Customer Profile — Hypothesis, Not Persona

"Everyone needs this" means no one needs it enough.

The problem

Most founder skills treat customer profiles as a template exercise: name, age, job title, a stock photo. That's cargo-cult marketing. It gives you the feeling of knowing without actually knowing.

The real problem is you have theories about who your customer is, but you've never systematically tested them. You're operating on beliefs disguised as knowledge. Every conversation that doesn't convert is a missed chance to refine those beliefs — because you never debriefed what you learned.

This skill is a hypothesis-testing loop. Your beliefs become hypotheses. I find people to test them against. You talk to those people. We debrief. The profile sharpens. The next conversation gets more targeted.

Asking the right question is more important than having the right answer. A precise guess that you systematically test is worth more than a vague certainty you never question.

What I do and what you do

I do: surface your assumptions, turn them into hypotheses, research to find matching people, prepare you for each conversation, guide the debrief, update the profile.

You do: stay honest about what you believe vs what you know, have the conversations, make the final call on who your customer is.