icp-v1.0: supported by activation, retention, and economic evidence

Goal

Determine whether the product’s ICP v0.3 can be promoted to ICP v1.0 using activation, customer-outcome, retention, renewal, expansion and economic evidence.

ICP v1.0 must describe a customer segment that:

- purchases at sustainable pricing
- activates successfully
- reaches measurable value
- continues using or renews at the product’s natural cadence
- can be acquired, onboarded and supported repeatably
- produces acceptable unit economics
- does not depend on founder heroics or bespoke development

Do not promote the ICP merely because customers paid, pilots succeeded or total revenue increased.

If the evidence is insufficient, do not manufacture ICP v1.0. Preserve ICP v0.3 as the current hypothesis and create an explicit readiness report describing what remains unproven.

Do not modify application code.

Inputs

Locate and read:

- all applicable AGENTS.md instructions
- ICP v0.1, v0.2 and v0.3 Markdown and YAML files
- the complete ICP changelog
- the v1.0 readiness thresholds defined in ICP v0.3
- interview and paid-pilot evidence
- customer and account records
- product analytics and event definitions
- onboarding and activation data
- customer-outcome measurements
- subscription and billing records
- invoices, payments, credits and refunds
- contract values and pricing concessions
- renewal, cancellation and expansion records
- usage cohorts
- churn and downgrade reasons
- support and customer-success records
- implementation and integration logs
- infrastructure, model, data-provider and payment-processing costs
- implementation, support and customer-success labor
- founder labor required for selling and delivery
- sales-pipeline, win/loss and sales-cycle data
- channel and acquisition-cost data
- referrals and customer introductions
- product changes made for individual customers
- relevant customer research and satisfaction data

Search common locations such as:

- `docs/gtm/`
- `docs/research/`
- `customers/`
- `analytics/`
- `billing/`
- `finance/`
- `sales/`
- `crm/`
- `support/`
- `success/`
- `retention/`
- `cohorts/`

If required evidence is unavailable, identify the missing data and do not fabricate conclusions.

Evidence labels

Label every material finding as:

- VERIFIED: Directly supported by reliable operational, product or financial data.
- CALCULATED: Derived transparently from verified inputs.
- SUPPORTED: Corroborated by multiple credible sources.
- INFERRED: Reasonably suggested but not fully demonstrated.
- UNKNOWN: Insufficient evidence.
- CONTRADICTED: Evidence conflicts with the previous assumption.

For every calculated metric provide:

- definition
- numerator
- denominator
- observation window
- included cohort
- excluded records
- source files
- known data-quality limitations

Report raw counts alongside percentages, especially for small cohorts.

Step 1: Audit data quality and cohort maturity

Before evaluating the ICP, determine:

- whether customer identities are consistent across product, billing and CRM data
- whether test, internal and duplicate accounts are excluded
- whether activation events are reliably instrumented
- whether revenue reflects collected, non-refunded payment
- whether direct costs are complete
- whether churn and cancellation events are recorded
- whether cohorts have existed long enough to evaluate retention
- whether customer segments can be reconstructed consistently
- whether founder labor and customer-specific work are tracked
- whether pricing concessions and discounts are visible
- whether product usage can be connected to customer outcomes

Identify:

- missing records
- inconsistent definitions
- survivorship bias
- selection bias
- incomplete or immature cohorts
- customers excluded from analysis
- confounding product or pricing changes
- differences between pilot customers and standard customers

Do not treat an immature cohort as retained merely because it has not yet churned.

Step 2: Reconstruct the customer lifecycle

Create a customer-level inventory containing:

- customer identifier
- organization and operating state
- v0.3 segment
- acquisition source
- relationship strength before purchase
- user
- champion
- economic buyer
- contract or subscription start
- initial and current pricing
- discounts and concessions
- amount billed
- amount collected
- refunds and credits
- onboarding start and completion
- activation date
- first-value date
- measurable outcome
- usage frequency
- support and implementation burden
- renewal eligibility date
- renewal result
- expansion or contraction
- churn status and reason
- direct delivery costs
- founder involvement
- current Red, Yellow or Green classification

Include:

- active customers
- churned customers
- refunded customers
- customers who paid but never activated
- customers who activated but never reached value
- successful retained customers
- expanded customers
- lost and declined qualified opportunities

Step 3: Validate the activation definition

Locate the activation event defined in ICP v0.3.

Determine whether it represents:

- account setup
- feature usage
- completion of the core workflow
- receipt of product output
- realization of customer value

Do not treat account creation, login or onboarding completion as activation unless evidence connects it to meaningful value.

Evaluate:

- percentage and count reaching activation
- time to activation
- steps required
- abandonment points
- technical prerequisites
- customer effort
- staff assistance required
- relationship between activation and subsequent value
- relationship between activation and retention

If the original activation definition is weak, propose a revised definition and report results under both the original and revised definitions. Do not silently change definitions.

Step 4: Validate customer value

For every activated customer distinguish:

1. Product usage
2. Product output
3. Operational outcome
4. Economic outcome

Determine:

- whether the customer completed the intended workflow
- whether the promised outcome occurred
- whether the outcome was measurable
- whether the customer recognized the outcome
- time to first value
- frequency of value realization
- durability of the result
- whether value depended on manual intervention
- whether value exceeded the cost and disruption of adoption

Identify the value event most predictive of continued usage or renewal.

Do not claim causation unless the available evidence supports it.

Step 5: Measure retention at the natural product cadence

Determine the product’s natural usage and purchasing cadence before selecting retention windows.

Examples:

- daily operational tool
- weekly workflow
- monthly reporting process
- quarterly planning product
- annual or project-based purchase

Do not impose arbitrary 30-day retention on a product intended for quarterly or annual use.

Measure, where applicable:

- logo retention
- paid retention
- product-usage retention
- workflow retention
- outcome retention
- gross revenue retention
- net revenue retention
- renewal rate
- downgrade rate
- contraction
- reactivation
- churn rate
- time to churn
- reasons for churn
- retention by segment
- retention by activation status
- retention by acquisition source
- retention by pricing level
- retention by amount of founder involvement

Show cohort tables rather than relying only on aggregate averages.

Do not calculate or present LTV as reliable unless churn, gross margin and cohort duration are sufficiently stable. If they are not, mark LTV as UNKNOWN.

Step 6: Measure expansion and advocacy

Determine whether retained customers:

- add users
- increase usage
- add workflows
- purchase additional products or services
- move to higher pricing
- introduce the product to other teams
- refer qualified customers
- provide credible reference value

Distinguish:

- requested features
- hypothetical expansion interest
- actual expansion
- contracted expansion
- collected expansion revenue

Do not treat feature requests or compliments as expansion evidence.

Step 7: Calculate unit economics

Where data permits, calculate:

- average selling price
- average collected revenue per customer
- recurring revenue, if applicable
- gross revenue retention
- net revenue retention
- direct infrastructure cost
- model and API cost
- third-party data cost
- payment-processing cost
- implementation cost
- onboarding cost
- support cost
- customer-success cost
- direct delivery cost
- gross profit
- gross margin
- contribution margin
- cash acquisition cost
- fully loaded acquisition cost
- founder-led sales cost
- sales-cycle length
- CAC payback period
- revenue and margin by ICP segment

Report both cash costs and fully loaded costs when founder labor materially affects acquisition or delivery.

For labor estimates include:

- role
- hours
- reasonable cost basis
- whether the work can be standardized or automated

Do not exclude manual labor merely because a founder performed it without drawing a salary.

Do not infer future economies of scale without identifying the specific mechanism that would produce them.

Step 8: Evaluate repeatability

Determine whether the observed commercial motion is repeatable across:

- qualification
- messaging
- acquisition channel
- sales process
- pricing
- contracting
- onboarding
- integrations
- activation
- value delivery
- support
- renewal
- expansion

Identify whether successful customers depended on:

- founder relationships
- custom pricing
- bespoke engineering
- unusual patience
- manual data preparation
- continuous founder supervision
- one-off integrations
- unusually favorable timing
- unpriced professional services

Classify the current motion as:

- REPEATABLE
- PROVISIONALLY REPEATABLE
- SERVICE-ASSISTED BUT STANDARDIZABLE
- FOUNDER-DEPENDENT
- BESPOKE
- UNKNOWN

Answer:

“If ten qualified customers entered the funnel next month, could the current organization acquire, activate and support them without delivery cost or founder effort increasing proportionally?”

Step 9: Compare ICP segments

For every v0.3 segment compare:

- qualified opportunity count
- win rate
- sales-cycle length
- pricing quality
- payment collection
- activation rate
- time to value
- outcome attainment
- retained usage
- renewal
- expansion
- churn
- gross margin
- support burden
- implementation burden
- founder dependence
- roadmap distortion
- referral behavior

Do not select the segment producing the most revenue if another segment demonstrates better activation, retention, repeatability and economic quality.

Identify characteristics that discriminate successful retained customers from:

- non-buyers
- customers who never activated
- customers who failed to reach value
- churned customers
- unprofitable customers

Step 10: Audit the v0.3 promotion conditions

Locate every readiness, confirmation and falsification condition established in ICP v0.3.

For each condition provide:

- original condition
- target
- observed result
- whether it was met
- evidence source
- data-quality caveat
- conclusion

Do not move thresholds after seeing results.

Classify every major v0.3 assumption as:

- CONFIRMED
- PARTIALLY CONFIRMED
- CONTRADICTED
- UNTESTED
- REFRAMED
- NEWLY DISCOVERED

Step 11: Attempt to falsify ICP v1.0

Challenge the strongest segment:

- Is activation genuinely connected to value?
- Is retention voluntary or contractually trapped?
- Have cohorts existed long enough to evaluate retention?
- Are renewals occurring at sustainable pricing?
- Are economics positive after including founder labor?
- Are retained customers receiving repeatable product value?
- Is continued usage driven by the core product or manual service?
- Does acquisition work beyond warm relationships?
- Is sales success dependent on unusually large discounts?
- Can customers be supported without bespoke development?
- Are successful customers materially different from failed customers?
- Is expansion repeatable or isolated?
- Would the segment remain attractive if one exceptional customer were removed?
- Could the business serve ten additional customers without breaking delivery economics?

State the strongest case against promotion to v1.0.

Step 12: Apply final Red / Yellow / Green classification

GREEN — Operational ICP

Requires evidence of:

- sustainable willingness to pay
- consistent activation
- measurable customer value
- retention or renewal at the natural cadence
- acceptable delivery and support burden
- repeatable product fit
- viable or credibly improving unit economics
- identifiable qualification signals
- limited roadmap distortion

YELLOW — Experimental or adjacent segment

Use when:

- activation is promising but retention is immature
- value is demonstrated but economics remain uncertain
- acquisition is not yet repeatable
- the segment requires standardizable services
- evidence comes from too few customers
- expansion potential remains unverified

Every Yellow segment must have:

- explicit hypothesis
- experiment
- resource limit
- success threshold
- kill threshold
- review date

RED — Do not pursue

Use when:

- customers fail to activate
- value is inconsistent
- churn is high
- renewal requires discounts
- acquisition or delivery is economically unattractive
- support or customization is excessive
- the segment creates roadmap distortion
- the buyer and user remain misaligned
- success depends on founder heroics

Step 13: Make the promotion decision

Promote ICP v0.3 to ICP v1.0 only if the evidence supports:

- a stable, observable qualification pattern
- actual payment at sustainable pricing
- repeatable activation
- measurable value
- retention or renewal
- acceptable cost to acquire and serve
- a motion that is at least provisionally repeatable

If these conditions are not met:

- do not create an approved ICP v1.0
- keep ICP v0.3 as the current version
- create `docs/gtm/icp-v1.0-readiness.md`
- identify the exact missing evidence
- define the shortest path to resolving it

Step 14: Define ICP v1.0

If promotion is justified, express ICP v1.0 as:

“[Economic buyer] at [specific organization in a demonstrated operating state] who experiences [verified recurring pressure], generally after [observable trigger], and currently spends [money, labor, delay or risk] on [existing alternative]. When [qualification prerequisites] are present, they activate by [activation event], obtain [measurable value] within [observed time], and continue or renew because [retention mechanism]. The segment can be acquired and served through [repeatable motion] with [supported economic characteristics].”

Specify:

- organization type
- operating state
- daily user
- champion
- economic buyer
- approvers and blockers
- painful job
- economic consequence
- trigger
- current alternative
- existing expenditure
- prerequisites
- qualification signals
- disqualifiers
- initial offer
- standard pricing
- maximum discount
- acquisition channel
- sales motion
- onboarding requirements
- activation event
- value event
- time to value
- measurable outcome
- natural retention cadence
- retention mechanism
- expansion path
- support model
- acceptable implementation burden
- expected economic characteristics

Step 15: Operationalize ICP v1.0

Translate the ICP into organization-wide rules.

Product:

- core workflows to prioritize
- prerequisites to preserve
- customer-specific requests to reject
- outcomes to instrument
- activation and retention events to monitor

Marketing:

- segment language
- problem framing
- proof points
- qualification signals
- channels
- claims that evidence does not support

Sales:

- required qualification criteria
- discovery questions
- disqualifiers
- standard offer
- pricing boundaries
- Yellow-segment exception rules

Customer success:

- onboarding milestones
- activation target
- value-realization target
- risk signals
- renewal indicators
- expansion indicators

Leadership:

- Green allocation rules
- Yellow experimentation budget
- Red exception policy
- evidence required for changing the ICP

Step 16: Establish the continuing ICP loop

Define:

- monthly monitoring metrics
- quarterly ICP review
- cohort review cadence
- version-change criteria
- promotion and demotion rules
- ownership of each metric
- data-quality checks
- drift signals
- conditions requiring immediate reassessment

Possible drift signals include:

- falling activation
- increasing time to value
- retention deterioration
- margin compression
- rising support burden
- increased discounting
- buyer-role changes
- new customer segment outperforming the core ICP
- product changes altering prerequisites
- acquisition-channel deterioration

ICP v1.0 is an operational baseline, not a permanent truth.

Deliverables if promotion succeeds

Preserve all earlier ICP versions.

Create:

1. `docs/gtm/icp-v1.0.md`

Include:

- promotion decision
- evidence and data-quality audit
- customer lifecycle analysis
- activation analysis
- customer-value analysis
- retention cohorts
- expansion evidence
- unit economics
- repeatability analysis
- segment comparison
- v0.3 assumption audit
- falsification case
- final Red/Yellow/Green classifications
- ICP v1.0
- beachhead and disqualifiers
- product, marketing, sales and customer-success rules
- continuing monitoring loop

2. `docs/gtm/icp-v1.0.yaml`

Include:

- version: 1.0
- status: operational
- based_on
- evidence_cutoff_date
- confidence
- sample_sizes
- observation_windows
- primary_icp
- beachhead_icp
- operating_state
- users
- champion
- economic_buyer
- approvers
- painful_jobs
- economic_consequences
- triggering_events
- current_alternatives
- existing_expenditure
- prerequisites
- qualification_signals
- disqualifiers
- initial_offer
- standard_pricing
- discount_limits
- acquisition_channels
- sales_motion
- onboarding_requirements
- activation_event
- activation_rate
- value_event
- time_to_value
- value_metrics
- retention_cadence
- retention_metrics
- renewal_metrics
- expansion_metrics
- gross_margin
- contribution_margin
- acquisition_costs
- payback_period
- delivery_requirements
- support_requirements
- repeatability_status
- green_segments
- yellow_segments
- red_segments
- confirmed_assumptions
- contradicted_assumptions
- unknowns
- monitoring_metrics
- review_cadence
- drift_signals
- change_conditions
- evidence_sources

3. Update `docs/gtm/icp-changelog.md`

Append:

- promotion decision
- changes from v0.3
- supporting activation evidence
- supporting retention evidence
- supporting economic evidence
- segment promotions and demotions
- remaining uncertainties
- future review conditions

Do not alter previous changelog entries.

Deliverable if promotion fails

Create:

`docs/gtm/icp-v1.0-readiness.md`

Include:

- explicit decision not to promote
- failed or untested conditions
- data-quality limitations
- missing cohort maturity
- activation, retention or economic gaps
- strongest existing evidence
- exact experiments and observation periods required
- responsible metric or data source
- next review condition

Keep ICP v0.3 as the current version.

Boundaries

- Do not overwrite previous ICP versions.
- Do not modify application code.
- Do not treat payment as activation.
- Do not treat activation as value.
- Do not treat value as retention.
- Do not treat an unchurned immature cohort as retained.
- Do not infer LTV from insufficient history.
- Do not hide churned, refunded or unprofitable customers.
- Do not exclude founder labor from economic analysis.
- Do not let aggregate revenue conceal segment-level failure.
- Do not move thresholds after observing results.
- Do not allow one exceptional customer to define the ICP.
- Do not confuse contractual lock-in with voluntary retention.
- Do not claim repeatability from founder-led sales alone.
- Do not expose unnecessary confidential or personal information.
- Preserve uncertainty rather than manufacturing confidence.

Done when

- Data quality and cohort maturity have been audited.
- Payment, activation, value, retention and expansion are reported separately.
- Retention uses the product’s natural cadence.
- Unit economics include direct costs and founder labor.
- Successful, failed, churned and unprofitable customers are visible.
- All v0.3 promotion conditions have been evaluated.
- Every segment has been compared using customer and economic outcomes.
- Red/Yellow/Green classifications are explicit.
- The strongest falsification case is documented.
- ICP v1.0 is created only if promotion is justified.
- Otherwise, v0.3 remains current and a readiness report is produced.
- The resulting ICP is operational across product, marketing, sales and customer success.
- A continuing measurement and revision loop is defined.