ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): the tight slice of buyers (industry, size, role, pain, budget) where your product wins fast, loses rarely, and pays the most.
When Linear launched in 2019, founder Karri Saarinen has repeatedly said they ignored enterprise sales motions and chased a sharply drawn ICP: small but serious product teams who already hated Jira. That focus let them ship opinionated workflow defaults instead of configuration menus, and it shaped the brand long enough for the broader market to come to them.
