Your Ideal Customer isn't just "a Woman in Tech".

A lot of companies talk about building an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), but in practice, they often stop halfway — which leads to wasted effort and missed opportunities.

A real ICP isn't just "a small business" or "a company using cloud services." Saying your ideal customer is "someone who lives on Earth" is like that – it's technically true, but not very helpful.

Identifying the type of company is only the first step. Let's say you're after businesses that use cloud infrastructure. That's a start – now it gets interesting.

You also need to know who in the company would be your internal advocate. Maybe it's the Chief Information Security Officer – someone who can champion your product internally.

Then, you need to figure out what this person is responsible for that's directly connected to your solution. For example, protecting sensitive data and managing access controls in cloud environments. Just make sure this problem is high on their priority list – otherwise, even if they like your product, it won't move forward.

Next, you need to understand how they're solving that problem today. If they're not doing anything about it, you might've misjudged how important it is. Maybe they're using tools A, B, and C.

Now, dig into the pain points: What's frustrating or inefficient about those tools? Where are they or their team wasting time, money or energy? Can your product solve these problems?

You'll have a much better idea of your ideal customer when you've got all this info — the company type, the main stakeholder, their top priorities, their current solutions, and their pain points.

And here's the kicker: most of this information is out there if you look for it – in public materials, LinkedIn profiles, interviews, case studies, or even job descriptions.