ICP — Ideal Customer Profile

The discovery agent reads this file on every run as system context. Edit it monthly as your understanding sharpens. Config-as-files.

Who I'm looking for (2-3 sentences, plain English)

Early-stage founders or solo operators of pre-PMF or just-past-PMF SaaS / AI tooling startups. Technical or technical-leaning — they can read code or evaluate Docker. They're paying for outbound, automation, or research tools today and feeling the cost. Often Boulder/Denver/Bay Area but geography isn't a hard filter.

Signal keywords — what to search for

The agent uses these in its web_search query. Mix specific tool names with pain phrases.

"n8n cost", "Lindy credits", "Zapier expensive", "Make.com pricing"
"hired an SDR", "hired a VA", "hiring head of automation"
"replaced our outbound team", "firing our agency"
"building a Growth Agent", "customer discovery automation"
"Apollo.io alternative", "Smartlead vs Instantly", "Clay too expensive"
"cold outreach drowning", "founder-led sales", "prospecting for hours"
"Sonnet 4.6 cost", "Anthropic bill", "running out of credits"

Sources to listen on (priority order)

r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur, r/AI_Agents
Hacker News (homepage + comments)
Indie Hackers (Open Stories, Milestones)
Product Hunt launches (the discussion thread)
r/LocalLLaMA (when complaining about API costs)
X (Twitter) — but only via search, low signal-to-noise
r/ChatGPTCoding, r/ClaudeAI

Buying triggers (5 events that mean they're ready)

Just hired or just lost an SDR / outbound contractor
Posted a complaint about a tool's pricing in the last 14 days
Asked for a tool recommendation for outbound, lead-gen, or research
Announced a fundraise or revenue milestone (cash to deploy)
Just churned from a SaaS and is publicly considering alternatives

Disqualifiers (skip these — even if they look great)

Pre-product (no website / no traction signals)
Enterprise (more than 50 employees) — wrong sales motion for me
Agency / consultancy (different buying psychology)
Crypto / web3 / defi-only — not my expertise
Anything with "AI co-pilot for [vertical]" with no traction — usually flooded market

Three "good fit" archetypes

Archetype A — The lean SaaS founder

Solo or 2-person team. Building a focused B2B SaaS. Doing outbound themselves. Bill creeping past $200/mo on tooling. Looking for the next leverage move.

Archetype B — The technical operator

Inside a 5-25 person startup. Owns growth or ops. Has API budget but not infinite. Wants to automate the boring 80% so the team can do the interesting 20%.

Archetype C — The recovering agency owner

Used to run an agency or did consulting. Now building product. Comfortable with stacks. Wants to ship agents to replace what they used to charge clients for.

Don't contact (link to spreadsheet)

See do-not-contact.csv in the same Drive folder. Updated continuously. Includes:

Past clients
Active customers (don't look like outbound)
People who explicitly asked to be removed
Direct competitors

ICP file by Sophia Stein · agenticarchitect.ai/blog · last updated 2026-05-04