Worksheet
Founders and aspiring entrepreneurs
The Customer Architecture Map
Define who you're actually building for before you give them a name and a face. A printable one-page map for building an ideal customer profile.
The Customer Architecture Map is a one-page working document for defining an ideal customer profile (ICP). It was created by Martin Dubreuil, The Modern Business Architect, to turn the thinking behind a target customer into something you can fill in, test and improve.
Most customer avatars start too late. They begin with a name, an age and a stock photo, and never explain why that person would buy. A target market tells you where to look. The Map helps you decide who to understand, starting with the human situation and the commercial reality, and leaving the persona until the end.
It's useful for founders testing a new idea, entrepreneurs deciding who to build for first, and established businesses that have quietly lost track of who they serve.
You work through eleven sections: Who, Now, Problem, Move, Mind, Money, Journey, Reach, Outcome, Not Them and Evidence. Together they cover the customer's situation and pain points, the trigger that makes them act, their psychographics, whether they can and will pay, their customer journey, whether you can realistically reach them, and who you should deliberately exclude.
Every statement gets a mark: K if you know it from evidence, A if you're assuming it. Most first drafts are mostly A's. That's the point. The A's become your customer research and validation plan, and the Map gets stronger each time evidence confirms or breaks one.
The download is a two-page PDF: a short guide to using the Map, and the printable Map itself, sized for US Letter and printable on A4.
Want to understand the thinking behind the Map? Read How to Define Your Ideal Customer. It also includes AI prompts for turning a completed Map into a written customer persona and an optional visual profile.