Ideal Customer Profile Discovery

The scene

Michael Harrower

Head of Product Design · Disciple

In 2022, Disciple had 380 customers. On paper, that sounds like success. In practice, it meant we were building for a religious community in Texas, a wellness coach in London, a photography collective in Toronto, and 377 other distinct use cases. All simultaneously.

With 25 people and 10 engineers, this wasn't strategy. It was chaos pretending to be growth. I needed to find out who our best customers actually were, and give the company the confidence to focus.

The problem

When you build for everyone, you build for no one.

Without a clear picture of our best customers, every roadmap decision was a compromise. Features that would have transformed our top cohort got watered down to serve everyone. We weren't making our best customers better. We were making everyone slightly less unhappy. The retention data was hiding this truth in plain sight.

380

Active customers

People on the team

~40%

Avg. retention at year 3

The work

I led a three-person team (myself, our Head of Growth, and a Customer Success Manager) on what became the most impactful project of my time at Disciple.

Phase 01

Defining Success

We started by defining what a 'successful' customer looked like. After debate, we landed on three criteria: 48%+ contributor rate, 60%+ retention rate, no payment issues in six months. Simple, but defensible. You can't find your best customers until you can define what 'best' means.

Phase 02

Jobs-to-be-Done Interviews

Ten customers. Ten 45-minute conversations. We used the jobs-to-be-done framework, asking not 'what features do you use?' but 'what were you trying to do in your life when you found us?'. The answers were surprising. And they were unanimous. Findings only advanced if all three researchers agreed independently.

Phase 03

Survey & Churn Analysis

We validated interview findings with a survey of 50 customers from the success cohort. Then we cut the churn data by customer type. The numbers were stark: Coach, Coach+Network, and Faith customers were renewing at nearly 100% in year two. The rest were churning at rates we'd been averaging into oblivion.

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Phase 04

Communicating the ICP

Rather than presenting a fictional persona, we documented specific firmographic details, real customer examples, and the five jobs-to-be-done that explained why ICP customers chose Disciple. The researcher presented counter-intuitive findings that challenged assumptions the product team had held for years.

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Phase 05

Jobs-to-be-Done

Five jobs-to-be-done emerged from the research, validated by the survey. These became the lens through which the product team evaluated every roadmap decision going forward.

The outcome

~100%

Renewal rate (ideal segments, year 2)

vs 40%

Average retention at year 3

Jobs-to-be-Done established

ICP segments defined

Coach, Coach+Network, and Faith customers weren't just our most retained. They were using Disciple the way it was designed to be used. Narrowing our focus meant saying some hard things. But it meant building with clarity for the first time.

What I learned

Averages are the enemy.

Averaging retention across 380 very different customers was hiding a truth in plain sight. Segmentation revealed it. The answer was always there. We just hadn't looked at the right cut of the data.

Real customers beat personas.

We presented findings with real customer examples, not fictional personas. The team remembered actual people, not archetypes. That changed how they talked about the roadmap for months.