May 16 • PLG
Can You Start Acquiring Users Before Your ICP Is Fully Clear?
I had a conversation recently with a few SaaS founders, and one question kept coming up:
Can you start acquiring users before your ICP, use case, and value message are fully clear?
My honest answer is yes.
But only if you treat acquisition as a learning engine, not a scaling engine.
A lot of founders think their growth problem is the channel.
LinkedIn is not working.Outbound is not working.Paid ads are too expensive.SEO is too slow.The landing page needs a redesign.
Sometimes that is true.
But often, the real issue is more foundational:
- The ICP is not clear.
- The use case is too broad.
- The value message is not sharp enough.
- The founder is trying to sell too many things to too many people.
And when that happens, acquisition does not create growth.
It creates noise.
The better question is not:
Should we start acquisition?
The better question is:
Are we using acquisition to learn, or are we expecting it to scale?
Early acquisition should help you validate:
- Who reacts fastest to the problem?
- Which use case creates urgency?
- What message gets attention?
- Which segment is willing to engage?
- Where do people get confused before converting?
This connects to the first part of my G.R.O.W.T.H framework: Groundwork.
For me, Groundwork means clarifying:
- Who are we serving?
- What problem are we solving?
- Why does it matter now?
- What value should the user experience quickly?
- What metric tells us they reached value?
Without this, every growth channel becomes harder.
Your landing page becomes vague.Your outbound becomes generic.Your onboarding becomes unfocused.Your sales calls become too educational.Your roadmap becomes reactive.
My view:
Use acquisition to learn when your ICP, use case, or message is still evolving.
Use acquisition to scale when you know who your best-fit customer is, what problem creates urgency, and how users reach value.
The risk is not starting acquisition early.
The risk is scaling acquisition before the foundation is clear.
I wrote more about the framework here:https://product-led-growth.com/
Curious how others think about this.
Have you seen companies try to scale acquisition before their ICP or value message was clear?
What happened?
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Can You Start Acquiring Users Before Your ICP Is Fully Clear?
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