Read the presentation that prestigious VC firm Greylock gives to startup founders to tell them everything they need to know to raise a Series A

"If you're a seed stage entrepreneur, I actually really think it's important to focus on solidifying your foundation — versus some ARR target — because that's going to be more important to both raising a successful Series A and, more importantly, building a significant business," Motamedi said. 

Each of those categories has three elements.

Each of the three archetypes has its own kind of risk. 

For example, if a firm is moving into a competitive area with established incumbents, the founder needs to explain why the product is so much better than anything else that's already out there. 

Motamedi asks questions like: Are you going to replace the incumbent from Day One, which requires convincing customers to rip out a core part of their system in order to use your product? Or are you initially going to try to coexist and live alongside the incumbent and then expand into new areas?

To figure out their ICP, founders should think about how they'd instruct a new sales representative, Motamedi said:

"What are the questions you would have the sales rep ask a customer, where, if the customer answered affirmatively, you could convert them with like an 80% conversion rate?" 

Once this set of criteria is established, the founder will know what customer market they're attacking first. 

An ICP should start very narrow, he said, but companies should continually tweak and expand them as they build additional product features. 

For example, if a startup's average contract value is below $226202485,000, the product needs to be able to spread organically, by word of mouth, without much customer support needed.

If it has a $226202485,000 ACV product but requires an "inside sales" approach, that company is going to run out of money. 

"You can figure all of this out without writing a line of code," Motamedi said.

"We love to see founders who can hire from a networks of folks that they've worked with in the past, either from previous companies or from their friend groups, and the reason for that is twofold," Motamedi said. "One is that you have more conviction in the quality of people you're hiring and the culture fit, and the second is that you can get an initial team up and running much faster."

Diversity is also important:

"We look for teams that are diverse from day one," he said. "It's important to us that companies prioritize that with the founding team and set that foundation."

The chart should show the product capabilities and, based on feedback from customers or potential customers the startup has talked to, which category each falls into.

"You want to look at this and say, 'There are enough data points that are two's and three's that we believe that we have sufficient product superiority," Motamedi said. 

The firm tells seed stage entrepreneurs to build their front-end first, so that they can let potential customers play around with the product like it's real. That will lead to much higher-quality feedback than just describing something theoretically, Motamedi said. 

These boards can create a win-win situation:

The customers that join can feel like they're on the "cutting edge of innovation" and get ideas from other peer companies during brainstorm sessions, Motamedi said, while the startup gets tons of feedback on their product. 

Startups can also give participants "advisory grants" to sweeten the deal, he added, so that they feel like they're really stakeholders in the company. 

For example, if the startup needs to ask a customer for a ton of data upfront to show them any sort of interesting benefit, they'll likely face a lot of "no's."

"Customers will be like, "That sounds great in theory but I have no interest in giving this five person startup all my data,'" Motamedi said. 

Startups should start by showing customers some value with very little upfront work first, and then asking for more access.