One of the most important things for any startup to do is to develop personas — descriptions of fictional people who represent typical customers for your venture. Some founders think this is a marketing exercise that some intern can do later after the product is built. Those founders are probably now broke and looking for a job. Don't be one of those.
Everything we know about successful product development is that it should be customer-centric in every way. Great products are developed by teams who really understand customers, empathize with the problems they have, understand the ways customers currently solve those problems, and obsess about how their product can solve them better. Writing personas is a critical part of this product development process — and later on, personas will also be a big part of the successful marketing of that product.
Different customer segments care about slightly different things. Personas bring those differences to the surface.
Let's take a look at a simple example. Say our new venture is an on-demand service delivering healthy breakfasts. We'll likely have several different customer segments, but let's start by writing personas on just two of them:
Single Sam
Age 25 · Lives alone
Sam hates cooking. Sometimes in the evening he'll use DoorDash to get some dinner, but in the mornings he usually just skips breakfast. A hot cup of coffee is all he needs to get going. He's got a busy professional life, so he tends to just get up and jump right into work. He knows his mom says breakfast is important, but who's got time for that?
Mary the Mom Warrior
Age 36 · Two kids, ages 6 & 8
Mary is all about healthy living — she doesn't let her kids drink soda, forces them to eat their vegetables, and has a strict no-candy rule. But breakfast is a struggle. She's a working mom, so between getting the kids up and ready for school and getting herself ready for work, there just isn't much time for preparing a healthy fresh breakfast for the family.
Single Sam just really cares about time and not wanting to cook. Mary the Mom Warrior is very much driven by wanting healthy meals for her kids. Same product, very different motivations — and that difference matters enormously for how you develop, position, and market your offering.
Over time, you'll develop these further: add demographic and income data for each persona, add illustrated portraits, and more. If you Google "persona template," you will find many detailed examples. Or you can just ask ChatGPT to write personas for you.
But for me, it starts by just writing a paragraph on each, which you can then expand and iterate upon. Keep your personas in a shared doc where everyone on the team can refer to them. Most importantly, update them regularly as you continue to learn more about your customers and what they care about.
Like everything else in building a successful startup, it's about being customer-centric and iterating regularly based on what you learn. Start that process early by developing personas and referring to them obsessively.