Customers
The people ladder from Visitor to Customer, who the Customer is when someone else uses the Offer or an Agent acts, and what follows the first acceptance.
A Customer is a party that has accepted an Offer from a Startup at any price, including zero. Before that acceptance, a Person climbs a ladder of records, and each rung sets what the Startup may do.
The people ladder
Each rung records how a Person arrived and what they did. Nothing skips a rung by assumption: a bought list stays a list of Prospects, and a compliment stays an opinion until an Offer is accepted.
| Rung | What it means | Reached by | Outreach allowed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visitor | someone the Startup cannot name | a Visit | none |
| Prospect | found, never engaged | research or enrichment | outbound, with a legal basis |
| Lead | raised a hand | a Waitlist, a Form, or a reply | an answer, on the stated interest |
| Customer | accepted an Offer | accept, place, subscribe, or reserve | service, and Offers within Consent |
A Visitor is known only by an id scoped to one Startup. A Prospect is held with the basis that makes contact lawful. A Lead asked for something, and the Startup answers in writing within minutes.
People, Contacts, and Organizations
A Person is a human with one identity across every Startup. A Contact is one Startup's view of that Person, or of an Agent, known by at least one address. Each Contact carries the Consent recorded for it.
An Organization is an outside party as one Startup knows it, keyed by its domain. A Contact works at an Organization, and a Deal is usually with one.
The split keeps privacy and convenience together. One Person can be a Customer of three Startups in a Portfolio, with one sign-in, one bill, and three Contacts. A Suppression recorded by one Startup holds for every Startup in the Company.
Who pays and who uses
The party that accepts an Offer is often not the one who uses it. At tutorpair.co, a parent accepts the Offer and pays, a student books the lessons, and a tutor delivers them. The parent is the Customer; the student acts for them.
Each Persona names one type of person in that chain. The buyer approves spend, the user does the work, and the admin grants seats. Copy, onboarding, and receipts each address the right one, so the parent gets the invoice and the student gets the lesson reminder.
When an Agent acts, the Motion records it. A household's assistant Agent that buys a language course from lingolane.app runs in b2a2c. The household is the Customer, and the Agent buys inside the Limits the household set.
Who the Startup is built to win
The ICP is the customer a Startup is built to win: who they are and what they do. tutorpair.co's ICP is a parent of a high-school junior, two months before the first college-entrance exam.
The founding Hypothesis names that customer, the Problem, the approach, and the reason to switch. Evidence is graded as behavior, commitment, or opinion, and an accepted paid Offer outweighs any number of favorable calls.
Research stops when more of it would not change the next step. If ten more interviews would leave the Offer as it is, a reserve page or a small paid pilot answers faster.
Routing the misfit
Some Leads fit no Offer this Startup sells. A Lead that fits a sibling Startup better is routed there with its Consent, never dropped. The Portfolio cross-sell Play runs this routing, and each sibling keeps its own Contact for the Person.
Revenue from a routed Customer counts as outside revenue for the Startup that sells to them. A Customer who is part of the Portfolio counts for neither.
After the first acceptance
The Customer Team takes over at acceptance: onboarding, support, and retention, through the one Thread each Person has with the Startup. SalesBuilder returns when a Customer outgrows the Offer and the next tier or an annual term fits better.
A Customer record is never deleted. A Customer who leaves keeps their history, and a return picks it up. Net revenue retention, this year's revenue from last year's Customers against what they paid then, says whether Customers stay.
Next
- Selling: how a Lead becomes a Customer.
- Selling to agents: when an Agent is the buyer.
- Offers and pricing: what Customers accept.