#38 ICP, Positioning and Scaling Reality with Joris van Kappen

[Music] Hi everyone, welcome back to Fordermies, the podcast where growth meets reality today. I'm joined by Joris van Kappen. You have several times worked in-house, build-bought and sold companies and now have founded Accelerator Hub and work as a consultant. So we somewhat work in overlapping territory, in the founder-led companies with an ICP positioning and go-to-market alignment. And I think you have a very distinct perspective on ICP. I'm so much looking forward to diving into in this episode. Perfect, well, yeah, thank you for having me and thank you for the introduction. I'm really looking forward to have these discussions together and see what we can dive into. Yes, so to kick this off on an ICP, where does your thinking on ICP start? ICP is a strategic filter, in my opinion. It's very often used as a demographic checklist, right? A partariding person A, A, B, C and there in this range of revenue there in this geographic location. But most of the time that doesn't really bring you anywhere because that still keeps it so broad and misses out on the main, well, function it has, narrowing down your total addressable market into people you can actually win with repeatedly and finding out more are the best customers for your product and they should bring focus towards the company instead of like derailing you from all the efforts. That's my quick take on it. Yes, and I've seen this play out in house several times. Exactly as you describe like using an ICP to, you know, map out who is the total addressable market and who is everyone we can sell though. But on a strategic level, you dive further than that on the ICP, which I think is something that is very important because having the numbers is, of course, a great proof point is a great proof point on where do we start and what can we achieve. As I've experienced most companies sit there and want to be the market dominator, want to be made and like, you know, the sky is the limit, which of course is the kind of enthusiasm and energy and passion you need to bring to business, especially on the leadership level. But going into the actual execution and strategy of the ICP, what needs to be applied to make it workable and to actually get the most value out of the ICP? Yeah, no, great question. I think part one is making sure that there is a shared understanding of what your ICP is and what it actually means right within the company. If everyone has a different definition of it, then it already will feel so mostly it's about how do you operationalize your ICP across like Discovery calls, pricing, compensation. You have like an assumption on what it should be, you test it on the data that you receive from your calls, from your CRM, and you want to score that, right? You want to have some sort of scoring mechanism and I like to put like the ICP matches in three buckets. One is like the clear hit and the last one is the one that even if they will give you like one million tomorrow, you still want to stay away from them because they will bring trouble into your company and they will derail you from your growth trajectory. And if you define that and you actually dive into like, of course, right, you need the thermographics, you need technographics, you need the jobs to be done, you need clarity on these things. And if you have a scoring mechanism that rates like where, what are what signals do we need, what are the data points do we need, what behavior do we need to actually win with them to increase our lifetime value and actually have a long term relationship with these profiles. I think if you operationalize it like that and everyone has a clear understanding of like, hey, we should go for this profile compared to that profile. And then it shows up in like the targeting for marketing in the sales conversations that are being run, think about expansion and renewal conversations that you're running. You know like the trigger points, you know the touch points that you need to cover with them and you know what they try to accomplish. And instead of derailing you from a think of like let's say roadmap decisions you are taking in making for customer A because he asked plah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it doesn't leverage the rest of your customer base. So it just derails your your your resources. And so most time, yeah, it's the sharper the aim and the more clear you are in what bucket the specific customer could fit. The more clear you will be about how do you serve them and well, you will bring in better rates that way as well. Yeah. Definitely. I you just mentioned the growth trajectory and I think that is one point where this becomes difficult because there was a status now. So when the ICP is focused now, where do we have the biggest growth trajectory? And bringing all teams on board to focus on that. And then there is of course like the future point, the vantage point of where do we want to go to next and how do we actually enable the process of going from one specific ICP that can be a certain segment, can be a certain industry or what it is to another. How do you think that strategy and execution should should meet there and be run there? Yeah. So most of the time this is a translation part where we're talking about. The thing is like everyone is running something in the company that they have an understanding of. So most time like a founder has a clear mental model about where the company needs to go. But then everyone in the company is running on some sort of like a fragmented interpretation of that because it has never been centralized, there's never been downloaded from the founders brain. So if you add in like pressure from boards or a tight runway, things get even messier, right? And the board that the CEO or the founder, he will talk about, yes, this is a total dressable market and this justifies the investment. Well, sales will be more like, hey, the customer I'm facing is asking for this. So this is what I want to talk about. And well, you see how that that will go right. And in my opinion, it's not that people are careless about how they actually tell the story to towards their person who is in front of them. But it's more about like what is the shared meaning and how are we talking about this in like without losing or coherent voice? I mean, if you have a shared meaning, then you also understand that you will see that companies will start to act more like a culture. You're talking about the same thing, but you could use different words instead of like using words that have different meanings. Because like the underlay part is so lived within the company and while getting there that obviously takes effort and takes a lot of internal branding and exercises as well. Like you need to repeat it, you need to show it constantly. Think about like weekly updates where you just like repeat specific parts of your messaging and will you work for what you are doing. And if you like implemented that way, it becomes way easier because like if you go broader here, that's never the answer, right? That just dilutes everything. So you need to make a sharper aim and bring that back to the people within the organization. So everyone is like living from the same source of truth, so to say. Yeah, definitely. And I think that is a big part that I have seen break in reality. So firstly, the difference in how a product talks about the product, the company, marketing, customer success and sales. And a lot of times this red threat is missing. And I think the hardest part on the ICP is actually creating an ICP that holds under pressure because especially within marketing, but also within well across departments. But I think even more so it trickles down to customer success marketing sales when targets go up and have to be met pressure in increases. And that is often a moment where the ICP gets abandoned. So how do you ensure with the clients that you work with that that holds? Yeah, well, that's what I just explained, right? If you have like buckets where where you are very clear understanding of like we can win with this customer, we can win with this customer or we have to stay away from this customer profile, it becomes easier to to maintain that during pressure. If you have the conversation up front that it will rain and things will get tough and the boards will demand specific outcomes runway will get tied, especially startups right, we all know the cycles and we all know how it goes. And the natural reaction is always like go faster, but going faster is not going broader. It means like going deeper, it's going sharp. the accident. Like if you miss your quota for the quarter with like 20%, it doesn't make sense to like just increase budgets or hire more people or whatever because it shows that the system below is broken and it doesn't show that you have a clear path to accelerate and go faster. So you first want to dive in, fix those problems and really pinpoint down on like hey do we actually have this segment of the ICP, do we have that crystal clear yes or no. And if it's a no, well then think about it like what are we missing? I mean if a company is below like let's say two three million revenue, that the ICP probably isn't depleted, that's just not the case. It's just the case of like how sharp are you aiming for that customer profile. So don't make it broader, right? Well that's the natural reaction, but don't do it. Just focus down and triple down on your efforts for one market or one segment or one like ICP that you could actually win with. Go for the green bucket so to say. Well yeah as you describe it with the bucket, I mean again the year goes, the quarter goes, how do you keep that ICP conversation at a consistent level because I think that is a as a key factor of companies and teams actually sticking to it, right? Constantly being reminded. These are the buckets. Yeah, but it's repetition what I said, right? You have cadence issue, you have weekly updates within functions, you have the monthly company updates, you have OCRs, updates, stuff like that. You have all these mechanisms that you could leverage to actually repeat it back into the company. If the founder is just talking about the goals or the ICP with the investors or the board and Sils is just like internally discussing like hey we are able to sign this bigger logo where we that will derail you and that doesn't work. You have to have a shared understanding and how that's built that is by repeating it internally and it sounds very simple or maybe stupid but it is what is creating a shared understanding and a shared goal as well, right? If you are all aiming towards that goal then you will start to live it as well and then you will it will show up because then people will understand the conversation like okay we could go for this big logo but that also has the side effect that we need to build these features, we need to market to that part, we need to create these emails, we need to create that. It comes with a whole lot of side effects that you don't want to bring into the company and if you actually create the clarity around that it becomes way easier for people to speak up and stand up and hold the line so to say on the ICP as well because you need to think like a little bit further than just this quarter, right? It's still balance it with your runway and stuff like that but you get the point. Yes, definitely and the next point of course is when you talk about the shared understanding who within the company should be included in shaping that shared understanding and how do you get the buy-in from the rest, from the people executing, from the marketing manager, the marketing setting up the campaigns from the EEs and SDRs having the good talks and having the tough talks, how do you ensure that matches? So it always starts with I would like to call it a founder founder's brain download, right? You just like sit down with the founder and actually try to find out why did you start this company in the first place? What was the thing that you wanted to solve? What is that big problem that you were trying to solve and that you verify that in the market? Did you get the understanding of the customers that the problem that you were solving is actually a real problem and they are coming to you for that problem and not like a side effect that you happen to develop along the way and then it starts with like if that story is right and it starts with updating the people within the company on that story and repeating that again and repeating that again and it's not like a static so it's not something that is set once and then being broadcasted into the company into the new hires or stuff like that. No, you need feedback loops from the conversations that you're having and they should ideally be data driven, right? You need to get the feedback from the calls that you're having, from the notes that you're taking, from like all these various points of where you're having conversations with the market and where you're getting validations from and those points they will help you to sharpen your story and sharpen like the goal saying of what you're trying to accomplish. Markets are not static, they are moving, they are changing and you need to be able to anticipate to that and like having a way of people or enabling people to actually give their inputs and share their their their seeing, knowledge and stuff like that and then actually feeding that back in a specific route into the whole company as well that really makes it a shared effort and then still the founder is always the one in the end who makes a decision about like hey this is our strategic direction but everyone receives signals, everyone receives data in the company and that needs that needs a way to to carry to the founder and to that decision dog as well in like having an updated version and then what I always like to do is like in a in a in a monthly meeting or a quarterly meeting always start like hey this is what we're trying to accomplish here this is why we are here together we are group of people we are trying to solve a specific problem we haven't done it completely yet we are on the way this is where we are this is what we are seeing that we're going to do these are our blockers this is what the market is feeding us and then you have like an update to people that that that they will understand and they will feel part of like contributing to as well and then you get like a living state so to say of like hey what are we actually trying to accomplish here as a company yeah definitely I think feedback loops is is a wonderful part and especially also in one of my focus areas the the alignment between sales and marketing yeah it's such an important part and I found that bringing I think it's really important to get the subjective feedback from from sales as well yeah and so the sentiment on how are the calls going how is the messaging being perceived and so what is like that direct feedback from the market that you a lot of times don't get in you know you only get it when you actually talk to people 101 actually check but adding of course and founding is also on on data is a really important part so you have this 360 degree perspective on it to actually connect the dots and and focus in there you need to communicate internally right and and and it should be allowed to be communicated on as well it should not be like forced into a company it should be like everyone is is is part of the organization and every day everyone is like getting signals in or getting like a feedback in and and like having that end with that specific person that would be ashamed right that doesn't bring the company then your company stops learning and when your company stops learning well then we all know what will happen so I think yeah it's about like making sure that you have the right system in place internally to have those communication lines open and actually do something with it as well yeah so your framework focuses heavily on how buyers perceive and choose so where thus the ICP conversation often break down between what the founder intends maybe also has communicated internally and what the market and the buyers perceive externally so I think in general like most of the time companies think internally they are extremely clear right they they all speak the same language they all say like maybe in different words but they are like okay we get it and therefore they automatically assume most of the time that the market will do that as well because in their mind it's so clear it's so well they live it right they repeat it every day internally in in the teams but outside people don't see that people need to fill the blanks and they need to like get answers and getting the answers is not per se the full picture that you have in your your your your mind it's just a specific set of data points that they are questions that they need to have answered to make sure that they see you as a valuable option and in the end hopefully the obvious choice in your market right because that's what you want to want to want to get through there and The problem is that a lot of companies. companies are always facing this, it's like we have a funnel that we need to drive them to, right? We need to create awareness. Then we need to educate them and then they make a selection and then we win a customer for some magic reason. But that's a dream, right? That's a salary dream. That's your wish list. That's not the reality. That's not how people buy. It's not linear. People like they will hit some piece of content or a landing page or whatever. And then they start seeing you again somewhere or they click through your website and they will go on their own journey. But in that journey they will have a specific set of questions that they want to get answers to because they are trying to make sense of it in their own mind. If you start to think about it, what are those questions and can we answer for those? And you start to create content in a way that's not per se, bottom-middle or bottom-final. It's way more like to the people actually have the parts that they need to make sure that they see us as the most viable option for them. So yeah, that's how I like to approach it compared to the standard funnel view of going from awareness to like a decision. At least in the market, I think most teams have actually abandoned that funnel view to an extent. But of course, it has been around for such a long time that it will always be something that shaped a lot of organizations, a lot of marketers. And therefore, we'll always take a certain share. It's really difficult to change that kind of part how we view and think about buyer behavior and buyers themselves. Yeah, no, I agree there. And like, I think that a lot of people are still actually, say they are aiming for, let's say, growth loops and stuff like that, but they are still functioning actually on a funnel view. They still think about like, hey, we need to create awareness in this and this way. We need to hit these benchmark numbers. And then we have this conversion rate going down to that and that and that. And if something is off, then they are like, hey, what's going on here? And obviously, you need some sort of funnel to see like, hey, do my efforts make sense? Can I justify it towards the investments that are making, but at the same time, it's also tricking you into, well, maybe false positives and stuff like that. Can you name a few examples when you say false positives? What are the signals that people should watch out for there? Yeah, so what might happen is that you see, let's say you have like an acquisition part, right? And it's all self-serve and the rates look amazing. The first buy of the product is happening in conversion rates that you say like, wow, this is amazing. But then comes the expansion and retention of that customer and it just like breaks down because they have missed some sort of understanding of what your product is actually fixing for them. They use it for one specific case, but they don't know what the product is able to do. And this is stuff that you do see happen in a lot of funnels that are completely like product led, where they fail to like onboard the client in such a way that it gets all the benefits and the value out of the product. So it's a broader sense of like, what are we communicating, what features do we actually offer and how does that tie to a job to be done? What's the capability that we give you with that? I think that's a better way to look at it and just look at a funnels view of like, hey, we've reached 1,000 people, 200 people clicked here, that many people signed up. That's of course something that you need in a model, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Isn't I think this is where the ICP conversation is or a decision, but it's a really good starting point to actually broaden and bring in product and customer success as key levels of long-term growth and stability and actually gathering the really important signals that actually show what is the growth threat checkery. Not right now, we close the customer, but what does that look like when it comes to recurring revenue and when it comes to upselling and so on and promoting the product, right? I think the better approach would be to dive into the full customer lifecycle for each product line and then see like, hey, what customer profile segment would benefit from this product line and what should benefit from this product line and blah, blah, blah. And then you get a more holistic view on what the product is actually trying to do than marketing, sales and customer success can all align on that lifecycle as well. And then you start focusing on like, hey, the customer comes in with this. He has these set of questions that need to be answered and every stage then comes with a different subset of questions. But it's not as linear as you might want to make it sound because that's what I say, that's a wish list. That would be ideal for us as sellers to have that as an outcome, but it's just not the reality on how people buy it just gives you like a framework to what that you work to and show productivity. But then again, like what we said, right? Internally companies really overestimate how valuable their effort is and the market itself, they just don't care about the effort they only want to see. What result am I getting from it? What's the outcome? Definitely, but I think this is also a difficulty in exactly that internal strategic alignment and internal execution because a lot of times also frameworks, they need to be breaking that broken down to actually do the work of consistently communicating what is the strategic direction we're going and how are we executing on it? So it also in a way needs these very simplistic models because it's the easiest way to get the point across to everyone. But this is often where things break in reality, right? Because then it easily creates the share understanding of we're displaying it like that and we're displaying it in a very simple way so everybody can follow along and we're all aligned on it while each department in reality knows and each expert and specialist internally knows that in their reality it looks very different and the touch points are very different, the conversations and so on and so on. Yeah, and that's the whole thing, right? I mean, there's always a couple of levers that you need to pull to move the business forward and having a good insight into those, having them into dashboards that really works but going blind for just like a funnel or a visualization of a data set that actually feels very counterproductive to me always because it's just like trying to justify something that you're doing without like it's validating the actual point that you're trying to make. So that's one of the points I always try to like warn startups for as well don't like completely stare blind on specific visualization of data or whatever but like keep measuring the software of what's going on as well, right? You can look at your dashboards but it will not show the software of your customer who's about to turn because all the behavior might still be like that but in the background he might be talking to competitors, he might be doing research on other tools and that's something your dashboard will just not show that that will show in conversations in the type of questions they are asking and stuff like that. So yeah, that's why I'm thinking more of like it's more of a psychological funnel compared to like awareness selection and that kind of stuff. Absolutely and this is where it needs to collect knowledge across departments because each department has their own expert knowledge data insights on how the buyers behave as you know customers as a buyer as prospect and so on and only by collecting this you can actually get a full overview of at least in these instances how behavior happens and what also levers are to influence because there are so many things you can't influence and AI has just proven to be one of the ones that is a factor that you know you work with an implement but you can't influence in that way, right? Like what products get a band and which product usage goes down and so on has been the biggest change in shift we've seen lately? Absolutely but I think that mostly has to do with like AI in my opinion is an amplifier right? It just strengthens what is or is not there. So if your foundation is lacking then obviously it will just show harder by using AI. the foundation or the parts that you know need to be. we run and that specific part is optimized for AI, then you can get an amazing amount of leverage from it from like speeding up in times to value and whatever. But it's just like if the underlaying work has not been done, then AI will just make a bigger mess of it. Right? That's the reality of where we are. - Very true. Very true because I mean, the big part of AI is that you can do even more because it makes a lot of things more efficient. But if you're doing the wrong things, you're just doing even more of the wrong things. - And do you know what good looks like, right? So are you the judge who can say, like, hey, this is what good looks like? Or because like a IS the tendency of showing you something that sounds smart. But if you have not seen it work or have not done it, then you can impossibly verify if that's the way. And that's also what worries me a little bit about all the agentic AI movements. What if the AI itself is holding its own criteria, right? Like this is a pass or a fill. And what if you actually tell the agent, like, hey, you need to have a benchmark of a pass rate of 80%. How will that AI then start to behave in order to hit that 80% will he change the rules? And because we know it will, right? So the quality will just decrease. So you need like a human touch point there and interpretation there of someone who actually understands what it is. So the foundation still needs to be strong. And yeah, otherwise the AI will just like set you back more than it will ever to in my opinion. - Yeah, very, very good point. And I mean, this conversation is, or this point as a conversation, I'm having a lot also on this podcast. What does quality look like in the 2026? Because again, all markets are overcrowded with products. Social media is overcrowded with content. So there's in everything, lots of different things competing. And quality becomes more and more important, the same thus brand and trust. How do you, I bet like how do the conversations look like you have with the founders you work with on that split between the old volume and velocity model and the importance of brand and trust and credibility in today's market? - Yeah, no, I don't think that volume has ever been the problem, right? You can go really big on a specific market or a subset and you can throw a lot of budgets to increase your reach and stuff like that. But if the underlying model is not clear, like who are you for, what problem are you solving, why are you different compared to the rest? What is your point of view on that? And do people actually know what they sign up for when they join you? If those elements are not in place, then volume will still not fix it. You will just burn more money. You can increase the amount of people working on it, but it will not fix a leaky bucket, so to say. So I do think that right now with even more people throwing out AI, slope and whatever, it is about like, hey, how do you build that trust with a customer segment in like, you are the right solution for my problem and I trust you well enough to solve that for me. And in the end, it has always been about that, right? But the game has just changed because it's easier to show the artificial layer of it compared to like shown real. So there's a part where the founder needs to show up for to build trust. But in the end, the trust is built by the results you are delivering to your customer. So the founder, let part is just working in the beginning. It opens the conversations easier because we tend to trust people more than instantions and stuff like that. But it's the starting point. And then once you have your loop going there and you actually show your wins that you are having with your customers and you build trust through these results and you show like how you actually solve these problems for them. That creates recognition, that creates the trust, that creates like the part that you say, like, hey, I've seen this so many times now, these guys have to write approach to that. And now I trust and that's how you actually build the brand, how you build the trust compared to just like, the trove all you made it because that's hardly for the best choice. Very, very fair point. So how do you make sure that, you know, that again, that there is this threat and this holds under pressure on their changing market conditions and so on? Yeah, well, changing market conditions is especially interesting, right? Because how fast are you to adapt to those changes? Do you have the feedback loops? Do you get the signals? Do you get like the sentiments from the market? Yes or no? And how fast are you able to implement those into the company? That's always a hard question. And I think you should dedicate some time to it every month, to see like, hey, this is our assumption, are we still on track? What are the changes that we're seeing? And how are we planning towards that? You'll be amazed about how little companies actually do this. They all have like some parts somewhere in their ads, maybe Person A from Sales and Person C for marketing, both get signals, but they don't get communicated through. What's the point we started, we touched earlier in this conversation as well, right? You need to make sure that the environment is there to share it and to feed it back into the company as well. And if you are able to do that, then well, it's about the shared alignment, shared goal, knowing what you were solving and having a trajectory or a goal that is a bit further out than just one quarter, then even if it's like four or five quarters out, then most of the direct pressure points will already be avoidable because you know, like, okay, this might be an issue in this quarter, but in two or three quarters, we are in a completely different season and things will be completely different because then we are on this trajectory. And most of that pressure will already be gone by again. It will either have solved itself or it wasn't important. Anyway, that's my understanding from it, right? But pressure only comes when you narrow the timeline. And if you narrow the timeline, then yeah, that's one of the most deadly things I think you can do as a company because you stop caring about the end goal of the company and you start to panic and go into defense instead of the attack. - I think that's a very interesting point that in conversation also often comes up speed versus accuracy. And what you just described with sticking to the timeline, I mean, it brings more end point of quality. So it's rather speed versus quality. So you are a firm believer of quality over speed. - Well, you need speed. You need speed because otherwise you will be taken down by competitors who are faster or whatever. But speed and aim are different things. You can go fast with a specific goal in mind, but what we just said, like pressure makes most companies go broader and going broader might seem like, hey, we go super fast right now. But it is actually a slow down. It's a speed bump that you're taking. It's a detour that you're taking. Because two quarters later, you will have the conversation about, oh, wait, we actually set out to fix this problem. And now we are on the trajectory to fix this problem. Now we're not the same company anymore. What are we going to do with the other AD or 100 customers that we have that are actually here for this problem compared to the 10, 20 new customers? We signed last quarters that are here for this problem. And then you get a whole different conversation. So now you have to run like two branches, two product teams, two support teams. It becomes this way more complex, way more capital intensive as well. It's unsustainable. Yeah. But that is what you're describing. It's exactly the problem between just focusing on data, because on the data side, this might make sense. Hey, let's look at the time again. Let's see how we can broaden the time. It will give us a bigger market and more opportunities versus the actual conversations to actual signals. And there's actual viewpoints across departments. Well, I think the conversation should start with what is your market percentage on our current ICP focus that we're having. And if that is too low, then don't go broader, go deeper. If it is hitting like a plateau, because you have depleted that complete segment or you're serving everything, you're a market leader in that segment, Then you can say like, hey, what is the next? the logical step with similar use cases to compare to what we're already having. So we don't have to completely rebuild a product or build new product features and blah, blah, blah. But how can we leverage the things that we are already having to a use case for a different segment? And I think that's the conversation to be had, not like how broad can we go. It's like how deep can we go and then what's the next logical segment we should be after that have like matching use cases? Definitely. There's a very, very great point. You have outlined four gates, recognition relevance, differentiation and commitment about the buyer's journey. And I think there is a fifth gate that is said that is missing and that is do sellers and also customer success feel confident enough to actually stick with it and keep that. How do you how do you tackle that? That's a great point. And I think that actually also has to run down into like hey the commitment is mutual commitment is never just a part of like the customer side. It's also from the seller side. It's something you're offering and even though you have to convince the customer that he gives a commitment to you, you also have to commit to him because you make him a promise that you will deliver something and that promise needs to be fulfilled. So I do believe that like in commitment, it's mutual. You want to have a specific customer segment that you know you can win with. Otherwise the commitment is worthless because it will derail you. Well, it's exactly what we have been circling around in this whole project. But because it is irrelevant and it happens so often. And I assume we both have seen it play out. Now it's never just about the acquisition of the customer. Right? It's all like the most growth will always happen in the retention and the expansion of an account. It's never the new logos. It's always like how long are they staying and how can we expand with them? How can we win with them in the future? So I think yeah, the commitment is always mutual. It's never a one-sided thing and it's the same with like differentiation. How different are you compared to the rest in the market? But it is also like how does that translate into the use case and into the future of the use case? What is the entry point? I also have a model about what I call the minimum viable product. It's like how does your your increase in relationship translate over time? And what is the logical next step where the economic upside will go to the next level? And that means like you get closer to the customer. You become more of like a partner or you become more like one with them. It's from like the lowest level you could think of like someone's all your ad to like the highest level. It's like someone wants to buy your whole intellectual property and wants to take everything you have. And there's a lot of like levels in between there. And that actually is exactly what you're saying the fifth gate. It's like the level of commitment you are giving both ways. It's like you have to predefined it in some way as a company to guide your customer through. But at the same time you need to be open enough to get the feedback in to like keep it alive instead of static. Yeah, absolutely. I think internally playbooks are a great way to leverage that and create that internal commitment. And you know, I mean it goes in topic of like I mean sales and evenment of course but also like standardization but that is what creates that consistency and that commitment to stick to these messages, these strategic angle, this set of execution. And on an external level, yeah. I mean mutual, mutual plans, right? With customers and growth plans and so on to actually keep that keep that commitment. Yeah. I always like to say like it's not about winning customers but it is about winning with your customers because like you need to make them succeed in order to succeed yourself. Right. So it's about thinking through their journey. It's about thinking through what they are trying to accomplish and how you can help in that part. You're never the only solution to their problem. They will have more families. They will have more suppliers and whatever. But it's about how can you do your job to make their lives easier and that's how you win together, right? Building that relationship, making sure you do what you say you are going to do and deliver up on it. Yeah. Absolutely. In the introduction I already mentioned, you've built broad and sold companies and now with Accelerator Hub, you work as a consultant. What does that experience you have from your in-house work give you in your consultant work that other people don't have? So the thing is what I notice is I've seen it play out many times. Like you grow your company, you hit specific milestones, you raise funds, you sign specific amount of customers, you hire the first people that always comes with like how do we operationalize this? How do we actually start doing this? And the thing that hurts me most is that within startups we are still not completely able to share the knowledge on how it's done to the next generation of founders. I feel that a lot of startups are reinventing the wheel. Well, it has already been done. We know what is expected when you raise your first capital. You know you need to start reporting to your investors. You know you need to hit specific parts. Same way like going for your first hires. You know what profile, once you've done it, you know what kind of profiles to go for instead of like hiring a complete function at once because you don't have the economic means to do so and also it doesn't work to hire an army of interns because we also know that the quality of what needs to be delivered is just not being met there. So it's about these grow-plot-toes that they are hitting and how do you actually navigate those and how do you get to like your next growth level. And I think you have to experience it before you actually know how it is solved. And then I think that's the main thing we are trying to accomplish as well. Like stop the reinvention of the wheel. But giving the companies actually the insights and the experience without the cost-based of hiring a full senior team and having the dependency of consulate like we are more way more in-house compared to standard consultants. We're not just like strategy, debt delivery. We really give you like the commercial function we install it in your company and we try to aim between 6 to 12 months to be out of your company and have like you run it by yourself. But we help you with like hiring people, setting the direction, setting the the the gate and the operating system, position and pricing, packaging, like all the things we need to run through to make your commercial function work. We will dive into that. And I think that's a big differentiator compared to like either going for an agency that focuses on execution, hiring a full team internally which takes a lot of rampant time, a lot of capital or a consultant which is like strategy heavy but execution poor. So yeah we try to balance somewhere in there. As I that that was the thing I wish I had in my started journeys as well. As I think it's very valuable and it actually if you manage to operationalize this in an scalable way then we can really have a big hit on a capital allocation as well. I mean started failure rate is still high but we also know that startups that are going through specific accelerator programs or intensive coaching programs have a way higher success rate. And I think that knowledge needs to be like more accessible towards the startups and you might say AI can be a big leverage there but then still what's the quality control there? How is it going to make you avoid a mishigher or stuff like that? So yeah. The human interaction there. Yeah absolutely. I mean yeah that's what it is and that's what we what we all need currently and I mean this is why the focus is so much on brand and trust because that is also at the end stands for for human connection for you know in a way values and connection over data and facts because data and facts we all can get plenty of in all dashboards but that connection is what what you can't artificially create. Yeah no it's always the connection between there and it's never just data. right? I mean, if you think about it, most companies will say, like, okay, we're at one million now and we need to go to four million. They will just look at like, oh, what did we do to get to one million? Let's do that times four. And we will hit that, that, that, it's never the case. Like that never works, right? It's, it's always more challenging than that. And that's, I think the, the, the meaning of the work as well to like, make sure the startups and then the companies are aware of that. And what are those hurdles that you will hit there? Like if you've done one million sales with like four people, you're not going to do the, the four million with 16 people. You have people leaving, you have high performers, low performers, you have ramp up time, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. There's way too many variables there as well to just make it a single times four times five times six case. As the PNL likes to show. Excel always works like that. Reality doesn't. Very, very good point. So last question. What is the biggest version of the gap between growth and reality you're meeting at the moment? Well, it is, it is this thing that it, that scaling is not linear, right? It is about, all these touch points you're having and the human element of it. You need to be, you, you need to be able to create a culture. You need to be able to have a shared understanding and goal of what you're going through. You need to understand like, growth is mostly happening in S curves. So yeah, it takes slow to start and you accelerate, then you will hit a plateau. That freaks out a lot of people when they hit the plateau for the first time because they're like, what's happening? Things we were doing are not working anymore. But it's actually just a natural course and effect and it shows it's actually a good sign. It just shows that you need to like prepare for the next stage and you need to focus on those parts. But if you have not seen it, then you will like be scared from it. It will scare you because things get tighter. They get more urgent and you need to think fast in order to go for the next level of growth. And that's the biggest gap, right? In an Excel sheet, everything is possible when you do times four. But in reality, it's never the case. So that's the biggest gap that will always be like that. It's the the problem like the the founder will always try to sell a specific story to the investors with a specific target on the return investment that needs to be made and that needs to be operationalized into a story that is doable as well. It needs to be a solid plan. It should not be times four, times six, times eight. No, it needs to be built in reality of what you know, like how long does it take to ramp up people? How long does it take to a customer? What is the lifetime value? What is the future and what is all these variables taken into one big plan, so to say, compared to just setting a target and give it a go. Yes. Well, thanks so much for this great conversation on ICP and sticking to it feedback loops. And yeah, I mean, the gap between growth and reality, specifically on the founder that startups and scale ups. Thank you, Julia. It was fun having this conversation. Thank you for having me.