2025 goals, direction and our ICP

It's one thing to set some top outcomes we should reach by the end of the year.

I've already shared some of them:

• € 25.000 MRR
• 500 paying customers

That's just about 5x from where we ended in 2024 (it feels equally scary and motivating writing this).

How we're gonna get there, however, is a different story.

We first have to commit to the ideal customer profile (ICP) we want to target.

There's a saying when it comes to ICPs:

If you try to be something for everybody, you're gonna end up being nothing for anybody.

Before starting Herodesk, I spent 5 years in an E-commerce SaaS, so I (apparently...) have a bias towards that sector.

That kind of shows in what we've been doing so far (our first integration was with the DanDomain webshop, and then came Shopify).

We've already built some awesome features and integrations for webshops, serving both Shopify shops and the many smaller e-commerce platforms. And about 90% of our paying customers today are B2C webshops.

So it would seem both easy and obvious to target those kind of companies!

But before getting that specific, let's take a step back...

When it comes to settling on an ICP to serve, we've already made some choices:

• Business to business (meaning our customers are other businesses - not talking about who our customers customers are). The nature of our product dictates this.
• Small- and medium-sized businesses. I've previously talked about serving enterprises vs. SMBs; I'll take 1000 SMB customers over 10 Enterprises any day of the week.

Building a helpdesk tool (that term feels so... 2005-ish... I've gotta come up with something better!) lets you go super wide or super narrow.

On one end, you can go wide and serve anyone who receives customers' questions via e-mail.

On the other, you can go super niche and serve only a specific sector (say "b2c fashion webshops" or "fintech software-as-a-service" companies) that has specific sizes and are within specific areas or industries.

Which brings me back to where I started.

I don't want Herodesk to be "something for everybody" (read: nothing for anybody).

Even though "having the whole world as your potential customers" sounds tempting, all my experience, the playbooks I've read, the founder's advice I've received, etc., tell me not to do this.

So we probably shouldn't...

At the same time, I also don't want Herodesk to be too narrow and specific.

Going super niche has its advantages in terms of prioritising features, having clear communication, etc., but it can also be a growth-blocker.

So, based on the past 18 months of learning and some serious soul-searching and deep discussions (with whom I'll get back to later), we've settled on the ideal customer profile for Herodesk to be:

E-commerce companies with 2-10 people handling customer services across multiple channels.

"E-commerce" is more than webshops doing B2C sales.

It's any company that sells its product/service online.

B2C, B2B, D2C... Physical goods, digital goods or intellectual goods (courses, etc.). Hotels and restaurants. Agencies and service companies. And so on...

Herodesk won't be a good match for enterprises in the above sectors with huge customer support teams (to take a few extreme examples: Zalando, Nike, etc.)...

It's also not a match for companies that do not sell their product online or do not have the primary customer support online.

But if you have online transactions, customer support across different channels and <10 people handling it - we're here for you! 💪

We haven't really had a super specific ICP up until now (not good, I know - but it's here now!).

But now that we do, it'll set the direction for our product development, marketing, communication, etc..

The first changes will come already this week, as our website will be updated.

I'm super happy to have settled on this ICP.

It sets the direction we must go in 2025 to reach our goals!

If you're an entrepreneur and not 100% sure about your ICP, I can only recommend that you take the time needed to define and commit to it.

A final note: As with so many other things, the ICP isn't set in stone. It develops over time as circumstances change and businesses pivot. I do, however, have a feeling that we won't make any significant changes to this part of our strategy in the foreseeable future.