What are customer profiles?

After you figure out your big idea and before the world is obsessed with your product, you have to find your customers. And in order to find your customers, you have to create customer profiles.

An ideal customer profile — or customer persona — is a way of defining and categorizing your customers so that you can:

1. shape your startup to their needs and;
2. market to them more effectively.

That’s the simple explanation. Now, per usual, let’s do a deep dive into the more complicated one.

Why are customer profiles important?

Ideal customer profiles are important because without one, your startup is going to waste a lot of time trying to attract customers who are, at baseline, just not attracted to your product. They’...