI. This SEO-driven approach helped my content reach a wider audience and attract more clients.

Future-Proof your writing career

By the end of 2018, I had established myself as a specialist in martech and AI writing. The journey was challenging, but it was also incredibly rewarding. Understanding and embracing these niches allowed me to offer unique value to my clients, secure higher-paying projects, and build a sustainable freelance career. The experience taught me the importance of continuous learning and adaptability, especially as a freelance writer.

Reflecting on my journey, I am grateful for the serendipitous discoveries that came my way from my double niche. It transformed not only my career but also my approach to freelance writing,

Here is how you can identify your Double Niche using GenAI tools.

Learning and unlearning can happen anywhere. My apartment garden has become my classroom. It helped me realise that a gardener and a business tycoon need very similar lessons to thrive.

I failed over 8 times in growing a money plant as a simple climber in water. From there, I have created a terrace garden with over 10 veggies and a lot of house plants to refresh my space.

My Apartment Oasis: How 50 Plants Became My Unlikely Business Mentors?

My daughter’s favourite hideout place is this 5 feet tall plantfall (like a waterfall). Why do I have this?

Somehow this act of nurturing really soothes me. It has helped me stay calmer. I guess that’s what is called ‘garden therapy’. Now, gardening is a serious hobby for me. And, I do a bit of pruning, tilling or propagating for atleast 30 – 40 mins every other day.

My home is a mini jungle with plant mementos of different species. They are on the walls, in my balconies, outside in the corridor, utility area, inside my house, and everywhere.

A friend of mine calls them my “Plant pets”.

From Seedlings to CEOs: How my addiction to gardening taught me 3 business lessons?

Top 3 lessons that I learnt from my Plant Pets

Lesson #1: Resilience is possible when you remain rooted.

Plants are a very resilient species, and so are humans.

But, why is it that we humans cannot be resilient all the time. Only because we are not rooted enough. Comeback Stories of Steve Jobs and Sam Altman to Apple and Open.AI talk about this. They were called back to their original position after being fired from their own company. This tells us their soil stayed nurtured and they remained rooted. Their soil has been their tribe and internal compass.

I have learnt that plants thrive better in a nursery rather than a newly adopted home. Why is it? Because there are similar plants surrounding every sapling. They feel belonged and can communicate. I’m not saying this because I feel it.

They have a tribe to feel belonged. Dr. Perez Barrales found in his research clear evidence that the seedling and nurse tree beside it were more likely to thrive when grown together, compared to either plant growing alone.

This tribe helps even an entrepreneur jump back into action.

Lesson #2: Cloning is inevitable when you grow.

Propagation is a “must” after every 6 months for a house plant. With every growth spurt, plants grow faster and bigger than before. If they are not pruned or grafted well enough to be propagated, they die either because of a disease or they whittle. Diseases could get contagious killing other plants too.

If a leader does not expend enough effort to clone herself and make more people like her, then the organization will remain diseased. Or it will meet its diminishing growth. A leader needs to create more people like herself. Start cloning.

Lesson #3: Be prepared for your creation to be somebody else’s reward.

Whatever the crop yields, the plants don’t sit and eat. The plant’s creation is always given away rather taken by humans, us. It could be the fruits, leaves, roots, stem, or flowers. We enjoy its creation and we are rewarded by its yield. I have had a huge success with greens, tomatoes, carrots and radish in my terrace garden.

Even in business, if I create something, it also needs to be propagated in no time, when done well. If we are creating a product that is extremely consumable, it will be taken away. The customers will nurture the business to have more of it.

Whatever is being created, it will be someone else’s reward. In business, if your creation (product or solution) is not being someone else’s reward, then it won’t spread.

Bonus lesson: The seed that we sow or the sapling that we graft determines the plant that comes out of it.

Why talk about it now?

I have been giving away plants that I propagated to many of my neighbours and friends. Over the years, it feels like I have become a friendly official gardening consultant for many in my neighborhood.

I recently discovered that today, the 14th of April is the National Gardening Day. If you work from home, plant pets can be very easy to care for and save some good head space for you with their aura.

They help you focus and refocus while you are working from home.

For all work from home folks out there, happy to help you start ‘gardening as a hobby’.

DM me. It’s just a friendly gesture.