who-is-this-for

# Who is this for? > "Developers" is not a market. It's a medium. If your ICP doesn't exclude anyone, it isn't one. **Use this when:** you describe your user as "developers" or "engineering teams," you can't name a person who is clearly *not* a fit, or you're aiming your messaging at the VP of Engineering because they have the budget. ## The core idea A usable ICP is specific enough that some people are obviously **out**. "Every developer" gives you nothing to say, because a message that speaks to everyone speaks to no one. Sharpen until exclusion is possible. And in almost every AI/dev-tool sale there is **more than one person**: the developer who adopts is rarely the person who pays. Market to the adopter; sell to the buyer. Confuse the two and you get great meetings and no decisions. ## Framework 1: The personas in the sale (Frankl) Map who plays each role. You need all of them for a complex sale; skip one and the deal stalls. | Persona | Cares about | Role in the sale | |---|---|---| | **Alpha Dev** | "What's possible?" Lives in the future. *No budget.* | Finds you, experiments, advocates internally, creates social proof | | **Empowered CTO** | Kairos, weeks off a release cycle, competitive edge. *Has budget.* | Approves spend and strategic fit | | **VP Engineering** | Team velocity, DX, quality at scale. Fears downtime/security | Evaluates feasibility, tests in staging | | **SRE / Platform Eng** | Reliability, less toil. *Reads your code before your copy.* | Gate...