Finding ICP

EmailEngine, the business I run solo, is profitable enough that it pays my salary. As a developer turned founder, I've been asked a lot about how I got here and how I found the customers. Being primarily a developer, I really don't know how to do "business", and that shows – for the first year and a half, EmailEngine made no money. There were a few sales, but these were not actual customers but people who wanted to support my effort. It was only after I re-imagined who my target customer actually was and adjusted the sales process that I managed to get things going.

My first attempt was quite simple. I published EmailEngine as an open-source project under a very strict copyleft license. There was an option to pay to get a commercial license instead. My assumption was that businesses do not like copyleft licenses, and if they find EmailEngine useful, they will opt for the commercial license. In hindsight, many things were wrong with this approach.

It turns out that only enterprise companies care about licensing; smaller ones usually do not. Larger companies were not using EmailEngine because it was a self-serve open-source application with a strange license. Smaller ones did use it and did not care about the license at all, so there was no incentive to convert. Complete mismatch of interests.

I took some time to re-think who the customer I wanted to target was. Basically, I tried to define my ICP. And, to my surprise, the best customer seemed to be someone I already knew about – myself. Or a representation of myself over my experiences in multiple companies and roles.

I was working in Pipedrive more than 10 years ago when Pipedrive was still starting out. I think there were less than 2000 customers, and I worked on similar email integration issues that EmailEngine does. So, it seemed natural to target CRM and SaaS companies at a similar stage because I knew they needed such software, and they do not have the capability to build in-house due to being too small.

My other experience was in Outfunnel, where I was the technical co-founder and built the entire initial software stack. I had a credit card to cover technical spending, and if the amounts weren't high, I did not need to get any permissions. So, I figured that I should try to target the CTOs and engineering leads of small SaaS companies. They would definitely understand how hard it is to build email integrations, and if they can easily swipe their card for any sub-$1k amount, that's my customer. Such a person also wants to move fast, and they or their team is able to figure things out, which also decreases the need for me to provide support. They get predictable and cheap pricing for a feature they can't afford to build themselves. I get a low-effort customer who is able to get stuff done without much guidance.

Obviously, among the current 100+ customers of EmailEngine, there are different kinds of companies, but the core is the one I described.