Episode 773 | How to Find Your Early Customer Profile (ECP)

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Rob Walling and Maja Voje, author of Go to Market Strategist, dive into early customer profiles (ECPs) and why they matter more than ideal customer profiles (ICPs) early on. They explore practical, scrappy marketing tactics for B2B SaaS founders and share real-world advice on customer acquisition, community building, and staying authentic while growing. Episode Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by Mercury. I've been banking with Mercury for years and whenever I set up a new account, I'm reminded why traditional banking feels stuck in the past. When our previous bank faced solvency issues, we needed to spin up new accounts quickly that could handle millions in funds across multiple businesses. Mercury had us up and running almost immediately. I manage half a dozen different Mercury accounts across a wide range of companies – from my personal, single-member LLC to MicroConf, our 7-figure global events and education platform, to TinySeed, our venture fund and accelerator. Mercury easily handles them all. The interface is elegantly simple for daily banking, paying invoices, and sending and receiving international wires, yet powerful enough to handle the multi-step approval processes we needed to put in place when funding founders with large transfers. Anytime founders ask me who they should set up their accounts with, I send them to mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust; Members FDIC. Topics we cover: (3:02) – What Go-to-Market actually means for bootstrapped founders (7:14) – Early Customer Profile (ECP) vs. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) (10:30) – Common mistakes founders make when choosing their ECP (13:48) – Real-world B2B SaaS examples of successful ECP launches (18:29) – Why GTM actions must come before GTM motions for scrappy startups (21:52) – Warm outreach and fishing in the right forums: practical tactics for early traction Links from the Show: MicroConf Growth Retreat | London, UK - May 14-16, 2025 Invest in TinySeed Maja Voje | LinkedIn GTM Strategist Go-To-Market Strategist: (Maja's book) If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify Listen to Episode 773

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is brought to you by Mercury. I've been banking with Mercury for years, and whenever
0:04.9	I set up a new account, I'm reminded why traditional banking feels stuck in the past. When our previous
0:10.5	bank faced solvency issues, we needed to spin up new accounts quickly that could handle millions
0:15.4	in funds across multiple businesses. Mercury had us up and running almost immediately. I manage half a dozen
0:21.5	different Mercury accounts across a wide range of companies, from my personal, single-member
0:25.7	LLC, to MicroConf, our seven-figure global events and education platform, to Tiny Seed,
0:31.3	our venture fund and accelerator. Mercury easily handles them all. The interface is elegantly
0:36.7	simple for daily banking, paying invoices, and sending and receiving
0:40.3	international wires, yet powerful enough to handle the multi-step approval processes we needed
0:46.1	to put in place when funding founders with large transfers.
0:50.0	Anytime founders ask me who they should set up their accounts with, I send them to
0:53.7	mercury.com.
0:55.0	Check the show notes for more details and note that Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank.
1:01.2	Welcome back to another episode of startup for the rest of us.
1:04.1	I'm Rob Walling, and in this episode I talk with Maya Voie.
1:07.8	She's the author of Go to Market Strategist, Everything You Need to Reach Product
1:12.8	Market Fit. And her book and her consulting and her writing is all focused on B2B SaaS.
1:19.8	We have a great conversation today defining what go-to market is because that's always a
1:24.6	term that I've struggled with because it feels very MBA-like, feels
1:29.7	theoretical in a way that maybe isn't helpful for bootstrappers. But I've become more comfortable
1:35.3	with it over the last several years. And Maya has a nice way of communicating that go-to-market
1:42.5	or GTM is really just pricing and positioning and
	...

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