Customer personas: your best friends for startup success

My pitch coach Cécile introduced me to a set of new friends: Grace, Kristie and Melati. Grace, Kristie and Melati live in Singapore, Hong Kong and Jakarta. What is special about them? They are not human beings. They exist in my imagination and on power point slides. Grace and Kristie and Melati are customer personas.

Customer personas are often generated once market research and qualitative interviews have been conducted. By taking a more detailed look at a customer’s pain points, consumption habits and preferences, startup teams internalize client-centricity early on. Cécile and I did not follow this order — we like to rebel. I created the personas first. And then assessed their representation in a given population sample. This helped me determine the serviceable obtainable market (SOM) for my startup idea (an online marketplace for preloved clothes). Upon completion of this task, Cécile helped me evaluate wether the current SOM was big enough to continue working on the overall concept.

Let me introduce you to Grace. She lives in Singapore, she works as an academic director at the National University of Singapore (NUS) — she has to be well dressed at work. Grace cannot show up at work wearing the same outfit for three consecutive days!

But life is expensive in Singapore and the societal pressure associated with Singapore’s 5 Cs (cash, car, condominium, credit card, country club) weigh her down at times. Grace’s salary is a very good one by Singaporian standards — she earns SGD 170.000 per annum before taxes. But she has to make monthly payments towards her condominium loan and take care of her aging parents.

“Grace doesn’t see the point in spending a hefty monthly portion of her salary on new clothes”

The above slide summarizes Grace’s interests, her fashion goals, where she shops, which brands she likes. It also highlights her communication preferences and challenges when it comes to purchasing clothes online. Last but not least, it captures her interest in sustainability (and circularity).

The reality-check: how many Graces exist in my target market?

Creating assumptions regarding Grace’s living costs helped me. In theory, Grace can spend up to SGD 750 per month on clothes. But does she? Wouldn’t she rather go on holidays to nearby Bali or Vietnam, or take a trip to mainland China (the land of her ancestors)?

Are there enough Grace’s in Singapore? Put differently, how many women in Grace’s income and educational level bracket would use the marketplace REPERIO? My estimates showed that 13.000 women out of the 1.3 million women in Singapore aged 25–55 would use the marketplace. This is part of the exercise of defining the serviceable obtainable market (SOM). Hence Cécile’s comment: “Caro, your market share is too small”.

We didn’t stop with Grace. I also hashed out profiles for women living in Hong Kong (Kristie) and Jakarta (Melati) (as well as in Shanghai and Seoul). This helped me understand that female Indonesian shoppers having less disposable income to purchase fashion would not make them a customer demographic to focus on during the pilot phase. Indeed, for a pilot, we decided that testing the concept in two small markets with similar customer features would be more effective.

Creating comprehensive customer personas — not only assessing your prospective customer’s shopping and communication habits and their lifestyle, but also at their budget — was a very powerful exercise for me. I have learned that they truly are my best friends — friends for life (= the life span of your startup). I strongly recommend working with them! YC Combinator as well as other flagship accelerator programs have published about them extensively — see sources below.

Further reading:

  • John Brackett (for Forbes): “How to create actionable customer personas”. 2020. Link.

  • David Rusenko (YC Combinator): “How to find product market fit”. 2018. YouTube video. Link.

  • Surveymonkey: “How surveys help you create buyer personas”- Link.

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Digital wardrobes - a remedy to fashion waste?