2 min lesson
Who you sell to: ICP and stakeholder map
Consider this situation: "An engineer at a target account already uses Cursor daily. How should that change your outreach?" Start with the decision, then the evidence.
Step 1 of 3
Your ICP (ideal customer profile) is narrow on purpose: startup and mid-market engineering organizations. Not consumers, not non-technical departments, not enterprise IT committees. The buyer is a team that ships code and feels the pain Cursor removes.
Inside that org, three groups care about different outcomes and the message that opens a door for one falls flat for another. An IC engineer wants to know it won't slow them down. A VP Eng wants throughput and a standard tool. Reaching the wrong persona with the right message still gets you ignored.
Interactive diagram. Tab through its regions; each focused region shows its detail in the panel below.
Adoption starts at the bottom; the funded decision lives at the top.
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Advanced table
Match the angle to the persona
- Persona
- IC engineer / champion
- What they care about
- Daily speed, flow, autonomy over tooling
- Credible entry-point angle
- “You already use Cursor - how's the rest of your team adopting it?”
- Persona
- Eng lead / EM
- What they care about
- Team throughput, onboarding, review bottlenecks
- Credible entry-point angle
- “What would standardizing your team on one AI tool enable?”
- Persona
- VP Eng / CTO
- What they care about
- Output, retention, one funded standard, risk
- Credible entry-point angle
- “Several of your engineers already run Cursor - worth a 20-min look at the team plan?”
- Persona
- Product lead
- What they care about
- Shipping velocity, roadmap pace
- Credible entry-point angle
- Corroborate eng pain; rarely the primary thread
| Persona | What they care about | Credible entry-point angle |
|---|---|---|
| IC engineer / champion | Daily speed, flow, autonomy over tooling | “You already use Cursor - how's the rest of your team adopting it?” |
| Eng lead / EM | Team throughput, onboarding, review bottlenecks | “What would standardizing your team on one AI tool enable?” |
| VP Eng / CTO | Output, retention, one funded standard, risk | “Several of your engineers already run Cursor - worth a 20-min look at the team plan?” |
| Product lead | Shipping velocity, roadmap pace | Corroborate eng pain; rarely the primary thread |
Match the angle to the persona - the same value prop needs different framing for a champion vs. an economic buyer.
Whatever door you pick, you have to answer one question before you dial: why would this specific person take a meeting now? A new funding round, a hiring spike, a public migration or visible organic Cursor usage all qualify. “Because I have a quota” does not.
In the mock call or take-home, name your entry point and justify it out loud: “I'm starting with the VP Eng because three of her engineers already show up as Cursor users, so there's a standardize-and-fund conversation, not a cold pitch.” Showing you chose the persona on purpose - and tied it to a now-reason - beats a generic blast to everyone with @company in their email.