ICP Definition: The #1 Mistake Companies Make
Being too broad with your ICP criteria is costing you qualified meetings. Here's how to get specific.
Ask a founder who their ideal customer is and you'll usually hear something like "B2B companies with 50 to 5,000 employees that care about revenue." That's not an ICP — that's the entire economy. And on a performance marketplace, a vague ICP doesn't just weaken your results; it actively creates disputes.
Why broad feels safe but isn't
Broad criteria feel like they maximize your chances — more companies qualify, so more meetings can happen. In practice the opposite occurs. Hunters can't tell whether their contact is a fit, so the confident ones skip your bounty and the careless ones claim it. Then a meeting happens with someone who technically matches your criteria but obviously isn't a buyer, and you're stuck: reject it and burn the hunter, or pay for a meeting you didn't want. Both outcomes were caused at posting time, not meeting time.
The three-layer ICP
Strong bounty criteria have three layers. Company: industry, size band, geography, and one qualifying condition that actually predicts need ("runs an outbound sales team of 5+", "ships physical goods cross-border"). Person: exact titles that can own a budget decision, with the near-misses explicitly excluded. Moment: one sentence on why now — expanding into a market, hiring for a role, using a competitor.
Write your criteria so that a stranger could look at any meeting and say yes or no in ten seconds. That's the test. If reasonable people could disagree about whether a meeting qualifies, your ICP isn't done.
Narrow wins
Counterintuitively, narrower bounties get claimed faster. A hunter with three perfect contacts for your exact profile sees themselves in the posting immediately. You don't need every hunter to match — you need three of the right ones. Specificity is how they find you.
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